Take for example Dorothy and Bob, who wanted some last-minute advice before marrying. Obviously they were crazy about each other. To them a kiss or embrace was a way to convey their adoration. Everything pointed to their being truly in love and the tests showed them to be well-matched. To deny them such expression of affection when together would not only frustrate their love but might even impair their adjustment in marriage.
Their kind of innocent petting however should not be confused with the “exploitive” kind practiced by a student we’ll call Hale. He said quite casually that he “loves ’em and leaves ’em.” Investigation showed that was precisely what he did. And while he was apparently not as irresistible as he implied, he did find some girls to join him in his sex adventuring. Some naïvely fell for his line. Others joined in quite frankly for the thrill involved in exploring each other. Both Hale and two of the promiscuous girls involved showed in their tests strong traces of emotional instability which would make them poor marriage prospects. Before a girl becomes involved in any petting she should make sure in her own mind that it is not the “exploitive” kind.
Caressing or petting becomes definitely dangerous when physical contact and stimulation become ends in themselves. In the case of an engaged couple in love the intimacy is not just an end in itself but an expression of affection. The important thing is that sexual feeling should develop and grow out of the friendship and courtship of two people, it should not be the initial basis for it. There is likely to be exploitation involved if a couple feel impelled to engage in petting during the first few dates. Petting is progressive and can carry a couple much further than they intend to go. That is the big danger.
Ideally a couple should marry when their friendship and courtship have developed in them such strong sexual feelings toward each other that there is a physical and psychological need for satisfaction. This is why society is more tolerant of petting after a couple become engaged. It is nature’s preparation for marriage. The trouble of course is in the serious lag involved between the time a couple may be ripe physically for marriage and the time they are prepared vocationally and emotionally to marry. We still have our child brides in backwoods areas but most modern Americans do not consider it feasible to marry until they are well in their twenties. And in our civilization that is proper. But it does impose serious temptations on the people who have to wait.
From the time they pass out of adolescence young people—especially men—need outlets for the sexual tensions building up within them. There seems little doubt to us that refraining from any sort of sexual expression does impair one’s psychological balance and mental health. Personality can be damaged and physical health may be damaged. But if we rule out climactic sexual relations with another person what alternatives are left? There are three major forms this can take.
—Climaxes in the dream world. This is most common with men and produces their nocturnal emissions.
—Substitution. This usually means masturbation. Many people think that masturbation is a sin, that it will produce insanity, that it leads to skin blemishes or pimples, that it is something disgusting or filthy, that it stunts your growth. All the evidence indicates that none of these is true. A noted psychiatrist, O. Spurgeon English, recently said: “Most all psychiatrists, psychologists, and educators today regard masturbation as a normal phenomenon ... indulged in to some degree by all human beings during the course of their development.” As we see it, masturbation is a relatively harmless method of reducing tension providing feelings of guilt and shame are not connected with it and providing of course that it is not done excessively.
—Sublimation. You “sublimate” a sexual hunger, or handle it on a “high” socially approved plane by such things as dancing and associating a great deal with persons of the other sex. A young person is greatly helped in this if he is permitted to date at an early age (fifteen is not too young) and encouraged to bring his date to his home. Sublimation cannot reduce sexual hunger but it helps to take your mind off it.
If there is no outlet for these feelings through normal and natural associations with the opposite sex and if parental instruction on sex has been inadequate, really abnormal sex behavior may result.
The most common form of maldevelopment probably is homosexuality. It was once believed that homosexuals were “born that way.” But now it is known that the great majority of them, male and female, are normal in a bodily sense. Their abnormal behavior is clearly the result of unfortunate conditioning. Perhaps a boy was pampered too much as a child and has had little chance to mingle with the other sex, and then is rebuffed when he attempts to make dates because he seems namby-pamby or effeminate. While being forced away from associating with girls the hormones are being poured into his blood stream. The boy becomes tense without realizing why and without any outlet to reduce the tension. Bit by bit he may turn to persons of his own sex for sexual satisfaction, first perhaps through mutual masturbation and finally through homosexuality.