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At the time of the Song of Solomon, King Solomon had married only 140 wives. During his 40-year reign, he married 1000 women, averaging a little over 2 weeks spent on each wife from courtship to marriage to the honeymoon being over to pursuing his next bride.
The Song of Solomon relates the story of the one maiden who was too smart to fall for Solomon's practiced speech that made other virgins swoon. The young Shulammite rejected Solomon's fascination with feminine bodies and insisted upon developing a strong emotional bond before marriage. God put his stamp of approval on the Shulammite's marriage to the common Shepherd instead of the rich king by telling her to get married and get drunk on lovemaking in Song of Solomon 5:2.
At the end of his life, Solomon reviewed the results of all of his social and financial experiments in the book of Ecclesiastes. He confided in 7:25-29 that in marrying 1000 virgins, he had never found great pleasure and happiness:
I directed my mind to know, to investigate, and to seek wisdom and an explanation, and to know the evil of folly and the foolishness of madness. And I discovered more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, whose hands are chains. One who is pleasing to God will escape from her, but the sinner will be captured by her. "Behold, I have discovered this," says the Preacher, "adding one thing to another to find an explanation, which I am still seeking but have not found, I have found one man among a thousand, but I have not found a woman among all these. Behold, I have found only this, that God made men upright, but they have sought out many devices."
How sad that Solomon "didn't get it." Even after making love to 1000 virgins and all of his wisdom, Solomon still didn't get it. He never learned the simple lesson the Shulammite tried to teach him about what makes lovemaking great--a true emotional bond with the lover that liberates the body to sexual delights beyond description. For indeed, Solomon said, "adding one thing to another to find an explanation, which I am still seeking but have not found."
Solomon stayed locked into immature high-school sex for 40 years
Essentially, Solomon kept having the same sexual experience over and over for 1000 times. Talk about sexual immaturity, it doesn't get any worse than that.
A lifetime of glorious lovemaking requires work getting to know the other person emotionally and solving the problems of the daytime. Enjoying a happy marriage forces a person to grow up emotionally. In fact, this is what life is all about--growing up emotionally.
We spend the first 20 years of life growing up physically.
We spend the second 20 years growing up emotionally.
Then we get to spend the next 20 years enjoying the rewards of a wonderful lovelife.
But running from one sexual partner to another, locks us into the immaturity of high-school sex for a lifetime.
Yet, Solomon recognized that common men enjoy what all his wealth could not buy as he admonished a man to "enjoy life with the woman [not women] whom you love all the days of your fleeting life" (9:9).
Solomon was unable to enjoy a wonderful marriage with a single one of his 1000 wives because he didn't understand the basic principle of sex. And because of his ignorance of the role of the mind in emotional bonding creating outstanding sexual contact, he was not motivated to invest the necessary time to learn how to love a woman emotionally and sexually.
What a huge tragedy that a man whom God loved and gave wisdom so that there was none like him was so stupid in his personal love life that a young 14-year-old maiden had the insight to say, "Solomon, I can't stand the thought of your lecherous hands on me for ... "
It does down smoothly for my beloved, flowing gently through the lips of those who fall asleep. (Song of Solomon 7:9b)
Radical change in my teaching on marriage and lovemaking
In answer to the critical marriage question:
Which comes first, great lovemaking or loving leadership, or are they so intertwined that you can't enjoy one without the other?
The Song of Solomon teaches "great lovemaking intertwining with daily life." While the sexual attraction was there from the beginning, the Shulammite did not allow sexual coupling to take place before the emotional bonding was complete.
Different from most couples today, the Shulammite told the Shepherd her mother had taught her lovemaking was for her and how to please a man. One of the reasons she chose him over Solomon was that he was like a brother who nursed at her mother's breasts. In other words, he likewise grew up in a loving home so that he could enter marriage with healthy sexual attitudes and desires.
As a result of emotional bonding creating eager anticipation of sexual coupling in marriage, God told the Shulammite and Shepherd to get married, and get drunk on married love making--the innovative design of the wonderful Creator of the human mind and body. God so values the role of healthy lovemaking in marriage that he commanded young husbands to spend the first year at home practicing lovemaking to learn the secrets of giving pleasure to their wives. At the end of a year of playful experimenting with love bonding, that couple could weather almost any evil life would throw at them.
Unfortunately, most people don't grow up with sexually and emotionally healthy parents. Nearly everyone brings baggage to their marriages, some more than others. Such was the case of the Corinthians whom God described as adulterers and homosexuals and revilers. God gave his formula for overcoming these sins of both the body and the mind. It has been my great pleasure over four decades to watch this formula transform many lives.
God did not create humans as robots who must love and honor him when someone turns on the switch. With mankind's God-given freewill choice, I've also witnessed many individuals choosing to not honor God with their minds and their sexuality--their femininity and masculinity. Jesus could not save everyone when he walked the earth and that requires us to respect the choices others make, while giving God the glory for providing the choice in the first place.
Where I am now in my level of understanding and experience is that I believe couples with marriage problems need to start with Vol. II: God's People Make the Best Lovers to learn the role of the mind in lovemaking, for where there are problems in the bedroom, of necessity, there are problems outside the bedroom. Once we understand the role of the mind in lovemaking, it provides tremendous motivation to take care of legitimate problems in other areas of the marriage.
Turn on the body's power to receive and express sexual love
Once a person discovers for him or herself the power of the mind over increasing physical sensations, it provides a tremendous motivation for working with the mate in solving all sexual and daytime problems so that they can praise God through the intertwining of their bodies.
One student recently said, "If Patsy is right about this, who do we know who has achieved this goal?" Her husband could think of only the parents of one friend he played with growing up. Yet this goal is God's desire and his personal reward to us for our devotion to him in our marriages. Every time a woman experiences a supreme vaginal orgasm, she is praising God with her body and paying her husband the highest compliment possible because of the attitudes that must reign in her heart for that physical response.
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