Marriage relationships in Nudism
One of the most difficult to understand aspects of Nudism is that of how couples stay couples. Textile conventions (which may include influences from Western Culture, Hollywood and / or the Catholic Church) dictate that conventional man / woman relationships cannot work in Nudism. And yet millions of nudist couples (some of which have been together for many decades) remain faithful to each other. Clearly someone has got the facts wrong. Usually the error is made by vocal textiles who have never had anything to do with nudism. The first mistake made is (of course) to assume that nudity is a trigger for sex. We've dealt with that one in other sections so we won't go into it here.
Partners
Partners, Love and Sex in a Nudist environment work the same way as in Textile Society except that seeing your partner (or anyone else) nude is not an invitation to have sex with them. If you have a partner, and you want to remain partners after you try on nudism, you're going to have to find something other than nudity to excite you and your partner. Sounds hard.
But actually it's easy. In virtually all cases partners express an improved "love life" when they become involved in Nudism. This is because love becomes something you give instead of something you go looking for in a relationship. You'll be able to more readily control sexual desire in your relationship as a nudist. Love will be an extension of the feelings you have for your partner, instead of just a "fix" of touch and intimacy which (in textile society) cannot be experienced anywhere else but in the bedroom.
Nudist couples can readily express love for each other (by looking and touching) in amongst other people who may even be strangers. In practice this places sex in it's correct place (in private). It is no longer necessary to squash the entire day's feelings for eachother in to three minutes each evening. You can express these feelings all day.
It works. It works well. That's why there's so many close couples in Nudism - couples who probably may have known eachother for years before they tried nudism. Couples who are very likely to honour their original wedding vows.
Adultery & Monogamy
The obvious topic, this was bound to pop up. It's because there are biblical verses (many of which have not survived well through middle age translations) which imply that it's a sin, and that we're bound to burn in hell if we get mixed up with it. So you can't blame most churches for steering a wide berth around adultery. But to simply say "don't commit adultery" is to completely miss the point that God is trying to get across here. Of course the whole issue is complicated (again) by the "nudity equals sex" equation believed by many textiles. It's not hard to see that somewhere in the past 2000 years some wag has done some ludicrous word mathematics and figured that if Adultery is defined as "having sex with someone other than your partner" and "nudity equals sex" then the logical conclusion is that "to see anyone other than my partner naked is to have sex with them, and that's adultery, which means it's a sin". Thank God our universe isn't built on logic like this because if it was, we would probably still be stuck in the Big Bang.
The best and most accurate address of this misunderstanding is undoubtedly found in Jesus Christ's words in Matthew 5 Vs 27 which state that "Any man who looks upon a woman and wants to possess her, is guilty of adultery in his heart". And an open and shut case you would think, if only the words "and wants to possess her" were not included by Jesus in this sentence.
These words (ignored by the logic equation above) are actually the most important of all. The act of adultery and sin is not caused by the "looking" but by the "wanting". It's part of our sinful desire to want things - our endless pursuit of wanting to "own and control" our world - as if we ourselves were our own God. To want to place ourselves before God is the sin. The adultery example is only but one of millions of examples that could be used to illustrate our sinful lives daily.
You will of course note the total lack of mention of the presence or absence of clothing in this (and many other) biblical verses as being the "source" of the sin. Our plight is unaffected by presence or absence of clothes. However it is our "textile" thinking which somehow excuses us if we happen to look at a clothed woman and lust after her, while totally rejecting that the same thing can happen with or without clothes and that the problem is the lust itself, not the subject of the lust.
There is little data to suggest that marriage breakups occur more or less frequently amongst the nudist community. However it is a known fact that older couples represent the overwhelming majority of nudists worldwide, for reasons which may be argued in other sections of this homepage.
Polygamy
For the uninitiated, a polygamist chooses to ignore the convention of "one partner". For reasons detailed above, it is likely that a proportion of textiles (particularly those with religious beliefs) would consider nudists to also be polygamists. This belief is a result of total ignorance, more than just a "head in the sand". However the situation is complicated by the fact that a small proportion of nudists probably DO believe in, and practice polygamy (consented sex with others apart from your chosen partner - even to the level where there may be many partners all well known to each other) either within a close circle of friends or within communities.
The proportion of polygamists in nudism is likely to be the same as in textile society. Certainly there is no evidence to suggest that polygamy has "anything to do" with Nudism, however nudists in general tend to be more accepting of other people with differing beliefs to their own. Certainly the proliferation of acceptance and physical touch / affection shown in nudist environments could lead textiles to believe that nudists practice "group sex" etc. But this belief is skewed by their misunderstanding of sex itself, not the actions of nudists.
Love, Humans, the birds and ze beez, and all that Jazz.
There are some differences between the way humans express love to eachother now, and the way it was intended to work in God's original plan. Granted there is only one example of "original" culture to study (Adam & Eve). And this example is made more difficult in the knowledge that there was only one male and one female present. It would have been much easier if Eve had waited a few generations before picking the apple, so we could have some data with which to compare our current situation.
We don't.. so we can only theorise on what God intended it to be like, and perhaps use the Animal Kingdom (non human) as a guideline to the way love is expressed in cultures other than our own. Early childhood also offers some good examples.
Expression of love by means of touch in textile (and most nudist) cultures is confined to family relationships. This is seen as motherly (Mother / Father to child and brother to sister etc) or sexual (Husband / Wife). There is little scope for affection (especially touch) outside these relationships. But this is not the way humans were designed.
We were originally supposed to be one giant family, with equal love and affection freely expressed between all of us. I know what you're thinking. You're probably already visualising fuzzy 1960's photos of hippy culture. Some readers might even be visualising their own idea of a nudist culture, where (supposedly) everyone is having with sex with everyone else all the time.
Stop looking at these visuals! They're all crap - developed from a potentially deadly mix of Hollywood, pornography and a compulsively clothed society. You're a victim - so am I. Replace them with feelings about your loved ones.
Now imagine that every human existing today is a potential "loved one", with the capacity to give (and accept) love from you. In this fantasy you can freely show affection for everyone you meet, all the time. Add to this a world where every need of your own is fulfilled. You're close to Heaven. (in order to get there you'll have to look at all the God thing too, but since this is a discussion on nudism and not a session for me to push my beliefs on others, we'll leave that out for now).
Humans show affection for one another in various ways;
The need to be loved by touch is basic to all human survival. Nowhere is this more obvious than between parent and child. But the problems happen because we are weened off this dependency as we grow older. We are taught to believe that it is not necessary for our survival once we've "grown up".
Nothing could be further from the truth. We still need all that touching, stroking and loving care we once received (hopefully) from our parents. And we know it. But now it's called something else - Sex. So as teens we learn that the only acceptable way in which we can receive this kind of love is as part of a sexual relationship. Sex becomes a commodity - a need - a must have. And the rest (of course) is history - a society obsessed with sex. Getting it, giving it, paying for it.
But truthfully sex is not in itself a necessary part of human survival - only it's procreation. Medical interests will profess again and again how irrelevant the sex act itself is to survival. A woman need never have sex. A man need never ejaculate in his lifetime and still remain healthy.
To seek sex merely in order to give and receive love is doomed to failure. Those who try it will never be satisfied. A string of unwanted children, divorces and separations are the inevitable result. A society based on sex results in perversion, pornography, crime, misunderstanding and hate. The truth is that the expression of loving care through close physical contact between humans need not include sex, and need not (indeed, should not) be confined to a marriage relationship. The ability to give and receive love in physical ways should be spread as widely as possible over as many of our peers as possible. Sex is reserved for our chosen partner - the one with whom we have chosen to raise a family and share our whole lives. Such models are very common in other animal species.
Nudism is one step closer to this ideal (however it still falls short in many ways.) It firstly helps us to come to terms with our honesty and similarities as a common species. It helps us accept others and ourselves for what we are. It is an environment in which physical touch is more readily acceptable and likely. More often than not, it is a holiday experience for most - a relaxing time.
So the next time you're nude amongst friends, try it out. Stroke and coress eachother and jump on top of each other. Do all the fun stuff, frolic in the mud, paint each other, play contact games. Practice the feeling of uninhibited love without sex. Be like dolphins in the sea, monkeys at the zoo, fruitflies in the jar. It helps if you're sober, and in control of yourself. Remember what it was like to be a child (if you had a good childhood.. otherwise enlist help of a trusted friend to love you, and / or participate in a Human Awareness Institute workshop..)
I know this is all impossible. OK. So accept defeat and wait for heaven to come instead. But for those readers out there who can't wait... you can have a little bit of heaven now if you're willing to give up your past, renounce the textile system and take control of your body.
..warning.. the following paragraph is my own beliefs ..
Oh and yes.. it's a good idea to actually make sure you're going to Heaven when you do kick the bucket. Don't be a dilly and be sorry when it's too late. All you have to do is believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. And if you need help with that one, slide on down t' ta'triple rock. (p.s. leave your wallet at home..) Yes they're almost certainly all textiles inside, and they've got some weird ideas. But they should be able to set you right about the whole God, Heaven and Hell thing. And if they still turn out useless (lets face it, many churches are) then just pick up a Bible and check it out for yourself. You've got nothing to lose - but Eternal Life to gain.