My ex-boyfriend sends this thought-provoking post about sex from a Christian blogger

Byron sent this blog post to me and I found it to be thought-provoking, calling out the difference between intimate sex and casual sex. I am less judgmental than its Jewish Fundamental Christian author, Simon Mapleback, since I have enjoyed both sexual approaches at different times. However, I do favor intimacy that brings me closer to unconditional love...that deep well of mutual acceptance and commitment, as the author describes below:

Raya is the Hebrew word for companionship, and it’s not just like buddies, but it’s this: that I know you and you know me. It’s not that I just know your pretty stuff, but it’s that I know your junk, too. That I have seen the challenging parts of you, you have seen the challenging parts of me, and yet still we’ve decided to try to work on this relationship. So, the foundational element of love and sex for the Hebrew mind and their idea of love, was this word, raya, which means that I know you and you know me and I really know you and you really know me. Raya never occurs on a first date. It never occurs on a second date. Raya can never take place until that first time you watch the person you’re dating do something that makes you go, “Oh, no.” And then, in that moment, raya occurs if you say, “I’m going to keep going.” Now, if you go, “I’m done”, then you’re done. But raya is this getting to know each other in such a way that I know you, all of you, and you know me, all of me. And we continue to walk together. And raya leads into ahava.

Ahava is a love of the will. The best way to explain ahava is this, “I am not going anywhere.” It carries a very assertive tone, and it basically is this: Your spouse, your girlfriend, your boyfriend – is angry with you, and then in that moment of conflict there’s something within that says: “I am not going anywhere.” And so what happens is raya (or me getting to know you and you getting to know me – my good stuff, my bad stuff, your good stuff, your bad stuff) leads to sweet dod.

Dod is not the Hebrew word for sex. It is the Hebrew word for sex when ahava and raya are present. If we have raya and we have ahava, then sex isn’t just two bodies together, it’s two persons. And it’s in there, in that moment that all the intimacy and love that we crave is found.