In the evenings after dinner, I usually like to lie on the couch next to my husband David and scroll Facebook for interesting content I can share with him. One evening, my feed contained an intriguing post from the youth division of our local community center. It featured a stock photo of a twenty-something young man with his face buried in his hands. The title read: "8 out of 10 teens and young adults today struggle with navigating the world of sexual relationships in the digital age. You can help."
The post proceeded to explain that many young men and women today have absorbed unhealthy ideas surrounding relationships and sex which they have picked up from the internet, especially online porn. Studies have shown that youth in the digital age engage in much less sex--and even in less wholesome casual relationships between the sexes--than in previous generations. These studies have suggested that instead of learning about sex and relationships from personal experiences of trial and error and from sharing experiences of peers, today's youth instead turn to online porn as their guides. Because of this, the community center was looking for married couples from the community, in order to volunteer to meet with struggling youth and to serve as mentors. The idea was to provide these young men and women positive role models for learning how to develop healthy sexual relationships with their peers, and to help debunk for them the warped ideas they have picked up from the internet. I read the post out loud to David, and he and I both agreed that it was a very worthwhile cause and one that we'd like to volunteer to contribute toward. I sent a message to Cassey, the youth coordinator at the center, and explained that we'd be happy to volunteer to be a mentor-couple, and that we had no preference for mentoring either a boy or a girl. Sarah replied promptly with a few questions to ensure that we were an appropriate couple, and then set a day and time the following week for David and I to be introduced to the young adult that would be assigned to us.
At the appointed time, David and I met Cassey at the community center, and were introduced to Jason, a 20 year-old sophomore in the local college, where he studied philosophy. Jason seemed like a very intelligent and sweet boy--skinny, somewhat tall, and quite shy in demeanor. Truth be told, he was a rather good-looking boy, dark hair, piercing blue eyes, and fine features, but he exuded a certain lack of self-confidence which likely did not serve well in attracting girls own his age. David and I shook Jason's hand and David introduced ourselves: "Hi Jason, I'm David, and this is my wife Samantha. I'm 45 and Samantha is 35. We have been together for 12 years, and have been married for 5. Cassey explained to us that Jason had turned to her as the community center's youth counselor because he felt that he was struggling with initiating with girls his age and very much wanted to learn from successful couples with real-life experience. David and I agreed to meet up again with Jason at a local café over the weekend in order to launch the mentorship and to get to know each other a bit better.
David and I met Jason at the café that weekend, and spent a lovely afternoon chatting and getting to know each other and learning about Jason's struggles. Jason shared with us that while he has "made out" two or three times with young women at college parties, he has never gotten beyond this and indeed was still a virgin. He explained that his robust sex drive led him masturbate to porn pretty much on a daily basis, and sometimes even several times a day. He also described how he is worried that the ideas he has picked up from his porn use may be inhibiting his development of real-life relationships with young women his age. "I don't even know what a normal, healthy sexual relationship looks like," he explained. Jason seemed extraordinarily sincere and self-reflective, and both David and I really took a liking to him. We decided that we should meet up again at our home the next weekend, this time for some beers.
The next weekend, Jason came to our home and we all sat in the living-room sharing a round of cold beers. David and I shared a bit about our own sexual relationship--how it started, and how it developed over time. David explained to Jason that while in the beginning we used to go at it everyday, today we generally have sex around three times a week, usually every other day or so. We also gave Jason a bit of details about what our normal sexual activities usually entailed.