When Dan asked me to be a part of their new site, I began to think about what sex honesty means to me, and how I think it can help so many people out there. My first thought was, “you can’t have safe sex without honesty, and you can’t have honesty without safe sex.” Let me break that down.

What Exactly Is Safe Sex?

Safe sex doesn’t just have to mean protected sex with a condom or some sort of birth control – although that’s crucially important as well, in most cases! Safe sex should also mean intimacy with your partner, trust in your partner and in your relationship, and commitment to each other. You can’t have all these things – what I would deem as the broader definition of “safe sex” – without having honesty in a relationship. If you don’t know that your significant other is going to be honest with you, how can you trust them? How can you have true intimacy? How can you really commit to a person or a relationship if you’re not even sure what that relationship encompasses, or who that person is. Therefore, you can’t have safe sex without honesty.

In a sexual relationship, the converse is also true: you can’t have honesty without safe sex. Using the broader definition of safe sex – one that encompasses intimacy, trust and commitment – you’ll find that all these components must be present in order for honesty to factor into the equation. If you remove one of them, it becomes much harder to be honest. Sex honesty is an inter-connected idea, a cycle that must be maintained by both people in order to have a healthy relationship. Since you can’t have safe sex without honesty, and you can’t have honesty without safe sex, a couple has to work on making sure that both honesty and the components of safe sex are present in their relationship. That doesn’t mean that everything is going to be in perfect balance all the time, but learning to identify the deficits that may arise in these areas can go a long way towards insuring a healthier, “safer” sex life, and a more fulfilling, honest relationship.

Having Sex - More Than What Meets The Eye

This is also why I think having sex with someone should be more than a spontaneous decisions. It’s hard to be honest with someone you don’t know very well and therefore it’s difficult to have a truly honest, sexual relationship with that person. This, I believe, is often why casual sex doesn’t work out to the benefit of both people involved. Sex should be something that’s arrived at through intimacy, trust, commitment and honesty. By skipping those steps, you’re selling yourself and your relationship short.

Additionally, honesty in a relationship means fidelity – sexually, financially, and emotionally. I talk about putting relationships back together in my books “Adultery, the Forgivable Sin,” and Can we Cure and Forgive Adultery?” and highlight the idea that monogamy is a conscience decision. Fidelity – in its various forms – is a decision you make to stay honest in your relationship. Fidelity, honesty, sex, and finances are all inter-connected. In a healthy relationship this can be a great thing!

So, to make a short story long, I would answer that sex honesty to me is the culmination of intimacy, trust and commitment – all which ideally lead to fidelity and fulfillment in a relationship!