Psychology Today55%
Do You Treat Sex as Sacred? 15%
By Holly Parker13% Ph.D.26%
7/30/2026, 12:10:50 PM
Keywords: Sex, Sacred, Spirituality, Religion, Sexuality, Relationships, Intimacy, Nontheistic Sexual Sanctification
BS Summary: This article contains 18 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Post Hoc (False Cause), and False Dilemma, with Indoctrination as the most egregious example at 15.2% saturation with 87 hits. Analysis detected 620 faulty-reasoning hits from 574 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 30.4% and a BS Rank of 15% (19,070 of 22,240 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 85.70% of the article peer group.
Sex.
What does that word bring up for you?
If you’re open to it, let yourself slow down and notice what you feel and what comes to mind.
Maybe you noticed memories of sexual experiences, or you found yourself feeling something like curiosity, interest, or pleasure.
You might have noticed a slight smile.
Or maybe you felt anxious, ashamed, or frustrated.
Perhaps you felt yourself wanting to move away from the word.
Varied ideas could have popped up: It’s fun.
It’s an important part of who I am.
It’s dirty.
It’s okay to want it.
It’s not okay to want it.
I know what I’m doing.
I’m not good at it at all.
It’s too high pressure.
It’s a way I relax.
I bet you could add plenty of others.
Because we’re all different and we have unique experiences, what you associate with sex is probably going to be distinct, even in some small way, from someone else.
But what’s virtually guaranteed is that we all connect sex with something.
One of the connections some people make is nontheistic sexual sanctification, which refers to viewing sex as a way of tapping into what feels personally sacred and deeply meaningful; it's a higher place where people can go beyond themselves.
But this doesn’t hinge on having faith in God or practicing a religion.
It doesn’t matter whether someone identifies as religious or not.
Anyone can treat sex as a transcendent space if that resonates for them.
How do various connections with sex, including treating sex as a spiritual, powerful, elevated state, link to other facets of a person’s sexual experiences and religious identity?
In a recently published study, a team of researchers collected data to identify different patterns of how people approach sex and how these tie into their sexuality.
One type involved people who saw sex as sacred, and they either didn’t feel guilty about sex or they didn’t feel sexually restrained or guarded with their partner.
These folks were the happiest with their sex life, and they also identified as more religious.
Another type also considered themselves to be more religious, but their sex life wasn’t as enjoyable; they connected sex with the divine, yet also felt guilty or hampered in their sexuality.
And then a third type involved people who neither identified as very religious nor saw sex in a sacred way, but did feel guilty or held back in sex.
Their sex life was lower in quality.
The researchers noted that prior work has shown a link between being more religious and feeling bad or repressed around sexual intimacy; it’s also highlighted a connection to more encouraging views of sexuality.
They also pointed out that their results show there isn’t a clean line between whether someone identifies as religious and the quality of sex they have.
Some people are religious and sex positive, and have very fulfilling sex lives, whereas other religious individuals carry negative connections with sex and aren’t enjoying it as much.
And there are also ways in which nonreligious people can receive discouraging ideas about sex.
Again, we all have associations with sex.
Perhaps you’ll decide to experiment with sex as a metaphysical experience, or you might set that idea to the side.
Regardless, the researchers invite us to acknowledge the rich, intricate layers of our sexuality, and to consider how they come together in varied ways to reflect our sexual experience.
Analysis
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