Sexual standards set by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seem clear: no sex before marriage, total fidelity during marriage.

Guidelines for sexual activity are set out for young Latter-day Saints in publications like “For the Strength of Youth.” But what about older singles who have never wed, or those whose marriages end in divorce or death? How do they navigate the possibility of intimacy?

Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, a well-known Latter-day Saint sex therapist and author of “That We Might Have Joy: Desire, Divinity & Intimate Love,” has offered workshops and presentations on the topic.

Here are edited excerpts from a recent Salt Lake Tribune “Mormon Land” podcast in which Finlayson-Fife discusses this complex reality for many, and how to understand the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

What does chastity before marriage mean in reality and what are some of the reasons behind it?

We are a church that values sexuality and particularly committed sexuality and fidelity, and so we expect a high standard around how we relate to sexuality and sensuality, particularly up until we get married. Sometimes we think of it more as an idea of what we shouldn’t do, of limitations, of safeguards around our sensual and sexual lives, rather than a broader perspective that could be understood as a way to preserve the soulfulness of our sexual nature.

Do you think no sex before marriage is a good goal?

I certainly think it can be, and I think the way that we relate to it matters significantly. I wrote my dissertation on Latter-day Saint women and sexual agency, and there were two very different groups in terms of how they related to the restrictions and what impact it had on their married lives.

The group that did poorly tended to see sex as inherently dangerous. They feared their body’s capacity for pleasure and desire and arousal. They had anxiety around those feelings, and they therefore never took full ownership of this God-given capacity. So, even when sex became technically legal, it didn’t actually translate for most of these women into a kind of freedom to express and know a part of themselves.

The women who did well, which was the minority, saw sex and pleasure as a really good thing, something that God had given them, something that they were grateful for, even though they wanted to be in a careful relationship with this powerful way of being in connection with another person. They saw the law of chastity as something that was protective, ultimately offering them something that they desired, which was committed sexuality.

Does that mean older singles who have never found a spouse shouldn’t have any physically intimate experiences?

In the church there’s a growing population of single Latter-day Saints. In fact, it outnumbers married Latter-day Saint adults. And that is harder for us. We want the idea that it’s all the same. But, of course, if you’ve already been married, if you’re now widowed, if you’re now a functioning adult, that is different than a young adult who’s still trying to kind of sort out life. We still think the ideas in “For the Strength of Youth” should apply. Yet I think we all know, on some level, it isn’t the same, and there is more complexity than sometimes we are good at handling theologically.

So should the rules be different?

I don’t know if the question of rules is the right one. If we believe in a God who doesn’t want us to have pleasure in our lives, doesn’t want us to have joy in our lives, then the only goal is repression. Stay away from it. It’s all dangerous. Pleasure is a bad thing. That isn’t our theology. We believe that “we are that we might have joy,” and to have joy is to be in a wise relationship with the pleasures, the beauties, the sensuality of being embodied spiritual creatures. In the early stages of our spiritual development, we’re depending heavily on external authority. We haven’t yet developed the internal compass and capacity to make good decisions, and so being given very clear limits and guidelines protects us.

But we need ultimately to grow into people who are more capable of discerning what is best, what is right for my situation. What is loving? What, in fact, cultivates more soulfulness in my life? What is the kind of pleasure that opens me up to goodness and beauty, and is good for my soul? We need to grow beyond pure dependence on someone telling us what we can and can’t do, into deeper integrity, deeper discernment, deeper ability to choose what we believe is truly good and right.

Do you see a difference between older single adults who have never been married versus those who are older and are now divorced or widowed?

Well, I can certainly see a difference in terms of what one is navigating because it’s one thing to hold a limit around sexual behavior toward something you’ve never experienced versus having been in a marriage, enjoying sexuality for a few decades, for example, and then suddenly being single again — those are different challenges. They’re different questions.

I genuinely don’t know, nor do I think I should be telling people what they should do, but I think they are up against challenging questions around “what do I value, what do I believe is right and good, and what does it ask of me?” We want a world in which we have easy answers, and we get clear upsides to obeying those easy answers, and I don’t think that’s really how adulthood is.

What if you had sexual relations with your spouse but the marriage ends. Once you’ve had it, it seems a little awkward to stop. There have to be other things you can do besides that that are still intimate, right?

Yes. If we’re really maturing spiritually, we’re moving more and more from the letter of the law to the ability to not be commanded in all things, to discern the spirit of the law, to assert our agency, to choose to be wise actors. We really believe in a theology that we can become more godly, meaning become wiser, and not just stay dependent, being commanded in all things, looking to other people. I know some people would hear that and could say, “OK, great, I can do whatever I want because that’s maturity,” and that’s not what I mean either. I mean that you really are in a real conversation with your conscience, with divinity around “what is right for me, what is the right thing in my situation,” and to grow out of our dependency on having someone else tell us, as in take responsibility for our choices.

What could the church do as an institution to help older singles handle these situations better?

We would do well to more deeply integrate understandings of spiritual development. What we need as a 20-year-old may be very different from what we need as a 60-year-old, and to better understand what we’re aiming for.

If we are just indulgent and never get a hold of our bodies, we let our bodies and our impulses run our lives, those impulses will run our lives into the ground. So there is value in learning self-control and self-regulation, but it’s not for its own sake. It’s so that you can experience the beauty and richness and wonder of being alive, of being a physical sensual being.

In a fallen world, but in a world in which there’s also great beauty and goodness, that our souls can experience through the body. And so if we could teach chastity with that larger view, not just do’s and don’ts, but perhaps with why we want to learn self-control. Not because sexuality and desire are inherently wrong, but because we want to live our lives in a way that we are more able to experience the depth of goodness, the intimacy of a rich connection with our lives and with another soul, and that being careful with our choices makes this more possible in our lives. But also teaching movement away from dependence.

You want to consult with your leaders. You want to consult with wise others. You want to consult with God in prayer. But you want to get to a place where you can take deeper ownership of your choices and stand by them as your own, not in a kind of moral laziness.

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