What Does A Healthy Sex Life Look Like For Married Catholics?

 The engine is the heart and soul of a car. It runs best with regular maintenance and tuning, and has the potential to break down without it. 

Part of that regular maintenance is changing the oil every 5,000 miles or so.Why does a car's engine need oil? Well, there are a lot of moving parts in this complicated piece of machinery, and oil lubricates those parts and keeps them operating. It is essential, and you risk engine damage if you go too long between oil changes, or if your oil reservoir has a leak. 

By way of analogy, marital intimacy is the oil for your marriage--it keeps all the components lubricated and running smoothly, prevents overheating, and ensures a long life for the engine. 

John Paul II did a great service to the Church in his expounding on the vision of fruitful sexual intimacy in his "Theology of the Body." Sex in our culture has become so distorted and commodified that it can sometimes be difficult to know what is normal, healthy, and appropriate when one enters into a marriage. Thankfully, Christ and his bride, the Church, have a vision and purpose to our sexuality that is not only healthy and fruitful, but rightly ordered for our flourishing. 

Sometimes, though, the flowery theologizing can sometimes obscure the nuts and bolts of sexual intimacy in the minds of many Catholics. There is also the cultural flipside problem of secular cullture focusing on the nuts and bolts and abdicating any kind of theology of sexual intimacy and expression. 

Healthy Sex in a Marriage Is Rightly Ordered

G.K. Chesterton used the analogy of children playing in a fenced field to illustrate the importance of the moral law in the life of Christians:

“We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.”

This is the great grace of the Natural Law, the Moral Law, and the precepts of the Church: they give us a fence for the benefit of freedom. The secular world attempts to live outside this pasture, and may try to enact it's own "rules"--ie, the role of consent, lawful statutes, etc--but it is the Christian life which is the fullest expression of love and freedom. As Augustine said, "Love, and do as you will."

That does mean that in order to enjoy this freedom of conscience these boundaries must be respected and not transgressed. Martial intimacy is complementary in that it is reserved for those of the opposite sex; it is fruitful in that it is open to life; it is rightly ordered in that the marital act is completed in accordance with the Natural Law.

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is Open To Life

Sterilized sex (whether by way of barriers, chemical disruption of cycles, implants, or surgergy) that inhibits ovulation and the potential for new life to result from the marital act is not only a grave offence against the moral law...it makes for bad sex. You can't fight nature and biology--it's a fact that men are naturally more attracted to women when they are ovulating. When one closes the door to their fertility in impermissible ways, they are also closing the door to God's creative process in creating the potential for new life to form. There is something exciting about being invited to co-operate in this creative process, and one misses out on what God intends when they intentionally sterilize it. Fertile sex is good sex!

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is Self-Giving, Loving and Respectful

Sex is the barometer for a relationship, and what happens outside the bedroom affects ones sex life as well. When we act selfishly in a marriage, this can translate to our sex lives as well. When one "takes" without giving, or when one acts out spitefully, it casts a pall over the marital bed and the marriage, because selfishness is sin. Marital sex is not simply about gratification of the senses; it is an expression of embodied love. "Love is patient, love is kind...It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking" as St. Paul writes in 1 Cor 13:4-8.

Respect in marital intimacy preculdes coercion or pressure; it is tender, patient. It does not degrade or sacrifice dignity. It takes into account the individual's sensitivities. "All things are lawful to me," but not all things do profit" St. Paul again writes to the Corinthians, who needed guidance and discipline due to their sexual sins in that community (1 Cor 6:12). To the extent that we are loving and giving to our spouse selflessly, our sex lives will reflect that. 

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is Creative 

Sex is an endowed and brute appetite. But it is also an art, a language, an embodied poem of loving expression. The world is reductionist with regards to the sexual act--it is about technique and machinations. This is one reason why pornography is a lie: it sends the message that good sex is about these things. 

Healthy sex is creative, and creativity can employ variety as a spice. Again, this should be within the bounds of what is appropriate and moral, but it can employ creative license as to the "where," "when," or "how" it takes place, for example. Married people enjoy an immense amount of freedom in how they express themselves sexually, but can fall into routine over the years. It's perfectly ok to mix things up in this regard; variety is the spice of life!

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is engaged in fairly Regularly

As an appetite, sex can be enjoyed regularly and in fact this is a good thing. Frequency of intimacy varies from couple to couple, however, and should not be compared outside one's own marriage. For one couple, once a month may be sufficient for keeping the marital engine lubricated. For others, once or twice a week is necessary. 

There's no right or wrong, but there should be communication and compromise in this matter. Pornography is not only a moral danger, but a public health crisis as well. As St. Paul exhorts, "there should not be even a hint of sexual immorality among you" (Eph 5:3). When you cut this temptation out completely, and do not indulge even fantasy in your mind, you reserve that laser focus of desire for your wife, who benefits from it. Wives, honor this as well for your husband in offering him this gift of regular intercourse.

Healthy Sex in a Marriage is not used as a Bargaining Chip

Unfortunately, sex can be used as a weapon in a marriage. It can be withheld intentionally to hurt and deprive one of their rights. Again, St. Paul writes to the Corinthians on this matter: "Do not withhold yourselves from each other unless you agree to do so just for a set time, in order to devote yourselves to prayer." (1 Cor 7:5)

Women usually have the upper hand in this matter, so they should be conscious and may not realize how sexual intimacy is typically how a man feels loved. Withholding intimacy equals, in the minds of many men, a withholding of love.  

Healthy Sex in a Marraige does not incur Guilt

"My conscience is clear," St. Paul writes again to the Corinthians, "but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me" (1 Cor 4:4). One of the greatest gifts of a clear conscience and being in a state of grace is that we do not incur the guilt  of our conscience; this is also the gift of the moral law and the clear teachings of the Church which give us the fenced field to play in. When we step outside that pasture, we fear the edge; this is akin to acting out sexually in violation of the natural or moral law. 

This is the case for so-called "vanilla sex." "You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love" (Gal 5:13). Freedom was made to be enjoyed within the bounds set for its protection.