Is Marriage About Sex?

I wanted to place this under the comment section of the previous entry since I am replying to several issues raised by an anonymous commenter there (whom I will refer to as "Anon.") But I won't be updating this journal until next week, most likely, so I figured what the hey...I'll just make it a post and let people figure it all out for themselves.

I appreciate Anon’s comments because they are thoughtful, expressed well, and respectful. He didn’t call anyone names or come out with a personal attack. He simply vocalized his thoughts, and powerfully so. His thoughts and mine represent not just a clash of ideas, but conflicting world views. The ideas we hold are the branches that flow from root philosophies--core beliefs that shape our perceptions of the world and the meaning of life as it pertains to relationships. I will presently demonstrate stark differences between his core beliefs and mine.

* * * * *

"You're out somewhere around Jupiter. Come back to Earth."

This first line made me smile because it evokes the image of crabs in a bucket. Since a lot of people don’t live near the beach, I’ll explain. When you go out “crabbing” to catch yourself a dinner of blue crabs, you need only bring a small bucket with you to put them in--it doesn’t even require a lid. Just a little water for the crabs to frolic around in as they await their destinies in the boiling pot of doom.

“But,” you ask nervously, “won’t the crabs just climb out of the bucket when my back is turned?”

Oh yes, dear. They’ll try. But they won’t succeed. Do you know why?

Because any time one crab tries to climb above his captured brethren and escape the world of the tiny bucket, the other crabs reach out and pull him right back down. The way out of the prison isn’t some hidden, mystical thing--it’s in plain view of them all. But none can get free because the majority overwhelms the individual’s quest for independence.

Most of us can probably remember a time when this trend played itself out in our lives, when there was intense pressure from peers to conform. And most of the resistance doesn’t come from strangers, but from friends and relatives who don’t appreciate the changes they’re seeing in us, or think we've gone berserk.

I haven't gone berserk, loved ones. I'm just not content to persist in mainstream patterns of thought and behavior that have gotten me nowhere.

* * * * *

"We're all just animals. It's not the 'devil' tempting you. It's a biological need to procreate and spread your genes in order to ensure the continuation of the species. Porn is what happens when biology is subjugated with ethics based on an out dated belief system."

A contradiction in logic appears in the first Anon comment which colors everything else he says with confusion, and that is the assertion that human beings are animals, with the implied message that Christians are subjecting themselves to “an outdated belief system.”

Anon exposes his root, his core belief, right from the start. He is a Darwinist; he believes the theory of Evolution. To the casual thinker this is insignificant, but it is essential to understanding everything that follows. Notice I do not say it nullifies the things he says, or makes them true or untrue, but that it helps us understand his other ideas. Anon’s viewpoint is rooted in a religion. Darwinism has become a religion in the world.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Steve,” you say. “Evolution is about science, not religion.”

Oh but it is a religion, dear. Anon has faith in his heart, just as I do. His faith is placed in an unproven theory that is not based on scientific evidence (or else it wouldn’t be a theory) that somehow, against all odds and probabilities, life just sort of happened. Acceptance of this theory, apparently without question or reservation, constitutes his rejection of the idea that an intelligent Being created the universe. It's like a lens over his eyes, a filter through which he views life, understands human behavior, and interacts with the surrounding world.

Blind acceptance is religion, not science.

The reason the so-called scientific community gets excited every few years and craps their pants because of the discovery of some fossil or skull that might be the “missing link” is because no link exists. There is no bridge between their trusted assumptions and reality, and it galls them. Yet the masses accept this viewpoint as if it were indisputable. Why?

Two reasons. One, it's the only tune that gets good radio play. And two, the only other option is that the universe was preceded by a Creator. This the Darwinist finds threatening and scary, because accepting that idea would raise a lot of other questions he doesn't want to consider.

“But,” you say, “the ideas of intelligent design or Creationism are unproven theories, too. And everyone who’s anyone accepts evolution as fact, even though it’s not technically proven yet.”

Of course, dear, of course. We all have faith. It’s just a matter of where we place that faith, in what we trust. The problem with what Anon and many others believe is the confusion it leads them to. When our thinking begins (as did his comment) that we are just higher apes of some kind, that our existence is a result of some lucky roll of the cosmic dice, our thoughts will ultimately--and probably subconsciously--lead us to conclusions like this:

* Life has no intrinsic value (thus abortion, murder, suicide, and genocide are permissible and should not be questioned).
* The individual has no destiny, no inherent worth. He is a cosmic burp, a chance occurrence.
* Moral questions are irrelevant.
* There is no “meaning of life” or reason to live, except to procreate and try to have a good time.
* Art, music, composition, and even thought are all absurdities in the universe which amount to nothing.
* There is no God, no hereafter. All religious ideologies are mythic fairy tales. It all ends at death.

And since when is something true or untrue based on how many people buy into it? If something’s true, it’s true. It doesn’t become untrue regardless of who believes or rejects it. If I insist the world is flat but you insist the world is round, you’re right and I’m wrong no matter how many people agree with me. Even if I get the most educated, intelligent, powerful people in the world on my side, the truth doesn’t change. Therefore your “belief system” can never become outdated as it is based in unyielding truth, and my cohorts and I are all deceived because the world is, in fact, a sphere.

When things are unproven, the mind should remain open to all possibilities. But in Anon’s case (at least at this point in time), his words reveal a closed mind.

Ask yourself this. Since neither of the two theories regarding the origin of man have been scientifically proven, would you rather believe the theory that emphasizes life, goodness, destiny and hope, and the idea that a benevolent Being is responsible for bringing you and this world into existence? Or will you put your trust in the school of thought that accentuates death, violence, amorality, meaninglessness, and leaves you without hope that you will ever find anything of spiritual substance beyond what you can feel and possess?

* * * * *

A paraphrase of Anon’s first comment might be, “We are animals with biological urges. Our spouses are obligated to fulfill those urges. That’s why marriage exists. If wives do so their men will not have a problem with wanting to get those urges satisfied elsewhere.”

First off, you cannot insist we are animals and then try to make a moral argument about anything. It’s contradictory to reason. Isn’t it obvious that if we are mere mammals, creatures of instinct, then morality doesn’t matter? Morality is pointless in the animal kingdom; in fact it would be a detriment to “survival of the fittest.” In general terms, animals kill each other, steal, eat their progeny, and screw all their friends; and they don’t struggle with guilt or worry about whether their actions are right or proper. (I concede that people sometimes act like animals.) If we are truly beasts then there is no compelling reason to pursue anything above eating, sleeping, and fucking. Life means nothing. Death means nothing. Even pleasure eventually means nothing.

I am astonished at the simple-minded scope of Anon’s definition of marriage.

For one thing, defining marriage as “a mutually exclusive right to sex whenever you want it” is a contradiction of Darwinist doctrine. If the interest of Mother Nature is to perpetuate the human race, and the drive of men is to spread their genes, then the obvious conclusion is that we should all have sex with as many attractive partners as possible. We shouldn't feel guilty about this urge, and we certainly shouldn’t attempt to subdue it, because it's natural. It's who we are.

Anon's idea that people get married to have sex with only one person for the rest of their lives is an assumption, and a ludicrous one. It doesn’t take into account the origin and history of marriage in the human race, the connection of a man and woman on financial, familial, vocational, parental, and spiritual planes above and beyond mere physical pleasure, or the strange and sometimes bizarre complexities of human behavior.

Anon also claims that if a woman does everything she can to satisfy her man, he won’t stray. Human experience (and the confessions of honest men) prove this supposition radically false. Married men have been known to cheat on a woman they truly love, and the reverse is also true.

A man can have a quickie with his wife first thing in the morning, walk outside to get the paper, see his neighbor’s wife bending over in her rose bushes, and think, “God, that ass is spectacular. I wonder if she’s wearing a thong under those shorts? Wonder what it’d be like to tag her?”

These are not harmless thoughts, because his proclivity to engage in fantasy leaves him vulnerable to eventually acting on those ideas, even though he pledged undying love to his wife moments before while in her embrace. If the neighbor's wife feels dissatisfied in her relationship with her husband, she may be intentionally trying to attract male attention, and she may walk over and begin flirting with him. In the man's mind, he has already lost the battle, because in his thought-life he flung the door wide open when he should have slammed it shut. And all the while he never stopped loving his wife in terms of the feelings in his heart.

A married man struggles with addiction to pornography, not because of anything his wife does or fails to do, but because he wants to look at naked women. Which in turn breeds discontent in his relationship with his wife, and becomes its own excuse for looking at more porn. There are individuals who have sex or masturbate compulsively, yet never find satisfaction in the near-constant sexual release.

Many men get married naively thinking that marriage (mutually exclusive sex anytime they want it) will cure them of the problems they had before marriage, and it's true that the problem usually goes away during the honeymoon period--for a couple of years or so.

But it comes back. The lust, roving eyes, impurity, and feelings of dissatisfaction and emptiness always come back, marriage notwithstanding, because the problem does not have a physical cause, as Anon would like to believe. It's like taking a drink, but constantly being thirsty. Or scratching an itch again and again that never stops itching.

Anyone with a background in behavioral science will tell you, "Thoughts lead to behavior." To change behavior, you've got to change the thoughts. Anon’s comment implies that the behavior cannot be changed, because it is a biological impulse implanted in men as a result of evolution. This is an opinion, and it is false.

In addition, Anon excludes aberrations in human sexuality such as homosexuality and pedophilia--traits which, from a perspective of "natural selection" and passing on our genetic code, should not exist. Consider also the married couples who engage in “married-but-looking” affairs, wife-swapping, or “open” marriages where other partners are invited into the marriage bed, which means they're not interested in “mutually exclusive” sex at all, as Anon insists. Furthermore--and this is really obvious, as pointed out by Sikki--you need not be married to have sex with one partner for the rest of your days.

Anon makes yet another assumption by saying a “low [sex] drive is [generally] a result of a hormonal imbalance.”

An acquaintance of mine is a drug representative for Pfizer, the company that brought Viagra to the world. I was talking with her one day and she told me the organization has been conducting extensive research with the aim of producing a female equivalent to the profitable drug--a miracle cure for frigidity, as it were: a pill to ignite a woman’s lagging libido. But the Pfizer labs have been frustrated as they’ve spent millions to discover what women (and a few men) the world over already know: they won’t spread their legs for a creep.

When a woman goes to a doctor or psychiatrist complaining of a low sex drive, the first thing the specialist asks is, “What’s going on in your relationship?” If she feels insecure, betrayed, taken for granted, unloved, unappreciated, abused, fearful, or angry--guess what? Her sex drive’s null. In the vast majority of cases, her lack of desire for sex is explained by a damaged or dwindling emotional connection to her spouse. And guess what else? When she has sex out of a forced sense of duty to her husband while she’s feeling trampled inside, it makes her feel used--like a prostitute--and her resentment for him deepens. Finally, there can be issues in a woman’s history that make aspects of sex frightening or unpleasurable to her, or make it hard for her to connect emotionally with her partner, such as molestation by a trusted family member.

The idea that there is a miracle pill to cure every human struggle skirts the real issues and takes the pressure off people to examine their lives and commit to change.

Those are some of the problems from a logical standpoint with the first Anon comment. Please note that I, the Christian, did not quote a single Bible verse. :)

Now for the second comment...

* * * * *

Anon’s next comment (unlike the first) contains a lot of points I agree with, but many of the problems that surfaced in his first post are also obvious here. Since he takes on a more formal tone of debate in his address to Sikki, declaring her argument invalid, I assume his desire is to present a logical rebuttal. This he fails to do, though some of his ideas make sense in the specific context (such as with the story of the wife who uses guilt to keep her husband emotionally downtrodden).

His first argument that “porn is what happens when...” would be instantly shot down by anyone who’s ever been to a group based on the Twelve Steps, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. People show up at those meetings and say, “I drink because I had a bad childhood.” Or, “My wife drives me to drink.” Or, “I drink to numb myself.” The addicted person finds ten thousand excuses for why he engages in his destructive, compulsive behavior (and the ones who seem to be the best at deceiving themselves and others are the smart ones--the intellectuals). An addict develops a lifestyle of kidding himself and others: he lives in a complex web of lies. It isn’t until he honestly says, “There is no excuse...I am completely responsible for my poor choices and harmful actions,” that he’s ready to begin the process of change.

Anon asserts that if a man feels sexually unfulfilled, he will look at porn. He could just as easily say if a man is unfulfilled he will hire a prostitute, get angry and kick a smaller man’s ass, or smoke crack. Or if a woman is dissatisfied she will chat with strange men on the internet for ten hours a day, eat like a whale, or spend thousands on an out-of-control shopping spree. Yes, these things happen. But they shouldn’t be regarded as absolutes, as inevitable, unavoidable reactions to disappointment in life.

There is no acceptable excuse for infidelity in lieu of the marriage vows. Period. Just as there is no excuse for beating the snot out of your children, stealing a sports car, or killing your mother-in-law.

Human history and personal experience are testimony that willpower (which Anon calls “intellect”) is not sufficient to keep people away from destructive behavior. Nor are “feelings of affection and loyalty.” Ask any human being on earth if he always makes wise choices, and if he’s honest he’ll respond negatively. Does he always do the right thing? No. In fact, he finds himself strongly pulled to desires and behaviors he knows are wrong and will ultimately leave him feeling empty inside. Behavior analysts and writers have called this “the human condition.” The Bible calls it “sin.” It’s spurious to argue that a man will make right choices so long as he has a good mental understanding of when his pain will end, or as long as he feels strong emotions.

Emotions are subjective, prone to erratic changes, and should not be considered in decision-making. There are times when a spouse doesn’t feel loved. There are times when a husband will feel like he is being treated unfairly by his wife (and perhaps he is), or when he feels strong attraction to another woman. Something greater than feelings is ultimately necessary to bond a relationship through moments when the gooey emotions surrounding love and romance are not keenly felt, or not present at all.

What should a man do when he encounters a situation like the one Anon describes? How should a spouse react when they discover disagreeable things about their partner after the wedding? What’s the proper way to cope when one partner is too depressed or self-absorbed to react lovingly, or fails to meet the legitimate needs of his or her spouse? Yes, we have a right to mutually exclusive sex. But what happens when a man, for whatever reason, doesn’t get the thing he has a right to?

These are situations married people will face, and they are all unfair. Logic, argument, emotional appeals, lots of healthy sex, and even great communication won’t make these issues go away. Every married person will experience anger and resentment towards his spouse, everyone will be let down and have unmet expectations.

The common, ordinary human reaction to these slights and offenses–-whether they’re real or imagined--is to withdraw, to bail out of the marriage. To abandon ship, if not physically, then emotionally. Divorce statistics in the Western world speak for themselves.

Times like these are exactly the reason why God--who invented both marriage and sex within marriage, and whom Anon says has little bearing on the relationship--is essential to holding it all together. He understands you both, and knows you better than you know yourselves. Anon doesn’t venture a guess as to why “even pagans” experience “a level of uncertainty and unfulfillment” in their premarital sexual relationships, or why a woman might withhold sex to try and control the marriage--probably because the answer to these questions would necessitate exploration of the soul, issues that go beyond the physical realm. But because of Anon’s fear of admitting God’s relevance in this sphere of life, for his sake I will leave God out of this discussion. He is correct, though, that making a marriage work takes more than God and prayer.

* * * * *

Traditional wedding vows usually include these lines, or something similar:

I, (Bride/Groom), take you (Groom/Bride), to be my lawful wedded (wife/husband), to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward till death do us part.

I have never heard wedding vows include an explicit statement concerning sex. Anon mentioned his wife, so we know he’s married. If he really believes the foundation of marriage is sex (which I consider to be a branch on the marriage tree, not the tree itself) I have to wonder what kind of vows he exchanged with his wife. Did he really say “[I] plan to have sex with [you] for the rest of [my] life, in sickness and in health, for better or worse?”

That whole “I plan...” statement doesn’t fill me with confidence; it doesn’t sound too certain. I’ve already demonstrated the absurdity of trying to reduce marital union to the mere physical act of sex, or even of having children. On the contrary, the vows are much more encompassing, and usually imply personal commitment in the sight of a higher authority (be it God, a minister, or a justice of the peace) to unconditionally love our spouse in every situation life brings our way until death separates us.

The reason the vows are so rigid is because marriage is supposed to be permanent. The vows are unbendable so that the married couple cannot consider separation or divorce as an option when things get tough. (And they WILL get tough.) Because of the vows, a married man should think, “She and I have to either work these issues out, or be miserable the rest of our lives.”

When there is no escape, when the couple is committed to stay together no matter what happens, the only option is to grow up, learn to live unselfishly, and make the relationship work. That’s what they commit to on wedding day. That’s what love is: making loving choices on the other person’s behalf even when it goes against what’s natural, what violates our "rights," or what flies in the opposite direction of our hurt feelings.

The permanency of marriage (also God’s idea) is what fosters a stable family environment for children to grow in, a cohesive sense of community and responsibility, and the sense of security an individual needs when times get really tough and life throws curve balls. Marriage is the bedrock of society. Our society is seething with dissatisfaction and unhappiness because marriage is not held in esteem, is not supported, and because people enter into marriage without taking the wedding vows seriously.

There was nothing in my wedding vows to indicate that my promise was only in effect as long as my spouse made me euphorically happy and met all my needs and expectations all the time. She’s my wife and I committed myself to her. That’s that. End of discussion.