Jeremy Pierce posted an interesting piece yesterday: Sex and Duty. He’s taking issue with some aspects of my take on the 30-Day Sex Challenge. My basic point was that desire and duty are mutually exclusive, particularly where sex is concerned. I argued that the Pauline doctrine of mutual submission and the apostle’s words in 1 Corinthians 7 do not constitute an obligation to be sexually available to a partner when one is not in the mood.
One mistake I made in the original post gives Jeremy an opening to challenge my position. Casually taking Matthew 5:41 completely out of context, I wrote: Challenging spouses to “go the extra mile” for each other is a biblically and psychologically sound notion.
Jeremy jumps on that:
This Pauline view can be easily motivated by Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, particularly by the Golden Rule (do to others what you’d want them to do for you) and the extra mile (if someone asks you to carry something a mile, do it for two miles, and if someone asks for your coat offer up your shirt too). Jesus speaks as if this sort of thing is a typical characteristic of his followers, and those who don’t do this are failing to be like citizens of the kingdom of God out to be. I can see how someone would apply such statements to the case at hand by arguing for a duty to have sex even when one isn’t interested for the sake of the sex.
But this is not duty for the mere sake of duty. It’s duty for the sake of the other person. If a person motivated by love for another person has a duty to do what’s loving for the other person, there may well be times when that involves having sex when one otherwise wouldn’t have been interested, and Jesus’ teaching does seem to include cases like that. I’m not sure why cases of voluntarily being willing to have sex when one isn’t interested should be exceptions to the kinds of loving acts he commands in those passages.
Of course, as Walter Wink and other theologians have pointed out, much of Matthew 5 is concerned not with how we treat those whom we love, but those whom we hate. Wink points out that the challenge to go the second or extra mile had a specific meaning:
Jesus’ third example, the one about going the second mile, is drawn from the relatively enlightened practice of limiting the amount of forced or impressed labor (angareia) that Roman soldiers could levy on subject peoples to a single mile…
It is in this context of Roman military occupation that Jesus speaks. He does not counsel revolt…
But why carry his pack a second mile? Is this not to rebound to the opposite extreme of aiding and abetting the enemy? Not at all. The question here… is how the oppressed can recover the initiative and assert their human dignity in a situation that cannot for the time being be changed. The rules are Caesar’s, but how one responds to the rules is God’s, and Caesar has no power over that…From a situation of servile impressment, the oppressed have once more seized the initiative. They have taken back the power of choice…
In other words, Matthew 5 is about how the oppressed are to respond to injustice: by reclaiming agency in a startling way. That’s a radical way to think about Roman-Jewish relations, but it sure as heck is a horrible way to think about marriage! Unless we want to suggest that marriage is, at it once was, an institution where one party (a man) rules over another party (a woman), then the whole language of “going the extra mile” ought never be used to describe mutual devotion and commitment. It was my mistake to use the phrase so utterly out of context, and I handed Jeremy his opening to make a case that a biblical case for the “duty” to have sex, even in the absence of genuine desire.
When it comes to 1 Corinthians 7:5, Jeremy is on firmer ground. Paul writes: Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time… Jeremy reads that to say: “Not having sex is okay only if it’s a mutual decision, and that means that unless both people don’t want to have it, then the lower-desire spouse ought to give in.” But that misreads the radical idea of “mutual consent.” Paul’s use of the idea of mutual consent (in Greek, ek sumphonou) implies that decisions about sex must be agreeable to both parties. The word sumphonou is related to the modern word symphony, meaning different instruments playing the same music. Compulsion is radically at odds with consent; indeed, real consent is always rooted more in desire than in duty. If not having sex is something that must be mutually agreed upon, then the opposite must also be true if the notion of “mutual consent” is to have any meaning at all.
It’s also vital to remember the next line in the letter: Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Paul is worried about adultery, presumably, assuming that in the event of a prolonged period of abstinence, the higher-desire partner will have an extra-marital affair to “relieve the pressure.” But if the concern is creating an opening for Satan (or, the “opponent”, or “negativity”) surely having sex against one’s will is at least as likely to produce that result as an enduring period of abstinence. The devil feeds on resentment as much as he does on lust, folks. Four marriages have taught me that much! The notion of mutual consent, the notion of marriage as a bulwark against darkness, the notion that a husband and a wife stand together as a team against an often hostile world, suggests no room for compulsion or appeals to spousal duty.
We go the “extra mile” to show our enemies how much we love them, as Wink points out so brilliantly. If our lover is that enemy, we’ve already lost the war.
the text on reclaiming agency is brilliant, and the distinction between these situations well drawn.
I’m not sure you’re reading what I said the way I meant it. The kind of duty that I said I’m not advocating is doing something under compulsion based on mere law or doing something without desiring to do it. The idea isn’t to go ahead and consent to sex without really wanting to (never mind to have sex without consenting to). The point I was trying to make is (1) that someone can choose to have sex out of love for the other person when the desire for sex itself isn’t what’s motivating it and (2) Christian spouses ought to do things generally like that in non-sexual contexts, and I don’t see how sex is any different.
Fulfilling this duty wouldn’t be like following a law to do something you don’t consent to or following a rule to consent to something you don’t want. I’m suggesting that love for the other person would lead someone to want it but not wanting it for itself. It would be wanting it for the sake of the other. My wife is a really good cook, and I don’t like everything she makes, not because it’s not good but because I don’t like the ingredients that she does wonderful things with. I appreciate her creativity and often eat things I don’t like simply because she likes doing it. I even think that’s my moral obligation toward her in terms of Christian love and spousal love. I don’t think it means I’m eating without consent or consenting without wanting to eat. I want to eat it, but I want to eat it for her sake rather than my own.
I’m not sure that kind of duty falls under your criticism. I don’t see how it leads to resentment if I choose to love her by eating her food that I don’t like in itself. So why should it lead to resentment if I choose to have sex at a moment when I might not be interested in the sex for its own sake?
I do think we can extend the extra mile to people who aren’t enemies, though you’re right that that’s its immediate context. Galatians 6 says to do good to all, especially the household of faith. I think that’s a good reason for thinking that Jesus is presenting something that we should do even for enemies, but if we should do it for enemies then of course we should do it for friends. But even if the extra mile passage isn’t relevant, I think there are plenty of other teachings just of Jesus alone that signal an obligation to give way beyond what we’d be inclined to think of as a duty. In other words, there’s a duty to go beyond ordinary notions of duty and love even more, but it should be out of love, and that requires changing our hearts and not just performing actions (which is the real problem with the proposal you were criticizing).
Jeremy, I agree with your general point about how we ought to treat others. I disagree that this kind of sacrifice extends to sex itself. There is a qualitative difference between taking out the garbage or cooking dinner for someone when you don’t feel like it, and allowing someone to put their penis inside you when you don’t feel like it. The sacrifice of the former is putting another’s needs first without compromising your basic identity; the latter is potentially soul-destroying.
There’s a paraadox here. If a husband owns his wife’s body, and a wife her husband’s (1Cor7:4), then his ownership ought to give him right of access to her — and her ownership ought to give her the right to demand that he not do with his body (over which she is in some sense sovereign) as he wants to at any given moment. It’s a very difficult problem to solve.
I don’t accept that what I’m talking about can accurately be described as “allowing someone to put their penis inside you when you don’t feel like it”. What I’m talking about is choosing to display love by seeking to enjoy the sex act mutually with someone even if one wasn’t inclined to do so. Someone thinking about it the way the quoted description puts it can’t do that, and it seems to me to be a moral failing. It reflects an inability to identify with the other’s desire as something to enjoy fulfilling, and that’s an inability to do one of the most important things involved in sexual connection.
The paradox you point out is interesting, and I think it’s even worse than what you point to. Once you consider the moral obligations of the spouse who wants to have sex, it’s not clear at all what should happen. My argument is only about what one partner should seek, not about what should happen. There’s at least as much presumption that the desiring partner should be willing to back down as there is that the undesiring spouse seek enjoyment in fulfilling the other spouse’s desire. When only one is willing to concede to the other’s desire, it’s easy to see what will happen (depending on which concedes). But what if both do? If you’re working with a mutual submission understanding of marriage (as I assume you are), it’s not clear what should happen in any such case (whether it involves sex or not).
But I’m not convinced that there’s anything different about sex when it comes to whether such submission done in the right attitude can actually be a good thing. It’s hard for me to see how the paradox even arises if such submission is bad, but it does seem to me to be a genuine paradox of moral life.
Jeremy, I think we’re in complete agreement that a tolerance for paradox, and a willingness to work through paradox lovingly, is part and parcel of both marriage and moral life. And there’s no question that in the mystery of radical mutual submission to the other, there is the real possibility that a couple can work through the near-certainty of issues of disparate desire. I am still convinced that the right NOT to have sex ought to trump the right TO have sex. That said, I’ve seen couples work through these issues to a happy conclusion and balance. Not insisting on rights — particularly if the person with the higher desire is good about not being insistent — pays big dividends. Grace abounds.
Hugo, you keep talking about the ‘right’ to have sex, and I think that’s where you and Jeremy (and I) come into conflict. The idea isn’t that the higher-desire partner gets to say “I want to have sex!” and bam! sex happens. But sometimes, even though one partner is feeling tired and not really ‘in the mood’, he or she thinks about the other partner and thinks, “I’d really like to give my love a pleasant surprise tonight.”
To quote Jeremy, the idea is “that someone can choose to have sex out of love for the other person when the desire for sex itself isn’t what’s motivating it”. That is, there are good reasons to have sex other than pure animal lust - and a joy taken in fulfilling the lover’s desire can be one of those reasons.
My hackles stood up with Jeremy’s replies, but not with Lisa’s, even though Lisa says she’s espousing the same views. (Hugo’s sound the most comfortable to me, still.)
I think the difference in reaction is due to the absoluteness of the statements. Lisa’s ’sometimes, a partner may choose to have at it even though no lust is present’ seems much more benign to me than Jeremy’s ‘not being able to have at it with love even though you’re not feeling like it is a moral failure.’
For me, the situation is not just a question of ‘love.’ If I have intercourse without being sufficiently aroused and even sometimes when I am, I end up with 2 hours of pain afterwards. In the past, I’ve really taken all these ‘a good wife should not reject her hubby sexually too often’ pieces of advice to heart (especially since said hubby could get really sulky when rejected) which means I’ve had a lot of sex just trying to grit my teeth and ‘lovingly’ wait until it’s over. The other message I got from society is ‘a good wife should NEVER give the hubby ‘duty sex’ so when you do it, make sure you act like you like it.’ This really used to cause me to not stop him when things got too painful, and since he would be really disappointed when I didn’t want intercourse, it also meant having intercourse when I KNEW it was going to hurt.
Result of being a loving, caring wife: painful sex, doctor-instituted bans on intercourse for 6 months at a time, surgery, and anxiety and fear when I even think about sex. I LOVE good sex, but I prefer getting a root canal to having bad sex (at least the dentist uses anesthesia), and am deathly afraid of ‘mediocre sex,’ since it can morph into bad sex so quickly.
At this time, finally, I’ve taken to saying ‘no’ when I know it’ll just hurt. I don’t want to get so scared of sex that I’ll never want it again, and it’s time that hubby stepped up and change some of HIS routines to make sex fun again for both of us. In the past, I’d say to him ‘well, I’m not really in the mood and I’m afraid it’ll hurt’ and when I’d give in after some pushing from his side, he’d draw the (not unreasonable) conclusion that I’d changed my mind instead of that I was just humoring him. Now I’m sticking to my guns.
If that’s a moral failure, so be it.
I think couples should be encouraged to accomodate each other as much as possible, but I also think a hierarchy of needs should be advocated for. I, as a woman, have repeatedly been told that women can just ’spread their legs and have it over with in 5 minutes,’ and ’sexual frustration is one of the worst things you can do to a guy.’ As the atheistic child of a Catholic mother, I’ve apparently inherited the Catholic ’suffering is good for you’ mentality, and I’ve never really been able to convince myself that my pain (or trying to avoid it) has ever even come close in importance to hubby’s lust.
Maartje, I’m just sort of confused by your story - if you knew it was going to hurt, and your values at the time went in the direction of doing it anyways, why didn’t you at least invest in a lubricant? Did you ever tell your husband that it was painful and discuss ways he could help increase your arousal? I don’t think that even Jeremy from this post or the author of the 30-Day Challenge from the original post would advocate pain and surgery and a (possible) total lack of communication about it.
Maartje, there is one difference between my view and Lisa’s, but it isn’t a difference that’s particularly about this issue. It’s a more general difference in ethical theory. Lisa, like many people, probably thinks there are wonderful things you can do that you don’t have an obligation to do. They’re just heroic, moral things. But you can refrain from doing them if you want. You’re not as good a person, but you don’t do anything wrong. Philosophers call such actions supererogatory. They see someone who does such things as a Good Samaritan but don’t expect everyone to be like that.
I’m a Christian, and my discussion assumes Christian ethical teaching. I don’t think the Sermon on the Mount allows for actions of that category. In fact, the Good Samaritan example itself doesn’t allow for them. Imagine if you went up to Jesus after hearing him present the Good Samaritan parable and said, “Well, I know what that Samaritan did was really nice and everything, and I’d really respect him for doing that, but I don’t think I have any obligation to be like that. I mean, it’s nice to help neighbors, but why should I think I have a duty to be as good a person as I can be?” I think Jesus would tell you that you completely missed the point of the parable. This isn’t his main point in the parable, but the parable assumes a pretty strong denial of the category of supererogatory acts, as does much in the Sermon on the Mount and much in other teaching of Jesus and in other parts of the Bible.
But that’s not absolutism. Absolutism is the view that ethical principles apply in every circumstance without exception, and I don’t think that’s true. There are some absolutes. I think most of those involve our direct relationship with our creator, but I think there might be some things that it’s just never right to do to another human being, even in extremely urgent circumstances when the stakes are very high (e.g. forcible rape comes to mind; I’m not sure it would be ok even if it’s the only way to save the species).
In my post, I gave two exceptions, serious illness and complete exhaustion. Those seem to me to be clear cases when something else trumps the moral concern behind the importance of sexual connection between spouses. I don’t think those are the only exceptions, but they were intended to be illustrative. I think it counts as a legitimate exception if extreme pain results for an extended period of time every time sex occurs without desires. I don’t know the details of your situation, so I’m not sure if what’s happening is because your husband doesn’t work hard enough to get you physically aroused after you have consented or if there’s some other issue that wouldn’t be solved by his behavior, but I do think it sounds like an exception the way you described it. So don’t take my view to preclude that.
B, in invested in so many types of lubricants they should make me main sponsor of the industry. I even had an apothecary mix up one especially for me, and Ibet not many people can say that! The only thing I’ve ever drawn the line at was numbing agents, since that reduces also what pleasurable sensations I have and makes the risk of tearing something even larger.
In addition to this, hormone creams, fatty creams, herbal creams, physical therapy and talk therapy (sexual psychologist) didn’t help. Surgery didn’t help either, by the way. My husband knows all about my affliction, he went to talk therapy with me and all. And of course the 30-day challenge doesn’t PRECLUDE communication, but communication itself doesn’t really fix anything. It has to be followed by the correct action, and the challenge was to have sex for 30 days, not necessarily to implement all the actions necessary to make it wonderful for BOTH people for 30 days. It’d be great if that happened, of course, but it’s by no means a given, and colour me sceptical about its prevalence.
Jeremy, thanks for explaining. Still having a hard time classing my situation as ’serious illness or complete exhaustion,’ and I’m still allergic to the way you versed your statement, but at least I can trust that in this case the problem is my interpretation and not your message. :)
Still though, I found it hard to read from your message that the role of the high-libido spouse isn’t (or at least shouldn’t be)supererogatory either (thanks for that word, by the way - I didn’t know it). In my case, since I do strive to be the best person I can be, I’ve always treated the social and perhaps moral duty to be sexually fulfilling for my husband as a given. On the other hand, since he’s way less long-term goal-oriented than I am but way more short-term goal-oriented, my husband has never really applied himself to applying the suggestions I gave to him regarding my arousal. He can fulfill his short term goal of getting some even when he knows he’s killing the chances of fulfilling the presumed long term goal of being able to get some for the rest of his life, but that doesn’t really phase him at the time to close the deal. And yes, adaptions to his behaviour, whether action or reaction, would help, since whenever sex ‘happens’ to fall along those lines, it’s way less painful.
Of course, every time I come right out and say ‘I want to do this, that, the other or something entirely different of your suggestion that meets my requirement to get rid of this pesky sex problem, since I’m afraid I’ll NEVER WANT IT AGAIN if we go on like this,’ he does really care - it just hasn’t shown in his actions yet. We had this conversation again this week, and of course again I’m hoping things will be different now.
Maybe I’m just biased (OK, of course I am, but I try not to be!) but I’ve heard that I’m selfish or defective in this regard more times than I can count. My hubby tells me he doesn’t remember any criticisms of HIS actions (and he’s pretty sensitive to criticism so he would, and he’s really honest so he’d tell me when I asked) but only some generalised expressions of sympathy (”Oh, that must be tough” - I get them too, they’re kinda nice) and expressions of jealousy (”So you’re so big that you break your woman!? Wow! You must be popular!” - I get the ‘oh, I wish my guy were hung like that’ comments too, and they’re awful either way).
Of course there’s a danger in making actions dependent on certain conditions since that can (and has, occasionally, for us) become ‘I won’t scratch your back until you scratch mine,’ but as long as ‘having loving but non-lustful sex with your spouse’ is required to be a good person, than ‘not allowing your spouse to experience unwanted pain during sex with you’ should be even more, and I think it’d be a good idea if this were made more explicit.
I must confess, I don’t remember the wording of the original challenge, so maybe that was in there, but a lot of ‘have more sex!’ messages don’t include ‘make having sex with you more fun!’ corrollaries for the other. I sure wish they did, if only to make my (or other women in this situation) possible decision of leaving him for not helping me enjoy sex seem more like something *WE* couldn’t get past instead of something *I* couldn’t get past.
First of all, let me state that I’m the higher libido party in the relationship. Physical contact is very important to me; I need a lot of it, and I like sex to be a decent chunk of that equation. However, Maartje, I have the same problem as you. Unless I am having sex with him regularly, it tends to be painful. So when my boyfriend wants to only have sex once a week, it’s a problem — I can’t get used to it (that is the term I’m using; it’s not exactly what I mean). Which leads to me not wanting to have sex and being annoyed that he never wants to, etc. etc. Vicious cycle. But he’s currently on certain meds and so this is what I deal with for now.
But anyway, usually, I believe that when people are talking about these sex challenges and when people talk about the low-desire partner having sex even though they aren’t really feeling that up to it, they are talking about the woman, not the partner. And they are saying that she should just suck it up and lie there and think of England or whatever. And I don’t think anyone (here, at least) really believes that, per se, but the message of society is pervasive, at least in my head, and when someone says “woman, you should have sex even though you don’t really want to right now,” something deep inside me has a very strong negative reaction to that statement. Women have been having unwanted sex — a lot of it, I’d assume — for a long time. So to me, it becomes about getting someone you love to have sex that they don’t want. And I can’t understand that, even though sometimes I have that feeling myself, that I want to have sex and he doesn’t and I’m so frustrated and doesn’t he want me and am I not hot enough? and all those feelings that I know men have, too — at the end of the day, I don’t want to have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex. That just screams creepy, especially having been through an experience where I was sleeping next to someone and I woke up to them attempting to remove my shorts and position me for sex.
At the end of the day, this is just one of those issues that isn’t entirely resolvable. Which is why I think it’s pretty important to figure out if your libidos are at serious odds. We all go through times when we don’t want sex or want it more, and sometimes you will match up and sometimes not, but if you start out begging for something that the other person just flat out doesn’t want … well … I think it’s unlikely that it will get better.
I’m sorry Jeremy…but while my libido fluctuates a bit more, we’re a pretty good match.
But there are other questions you fail to address, and among them is that too often, for one partner, sex takes the place of actual communication. Thirty years in…I’m not willing to play that game. I’m not willing to view sex when I don’t want it as “a loving act” when it is used the end of the day to make one partner feel better, with serious issues remaining unaddressed/unresolved. And…at the end of the day…the BH doesn’t get to use sex that I don’t want to convey an apology for being a surly, micromanaging twit all day. Sorry, but if the plan is for limblocking, I’d like to feel good about myself and my partner.
Sex as communication is a great thing…but only in tandem with other solid forms of communication.
Also, while I have always understood that we have obligations to get our heads into the bedroom, as opposed to the office/carpool/kitchen…the idea that we must be “totally exhausted” to decline a session in which there is absolutely no hope of mutual gratification is nonsense. It happens.
Finally, there is this little question of fertility. Highly fertile, and unable to use chemicals, timing was everything for us. I have no problem with non-intercourse relations, but when it gets to be long-term onesided, as I assure you can happen…demanding submission to the selfishness and laziness of one’s partner as a demonstration of love is simply cruel.
My question to you is: at what point do you think that duty becomes degradation? At what point do you think that duty is destructive to the marital relationship? If at all?
Maartje, in my original post I made it clear that I wasn’t talking about what the higher-desire spouse ought to do. That wasn’t the issue under discussion. In the comments here, I thought I did say that there are responsibilities that go in the other direction on the part of that person, and those indeed would be duties that go beyond what many people might think is required. I didn’t intend serious illness and complete exhaustion as the only exceptions, just examples of exceptions.
The original challenge was Hugo’s claim that sex as a duty is always bad. I offered an account according to which one thing you might mean by that (which isn’t quite what he meant by it) is perfectly ok. In my original post, I mentioned that there are exceptions, so adding further exceptions doesn’t change my thesis. My point is merely that you can make sense of sex as a duty in a way that isn’t subject to Hugo’s criticism (in my view, anyway; Hugo still resists).
Nav, I’ve tried to make it clear that this is not something that the higher-desire partner should expect. Just because person A has a duty to person B does not mean person B has a right to person A doing it, at least not if a right means that it’s perfectly ok to demand it. It’s not ok to demand sex, ever. Sometimes it might not even be ok to ask for it nicely, unless it’s clear that an answer of no is perfectly fine.
And I’m not just talking about men as the desiring partner and women not. Hugo gave his own example as sometimes being the other way around. Women often have elevated desire during ovulation and will want sex every day for almost a week. Some men might not be able to keep up with that during that time. Even if the same man wants more sex more of the time, he might want less during that. The moral considerations we’re talking about can easily reverse themselves with a couple who has that dynamic.
I also think marriage makes a difference. I gather that the cases you’re talking about don’t involve marriage. Marriage doesn’t mean an agreement to have sex whenever the other person wants, but I do think it changes things. In fact, that’s what the Pauline passage I based part of my argument on assumes.
Ahunt, the issue is how to love someone. All I need to establish to argue against Hugo’s claim is that there are clear cases where the loving thing for me to do is to have sex that I might not desire for its own sake but because I love my wife and she wants it. If that’s so, then I think it’s a case of sex as a duty in a way that’s totally unproblematic. If there are cases when sex isn’t the loving thing to do, then it doesn’t damage my thesis. Your counterexample doesn’t seem to me to be a counterexample to that claim but to a more general one that I don’t need to make to make my point.
I think that answers your last question too. It’s duty when it’s the loving thing to do. It’s degradation when it’s not. Love is interested in the other person’s good. Sometimes sex can contribute to that even when the person agreeing to it isn’t interested in the sex for its own sake. Sometimes sex doesn’t contribute to the person’s good but actually harms, even if the person wants it.