Embarrasing question

  • Thread starter Thread starter bookgirl
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
B

bookgirl

Guest
I would love to avoid asking this question but I’m paranoid and won’t have access to confession until tomorrow at the earliest. My husband and I just had a baby four months ago. I then had a Pulmonary Embolism and was put on blood thinners. Although we planned to use NFP anyway, with the danger of Coumadin (blood thinner) to a baby, we decided to abstain until the course of treatment was over (six months). The first four months this was pretty easy, the ones after, not so much. I learned that intended orgasm outside of intended intercourse is not okay on either side (there was some prior confusion about the woman, but that has been cleared up). Now, I had some suspicion that any sexual contact without the intended purpose of intercourse was not exactly completely respectful of intercourse itself. So was it something to clarify and keep reigned in, of course. Was I completely aware that it was of a grave nature? No, not until reading some posts today. I’ve actually had a priest tell me in confession that “married couples have a great many freedoms” or something like that, but he was wrong even in his response there b/c I was asking about female orgasm outside of the context of sex (I think he understood my question). Anyway to wrap this up, my husband and I slipped up as far as the abstinence goes, had intercourse, but stopped before either achieved orgasm. On the clinical side is it still possible I’m pregnant – yes, it is and I know that. Which is why I switched to an injectable form of blood thinner that is safe for the baby (and will probably stay on even if not pregnant to avoid this whole situation from now on). Morally speaking, are we guilty of a mortal sin, keeping in mind what I wrote above? I still plan on confessing this regardless, on changing our actions to reflect our new knowledge, etc.
 
I think you are probably okay. However, as with all questionable areas, confess it.

But do not worry about it. 🙂
 
Considering the fact that you were able to stop before either of you were satisfied, I would say that you are almost certainly not guilty of a mortal sin. Remember, mortal sin requires that the act is committed willfully and with complete knowledge of it being against God’s law. Clearly, you had the latter, and clearly when you and your husband’s wills asserted themselves, you stopped yourselves.

Just my thought on it, but I am guessing your sin was venial and that you are more guilty for allowing yourselves to get into a situation where that could happen than for the act itself.

Of course, your confessor is the best person to consult on this :).

–
Bill
 
That’s an interesting question…certainly ask your confessor. IMHO, I don’t see the sin here. You and your husband had intercourse and were open to having children at the time. I don’t know that crossing the finish line, so to speak, is required with each and every marital act. Sin is in the will, and it seems your will was in the right place.
 
StCsDavid said:
That’s an interesting question…certainly ask your confessor. IMHO, I don’t see the sin here. You and your husband had intercourse and were open to having children at the time. I don’t know that crossing the finish line, so to speak, is required with each and every marital act. Sin is in the will, and it seems your will was in the right place.
Click to expand...
But doing so knowing that we didn’t plan to “cross the finish line”? We basically planned to do what we did. I guess if we would’ve messed up and “crossed it” it still would’ve been fine, everything would’ve gone to the right place. Most of this won’t be an issue anymore, with me on the shots instead of the oral blood thinner. Waiting through days / weeks for NFP is much different than waiting six months (after getting married, gettting pregnant two days later and having a very difficult pregnancy that did not lend itself to much intimacy at all, waiting six more months shouldn’t be that hard. But in my opinion, abstaining within marriage is actually harder than abstaining outside of it.)
 
StCsDavid said:
That’s an interesting question…certainly ask your confessor. IMHO, I don’t see the sin here. You and your husband had intercourse and were open to having children at the time. I** don’t know that crossing the finish line, so to speak, is required with each and every marital act.** Sin is in the will, and it seems your will was in the right place.
Click to expand...
There are quite a number of folks on here that would tell you it is required.
 
CuriousInIL said:
There are quite a number of folks on here that would tell you it is required.
Click to expand...
I agree that there are; however, I believe it has to do with what is in the will. An example I can give where it would not be a sin would be if the hubby experienced, how shall we say, mechanical failure and was unable to cross the finish line. Not all wives cross the line each and every time; however we hardly accuse them of sin. The OP clarified her concern that they intended to do the act from the beginning, which kind of changes the landscape a bit. In that case, I would say it probably crosses the line into sin, though she should let her confessor determine that. That’s different from what I originally understood the issue being that they started the dance and then realized they probably shouldn’t be doing it at this time for some very legitimate reasons and stopped.
 
StCsDavid said:
I agree that there are; however, I believe it has to do with what is in the will. An example I can give where it would not be a sin would be if the hubby experienced, how shall we say, mechanical failure and was unable to cross the finish line. Not all wives cross the line each and every time; however we hardly accuse them of sin. The OP clarified her concern that they intended to do the act from the beginning, which kind of changes the landscape a bit. In that case, I would say it probably crosses the line into sin, though she should let her confessor determine that. That’s different from what I originally understood the issue being that they started the dance and then realized they probably shouldn’t be doing it at this time for some very legitimate reasons and stopped.
Click to expand...
That would make a difference. I’m sure the occasional inability to orgasm (not total inability) in which you don’t know you’re not going to be able to until you get there is not a bad thing. As well as if we had started it, thinking “we know where we are and it’s okay”, then gotten scared midway through and stopped. But no, we never intended to finish. That’s where the sin is. I was just in question of whether it was mortally sinful or not, but I tend to be pretty scrupulous, as you can tell. I’ve had some private emails that have helped clarify things too. It’s amazing how complicated chastity within marriage can be. Before you’re married, you kind of have this idea of marriage being this free-for-all. In reality it’s not. I’m glad it’s that way, it was intended to be that way, and it makes you think about sex and what it means, and talk to your spouse about it which brings you closer. But you can also say that if you’re coming from the standpoint of “how much can we do without breaking the rules”, you’re always going to be somewhat wrong.
 
It seems the intent to go further than a married couple should under the circumstances was present . I’d confess it. Figure out what you can do next time to not tempt each other into sin. Pray together about it as well.

If no one has recommended the Good News about Sex and Marriage book by Christopher West to yet then I just did.
 
I’d confess it, and probably would refrain from communion until it was confessed.

From the sounds of it, there is probably less sin in simply completing the act than there is in trying to avoid it. The medicine you are on is not for birth control purposes. Yes there is a risk to any potentially conceived child, but it is not a risk willed by either of you two.
 
northgaredneck said:
What is a mortal sin? I am new at this?
Click to expand...
The poster thinks she’s going to go to Hell because she had sex with her husband without have him ejaculating, if I understand. A mortal sin would be one that would cause a person to go to Hell.
 
Black_Jaque said:
I’d confess it, and probably would refrain from communion until it was confessed.

From the sounds of it, there is probably less sin in simply completing the act than there is in trying to avoid it. The medicine you are on is not for birth control purposes. Yes there is a risk to any potentially conceived child, but it is not a risk willed by either of you two.
Click to expand...
I wondered about that too. It seems like all around we’re doing something bad. If we abstain completely does that hurt our marriage? If we don’t do we risk conceiving a child who would very likely be in some sort of danger, including danger of death? We’re obviously not using ABC and we know we now know the definite word on what happened in the past week. Abstaining just seemed the safest. I think that if we had been married longer before we got pregnant, were more used to intercourse being allowed, we might’ve thought differently? I don’t know. It’s hard to switch gears, in one day, from what you can and can’t do. We were still so close to not having marital freedoms (is that even a phrase?) that it didn’t seem like it would be that hard – it was!!

Of course, now that I’ve gone on the shots it’s not an issue, I wish I would’ve known I could do that all along. But we didn’t, we thought I had to be on the oral meds. It does make for an interesting discussion.
 
northgaredneck said:
What is a mortal sin? I am new at this?
Click to expand...
For a sin to be mortal three conditions must be met: (1) The sin must have grave matter, (2) one must have adequate knowledge, and (3) one must commit it with deliberate consent (CCC 1857–1859).
If even one of these conditions is not met then the sin is not mortal but venial.
 
BookGirl, Viki has it right about mortal sin.

And the fact that you felt the need to ask about it means you did not have full knowledge! Therefore, it’s not mortal.

You and your hubby may have sinned, since it seems you deliberately did not finish. So I add my voice to those saying, take it to confession. If you don’t want to wait until the next scheduled one, you can always ask your priest.

I agree that Christopher West’s book, The Good News About Love and Marriage, is excellent.

And do check in to NFP. It gives you real choice - it can be used to increase the odds of getting pregnant, as well as decreasing it. It works as well as, if not better than “the pill;” and tends to increase intimacy in marriage, too. Couples using NFP rarely split.

Just in case you haven’t heard of it… NFP is Natural Family Planning, which is highly scientific. It’s not your mother’s rhythm method!
 
Ruthie said:
BookGirl, Viki has it right about mortal sin.

And the fact that you felt the need to ask about it means you did not have full knowledge! Therefore, it’s not mortal.

You and your hubby may have sinned, since it seems you deliberately did not finish. So I add my voice to those saying, take it to confession. If you don’t want to wait until the next scheduled one, you can always ask your priest.

I agree that Christopher West’s book, The Good News About Love and Marriage, is excellent.

And do check in to NFP. It gives you real choice - it can be used to increase the odds of getting pregnant, as well as decreasing it. It works as well as, if not better than “the pill;” and tends to increase intimacy in marriage, too. Couples using NFP rarely split.

Just in case you haven’t heard of it… NFP is Natural Family Planning, which is highly scientific. It’s not your mother’s rhythm method!
Click to expand...
Thank you. I will read West’s book. We actually do do NFP, at least we started to. We didn’t mean to get pregnant the first time, but our wedding day landed on a “white baby” and we wanted to postpone for a little while. We pretty much followed all the rules as far as avoiding pregnancy, until about three days after we got married :). And that day resulted in my son :o. But I do know, at least I think I know, where we screwed up then (obviously we don’t consider it a screw up now). We were just so worried about this particular drug, and I wasn’t going to be on it for more than six months, that we thought abstaining would be the best thing. So of course while abstaining I convinced myself that I didn’t really have to resume my charting YET. Not the right decision either. But through all of this we’ve found out that I can take a different medication in an injectable form. The only thing I feel guilty about now is that I just realized how expensive (our insurance covers it, but still) that medicine is, one months supply costs the insurance company $4900!! But, as you can tell, I can find a way to feel guilty about pretty much anything.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top