Is refusing the marriage debt no longer serious matter?

[Bobo]

In 1 Cor. 7:3-5 Paul describes the marriage debt and go on to discuss how withholding marital intercourse can lead to other sins.

My wife frequently withholds emotional and physical intimacy to punish me for not going along with one of her unilateral decisions or demands. (By the way, I’m a good husband. No affairs. No addictions. Helpful and engaged with the children. Her complaint is that I don’t make enough money and while I defer to her on 90% of decisions, she goes up a tree when I resist in cases where I feel prudence demands it.)

Our marriage counselor has tried to encourage her to be more generous and available. (Our history is to have relations at most twice a month, and often months or even years of total abstinence when she so dictates.) Our counselor has suggested at least committing to a date night once a week when we will plan to have relations and can emotionally prepare to do so. She has cooperated a few times, but continues to find new reasons to be upset and withhold even on these nights.

Here’s the main rub. She now claims that she has talked to a priest and been told this is okay to withhold herself from me. It is unclear what reasons have been provided, but it appears to boil down to respecting her “emotional integrity” to refrain from making love when she doesn’t “feel” loving. I and our counselor have tried to remind her that love is a decision and that it should guide her to reform both her behavior and her emotions. But that has produced only temporary, intermittent efforts.

Following a dispute over how to split transportation plans for our children (actually, just my daring to raise the argument that after-daycare made more sense than disrupting my work schedule), she has had enough of me. She decided to move to another room in the house and is insisting on a “formal in-house separation.”

I am very bothered by how our parish priest has, in my view, tried to soothe her conscience instead of firmly reminding her of the spiritual, emotional, and physical importance of honoring the marriage debt. Theologically, I think his advice simply does not jive with Paul’s directive and it also undermines our counselor’s therapy by giving her an “easy way out” instead of encouraging her to struggle with what is obviously a “hang up.”

To my understanding, the marital debt is central to marriage. It is a source of grace and denying this source of grace, especially with forethought, is grave matter. Certainly there may be issues, and perhaps psychological issues in my wife’s case, that diminish culpability. So it may not be a mortal sin. Only God can make that judgment in any given case. But my wife insists that it is not even a venial sin, but is instead her “right.” While she has talked to the priest to get his blessing on this, everything she says indicates that she doesn’t consider it to be even a venial sin.

I know my bitterness is showing here a bit. Please forgive me. But if I am the one who has this all wrong, please set me straight. Or give me something I can give to my pastor so he may reconsider the advice he is giving to her.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I don’t think you are totally wrong, and I sympathize with your anger and bitterness. Assuming your wife is reporting your priest’s words accurately – and, unless you were also present to hear the conversation, it may be that she has engaged in some “spin” – the priest should have referred your wife back to her counselor for questions outside his own realm of competency (e.g., how to appropriately respect “emotional integrity”).

It is also true that marriage entails the spouses giving to each other rights to their bodies, such that a reasonable request for relations should not be denied. Of course, “reasonableness” includes mutual respect for when one or the other is ill or otherwise indisposed, and merely having a right to something does not permit anyone to forceably assert that right against the other’s will. But it can indeed be serious matter to unreasonably deny one’s spouse marital relations, particularly as a punishment for presumed offenses.

I do think though that there does need to be some adjustment of attitude on your part also. While the term “marriage debt” has indeed been used in Catholic sacramental theology, it is an unfortunate term for describing the marital act. It certainly should never be used by a husband when asking his wife for relations, or when arguing for increased amounts of relations, because to modern ears it has the ring of “You owe me sex and you better pay up!” Very few women will be rightly disposed to marital relations when they believe their husband is demanding sex, particularly those already struggling with being more emotionally and physically available to their husband.

Instead of focusing on “debts” and “payment,” I recommend you focus on marital relations as the physical restatement of marriage vows and the gift of marriage between a husband and wife. When seen as a restatement of marriage vows, it is hard to argue that it should be granted only to the “deserving” since such restatements (or, for lack of a better term, “renewals”) are usually done to repair hurting marriages.

Finally, I think you should talk to your wife’s priest yourself. He needs to know that his presumably well-meant counsel has instead caused your wife to withdraw from you even more, to the point of insisting on an “in-house separation.” No priest should want to be the cause of straining a marriage even more, and any right-thinking priest would want to know when his counsel has inadvertently done so, so that he may correct it.

Recommended reading:

Good News about Sex & Marriage by Christopher West
Holy Sex! by Gregory K. Popcak