Newlyweds struggling with sexual issue

[ethereality]

I’m reading this from the perspective of a single 24.5-years-old male … and really, he sounds a bit too fixated on sex. (However, he may also have more testosterone than I.) He needs help seeing “the bigger picture” (e.g. from the perspective of eternity or of companionship), and the strength that comes from self-mastery and the deeper relationship he can have with you if he can express his love in non-genital ways.

Is it really bad sometimes? Yes, there’s this pent-up feeling like a psychological “itch” that you want to take care of. What do you do? Busy yourself with various things and ignore it. It’s not pleasant, but it is possible. I hope he can see that he’s disrespecting you by not wanting to master himself. (This fact can be articulated in theological terms, i.e. through marriage his body belongs to you, and yours to him, but that’s another topic…)

 

[ethereality]

[The story of] Onan is not a story against masturbation.

It’s a related topic: Onan demonstrably wanted sexual pleasure without the sexual consequences, which is also at the heart of masturbation.

 

[domandcarols]

• Be A Man by Fr. Larry Richards

I third this.

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

I don’t know if you can. He is determined to put sexual pleasure first in his life. He needs some help to grow in chastity and maturity as a man.

I suggest www.dads.org for that. He has little self control and has never demanded it of himself. I’m sorry you are having to bear the brunt of his displeasure as you demand it of him.

He needs to learn that chastity is an integral part of **all **states in life. He likely had the wrong idea that he had to wait for marriage to have sex and the he could “feast” on sex without restraint. That is not true and not in line with the virtue of chastity.

Didn’t get that impression at all… Sounds to me like a good man who struggles with doubt and wants to make love to his wife. Kinda normal.

 

[GraceDK]

I recommend that we men decrease our exposure to pop culture’s hotties. Exposure to them only gets us all fired up. I recommend the beauty and romanticism of Tchaikosky’s Piano Concerto No 1 in B flat minor or Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Summer. We need to channel in a more romantic direction. But don’t be too hard on him. It’s difficult for women to understand the extreme urgency of the male sex drive. Try, but that’s the beauty of confession.

I hear you… the extreme urgency of female sex drive is the same. As a single woman I therefore divert my eyes from erotic images of sexy muscle men who are real hotties on posters all over European cities … If a hot scene comes in a movie, I don’t see the movie, or I don’t look at the scene. As a single I dont need the feelings that accompany these things after you turn off the TV.
The culture is not easy for anyone of us. We all have to learn chastity in our lives.
It starts with disciplining ones mind. If one has once been down the slippery slope of unchaste behaviour it will take time to get pure at heart again…
Virtue is learned and repeated habit. Indeed, after a time of discipline the passions will calm down.

The problem of the OP is that her husband is unwilling to take responsibility for his own sexuality and he makes a guilttrip on her. This is not fair after he willingly and freely entered a Catholic sacramental marriage.

 

[GraceDK]

This is incorrect. Onan is not a story against masturbation. The story of Onan is about disobedience on specific issues with respect to God. The ancient Jews even had cleanliness rules dealing with male emissions.

Well then, why was he struck dead?.. If it was only about these other rules, then there were other punishments prescribed for breaking them… but Onan was killed by God for is unclean behaviour.

 

[28562]

Please know that I am posting this with all the best intentions for both of you. I can hopefully give you some insight into where he is with this and maybe give you some advice that will help. There are things that my wife and I could have done differently (especially her IMO) that would have made things easier along the way and if you could avoid those mistakes, you’d be much better off. Just so you know, I am young (27) and haven’t been married all that long (almost 6 yrs) and my situation is not that much different than your husband’s, so I feel that my opinion on this carries a lot of weight. Please take it for what it is worth.

This is a very serious issue. You two are treading on VERY thin ice right now. You (and I mean YOU, not him) have to be VERY careful how you handle this if you don’t want to cause years of damage and heartaches and headaches between the two of you. If that sounds scary, GOOD. It should.
Please understand that there is absolutely NO quicker and easier way to push your husband away and cause resentment towards you than hurting him sexually. Once he is hurt and feels rejected, the resentment will soon follow and it will permeate every facet of your marriage. I really think it is natural for a man to feel this way and many (maybe most) women do not understand it. When a man feels unwanted sexually by his wife, unless you have been a man in that situation, you can’t understand the pain, the hurt, the frustration, the embarrassment of the fact that your wife doesn’t want to make love to you. PLEASE be compassionate when it comes to this. Try to understand where he is coming from and do everything you can to make it easy, because it is one of the hardest things to deal with in a marriage.
When I got married, I thought that we would not be able to keep our hands off of each other and we would be making love every chance we got. Boy was I surprised to find out that is not how it was…and my wife wasn’t very understanding of the hurt it caused me. After 6 years, we are now starting to heal our intimate life from the damage done since the beginning of our marriage. Most of it came (IMO) from a lack of understanding of each other. I thought it was something that she was just supposed to give me whenever and it should be easy for her to do so and she should want to. She thought that it was no big deal for me to do without just because she didn’t feel like it. You have to meet in the middle. I also didn’t understand that my attitude and actions throughout the rest of the day (like being in a bad mood or not helping out enough) caused her to not want to be with me. She didn’t realize that her lack of intimacy made me not want to go out of my way for the little things that were important to her. Someone had to budge first. It was me recently…and things have started to improve…a little. None of that has much to do with your situation right now I guess, but I just want you to see where you will get if you don’t solve this problem now and do it in a loving, understanding, compassionate way.
It takes a lot of maturity for a man to get to the point where he can understand that abstinence for a couple weeks does not mean he is not loved by his wife. I am just getting there at 27 after 6 yrs… But you can help him so it doesn’t take so long. You need to do or say whatever it takes to make him not feel rejected. When you said “I’m not willing to do this anymore”, he heard “ She doesn’t love me enough”. I would bet my paycheck on that. So now, after fighting his masturbation problem for all his life and thinking it would be solved when he got married, he is now thinking that he is going to be a married man that will have to take care of himself in that regard. It hurts our ego and self esteem more than anything else you could do. I promise. You can’t imagine the feelings of embarrassment a married man has when he feels that he has to do that because his wife said she doesn’t want him. Help him and BE UNDERSTANDING of his feelings. As a woman, you do not understand how difficult it is physically for us at times to abstain from sex. After all, that is one of the reasons that we got married—and now we are being told we can’t do it!

There is a lot more that I was going to say, but now I can’t remember it…maybe I will later.

Oh, and when you are not fertile, be like rabbits. It will make the times of abstinence MUCH easier to deal with when he knows he only has to hang in there a few more days and then all his waiting will be worth it.

 

[lizaanne]

Oh, and when you are not fertile, be like rabbits. It will make the times of abstinence MUCH easier to deal with when he knows he only has to hang in there a few more days and then all his waiting will be worth it.

I fail to see how this is at all a healthy use of sex within a marriage. You are saying that they should have as much sex as possible when she is not fertile - how does that make their sex life BOTH open to unity and pro-creativity? It doesn’t. But then again, I have issues with NFP anyway, so we probably should not go there if we don’t want it to turn ugly.



~Liza

 

[28562]

I fail to see how this is at all a healthy use of sex within a marriage. You are saying that they should have as much sex as possible when she is not fertile - how does that make their sex life BOTH open to unity and pro-creativity? It doesn’t. But then again, I have issues with NFP anyway, so we probably should not go there if we don’t want it to turn ugly.



~Liza

If they don’t want to have a baby right now, Church teaching says abstain during periods of fertility. Nothing unhealthy about that…
And if they are very active when she is infertile to help her husband avoid his temptation, then that sounds like they are doing something together that will create unity…I know it would mean a ton to me (and make me feel more loved and closer) if my wife said “Look, we can’t have sex right now unless we want a baby and I know abstaining is difficult for you…but in about 3 days, it’s safe and you better watch out when you get home from work…”

Your post makes it sound like you only think it is okay to have sex when you are trying to get pregnant. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be…

 

[lizaanne]

Your post makes it sound like you only think it is okay to have sex when you are trying to get pregnant. That’s not the way it’s supposed to be…

No - that’s not what I said, and not what I meant. I think it just places sex outside of the fertile period as more than just unitive, it now becomes a “sexual release” to tide him over the fertile times. That just sounds like appeasing a man who can’t control himself. That is not a healthy use of sex in any marriage.

~Liza

 

[GraceDK]

Please know that I am posting this with all the best intentions for both of you. I can hopefully give you some insight into where he is with this and maybe give you some advice that will help. There are things that my wife and I could have done differently (especially her IMO) that would have made things easier along the way and if you could avoid those mistakes, you’d be much better off. Just so you know, I am young (27) and haven’t been married all that long (almost 6 yrs) and my situation is not that much different than your husband’s, so I feel that my opinion on this carries a lot of weight. Please take it for what it is worth.

This is a very serious issue. You two are treading on VERY thin ice right now. You (and I mean YOU, not him) have to be VERY careful how you handle this if you don’t want to cause years of damage and heartaches and headaches between the two of you. If that sounds scary, GOOD. It should.
Please understand that there is absolutely NO quicker and easier way to push your husband away and cause resentment towards you than hurting him sexually. Once he is hurt and feels rejected, the resentment will soon follow and it will permeate every facet of your marriage. I really think it is natural for a man to feel this way and many (maybe most) women do not understand it. When a man feels unwanted sexually by his wife, unless you have been a man in that situation, you can’t understand the pain, the hurt, the frustration, the embarrassment of the fact that your wife doesn’t want to make love to you. PLEASE be compassionate when it comes to this. Try to understand where he is coming from and do everything you can to make it easy, because it is one of the hardest things to deal with in a marriage.
When I got married, I thought that we would not be able to keep our hands off of each other and we would be making love every chance we got. Boy was I surprised to find out that is not how it was…and my wife wasn’t very understanding of the hurt it caused me. After 6 years, we are now starting to heal our intimate life from the damage done since the beginning of our marriage. Most of it came (IMO) from a lack of understanding of each other. I thought it was something that she was just supposed to give me whenever and it should be easy for her to do so and she should want to. She thought that it was no big deal for me to do without just because she didn’t feel like it. You have to meet in the middle. I also didn’t understand that my attitude and actions throughout the rest of the day (like being in a bad mood or not helping out enough) caused her to not want to be with me. She didn’t realize that her lack of intimacy made me not want to go out of my way for the little things that were important to her. Someone had to budge first. It was me recently…and things have started to improve…a little. None of that has much to do with your situation right now I guess, but I just want you to see where you will get if you don’t solve this problem now and do it in a loving, understanding, compassionate way.
It takes a lot of maturity for a man to get to the point where he can understand that abstinence for a couple weeks does not mean he is not loved by his wife. I am just getting there at 27 after 6 yrs… But you can help him so it doesn’t take so long. You need to do or say whatever it takes to make him not feel rejected. When you said “I’m not willing to do this anymore”, he heard “ She doesn’t love me enough”. I would bet my paycheck on that. So now, after fighting his masturbation problem for all his life and thinking it would be solved when he got married, he is now thinking that he is going to be a married man that will have to take care of himself in that regard. It hurts our ego and self esteem more than anything else you could do. I promise. You can’t imagine the feelings of embarrassment a married man has when he feels that he has to do that because his wife said she doesn’t want him. Help him and BE UNDERSTANDING of his feelings. As a woman, you do not understand how difficult it is physically for us at times to abstain from sex. After all, that is one of the reasons that we got married—and now we are being told we can’t do it!

There is a lot more that I was going to say, but now I can’t remember it…maybe I will later.

Oh, and when you are not fertile, be like rabbits. It will make the times of abstinence MUCH easier to deal with when he knows he only has to hang in there a few more days and then all his waiting will be worth it.

A good and important post.

However you must know that a woman has to respect her husband… thats very basic in a Christian home… and when a man tries to put guilt on his wife when she is doing her moral and religious duty, then she slowly feels like an adult woman married to a boy.
That too undermines relationships very badly.
People ought to educate themselves about what they are getting into, eg. how can you think you can have nonstop sex if you marry… what about NFP and all those things?
Im sorry. But I think you put too much responsibility on the woman in this case.
The OP is trying to explain to her husband that she is just following the rules they agreed on when they entered marriage. He finds it difficult and blames her for his masturbation. NEVER ever okay to do something like that.
To make a woman feel used as some kind of tool for release is also a very, very bad idea, and might undermine the respect of the woman for the man for many years. I have tried this with ex-boyfriend, and its one of the reasons I would very much hesitate to trust him ever again.

This needs to be said also.

 

[28562]

A good and important post.

However you must know that a woman has to respect her husband… thats very basic in a Christian home… and when a man tries to put guilt on his wife when she is doing her moral and religious duty, then she slowly feels like an adult woman married to a boy.
That too undermines relationships very badly.
People ought to educate themselves about what they are getting into, eg. how can you think you can have nonstop sex if you marry… what about NFP and all those things?
Im sorry. But I think you put too much responsibility on the woman in this case.
The OP is trying to explain to her husband that she is just following the rules they agreed on when they entered marriage. He finds it difficult and blames her for his masturbation. NEVER ever okay to do something like that.
To make a woman feel used as some kind of tool for release is also a very, very bad idea, and might undermine the respect of the woman for the man for many years. I have tried this with ex-boyfriend, and its one of the reasons I would very much hesitate to trust him ever again.

This needs to be said also.

I do not disagree with anything you have said. I did not mean to make it seem okay for a woman to be treated less than respectfully.
I don’t see where he ‘blames’ her for his masturbation. She said–

He states that after many days without intercourse, the feelings of temptation to masturbate begin to return, which is something he hoped he’d never have to go through again after he got married.

That is simply stating a fact. If masturbation is something that you struggle with, then the temptations WILL return if you don’t physically release for a while. That’s just the way we are built, whether it is right or wrong. She also said that he agreed to go about it by NFP because it was important to her. With age, experience, and more maturity, I believe he will come to accept it as what he wants to do also.
I also did not mean to put a lot of responsibility on her, but I wanted to make it very clear what it feels like from the other side of the issue. I wish someone other than me would lay it all out like that for my wife. She does have the responsibilty of caring for his self esteem and feelings and therefore it is important that she know how they are affected by sex or lack of. That doesn’t mean that he can be a total d bag to her and still get some when it is safe…he still has to show her respect so that she will be willing to sacrifice her body as an act of love for him. That’s just what it is (or should be at least)–an ACT OF LOVE. She does something important to him to show him that she loves him, even if it isn’t her favorite thing in the world…kinda like when I bathe all the kids by myself so my wife can watch American Idol, or when I vacuum the floor while she is gone and clean the house so she is surprised when she comes home…That’s what love is about–sacrificing yourself for the one you love.

 

[kbachler]

It’s a related topic: Onan demonstrably wanted sexual pleasure without the sexual consequences, which is also at the heart of masturbation.

Nope. Onan’s story is about disobeying God directly. You’re off the mark.

 

[28562]

No - that’s not what I said, and not what I meant. I think it just places sex outside of the fertile period as more than just unitive, it now becomes a “sexual release” to tide him over the fertile times. That just sounds like appeasing a man who can’t control himself. That is not a healthy use of sex in any marriage.

~Liza

No, she would be performing an act of love for him. Maybe she wants him just as badly as he wants her when she is fertile. We don’t know that from the post.

I think the difference in the way we are talking about it is because of the differences in perceptions of sex between men and women.

If my wife goes out of her way to initiate intimacy because she knows it will make me happy (even though she may or may not care either way about it) is she doing something out of love or simply allowing herself to be used as a ‘tool for release’?

I would hands down say it’s out of love because she was thinking about me and wanted to do something to express her feelings for me, but I guess you would say otherwise?

 

[Luvz2travel]

Also, make sure that you do have a serious reason to avoid children. If you are a healthy woman, you are married, pray that you will be able to welcome children and not avoid blessings!

I think a high majority catholics are just lying to themselves when they say they have a serious reason for using NFP. They want to have a sex life but aren’t willing to welcome children then complain when they have to live with the consequences. They want to have their cake and eat it too. I’m not trying to pick on this couple it just seems sad that all these people want to avoid kids to the point of making themselves suffer.

 

[Castello]

The idea that after you are married you will have sex anytime and all the time is a lie that poisons marriage - it is NOT God’s design.

God made sex for marriage, he did not make marriage for sex.

When we begin to teach our young people this (contrary to what the world, and sadly some voices in the Church, tell us) we will begin to see heathier marriages.

 

[Job42]

Nope. Onan’s story is about disobeying God directly. You’re off the mark.

Then Pope Pius XI was off the mark as well when he issued his encyclical Casti Connubii.

 

[Job42]

archive.catholic.com/thisrock/1991/9107chap.asp

I think a key statement in that article is that “in recent years, both Protestant and Catholic commentators have downplayed” the traditional interpretation of the story of Onan. Most modern scripture “scholars” have been hard at work watering down the Holy Bible to make it palatable for our current culture.

 

[ValPal]

Then Pope Pius XI was off the mark as well when he issued his encyclical Casti Connubii.

Onan is only mentioned once in Casti Connubii, and it basically reiterates what the Bible and St. Augustine stated. The interpretation is very narrow in all cases, referring specifically to married couples. The more broad interpretations are based in Church Tradition.

 

[kbachler]

archive.catholic.com/thisrock/1991/9107chap.asp

I think a key statement in that article is that “in recent years, both Protestant and Catholic commentators have downplayed” the traditional interpretation of the story of Onan. Most modern scripture “scholars” have been hard at work watering down the Holy Bible to make it palatable for our current culture.

It’s not a matter of making it palatable, its a matter of understanding the truth. Given the practices of that day that we better understand today because of additional research, the interpretation of it as an anti-masturbation story just doesn’t make much sense, and wouldn’t have been how it was viewed at the time.