If you did not intend to end your sexual encounter with the you have an orgasm inside your wife, then you went in with the wrong intention and used each other simply for pleasure and not the intention of the act…being unitive and procreative.
hmmm… the act has to be open to life, but I haven’t noticed anything in church teaching with regard to every sexual act must intend to end in orgasm.
This touches on some advice given to me early in my marriage by a priest at the Cathedral in portland, who has since left the priesthood to marry a woman without permission of bishop Vlazny. So, I have become uncertain of the value of this advice:
He explained it this way: Acts of affection whether they intend to go all the way or not are acceptable. For example one may kiss their spouse on the lips which is pleasurable – (at least to some of us humans it is) – and is associated with sexual activity, but one is not obligated to have an orgasm just because they have kissed their spouse. The priest explained that the same is true with respect to any amount of foreplay, sexual contact, etc. But that (and obviously as I am a man, this applies to men) one is not allowed to complete the act outside of the woman.
So, for example, I understand that one could take showers with their spouse and scrub their back – etc. and no obligation is implied. One could sleep (as in really sleep cuddling) with their spouse in the buff (as some people like to do anyway) and that would not require sexual completion. One could also hold their spouse intimately, and spend time talking to them face to face regardless of other contact which might happen, and that would not always require one to complete the sexual act.
If you were intending to climax inside your wife, but the kids woke up, the fire alarm went off, or a burglar was breaking into your house, those are valid reasons to stop what you are doing and the intention was still there to complete that act.
If you went into this saying that you were going to give your wife an orgasm and then be “finished” then it would be a sinful act.
Again, it falls back on the intent. I agree to talk to your priest.
If you could expand the advice and reasoning a little bit, I would appreciate it.
What of those times where one knows the other spouse has expectations, or the potential to become quite interested – yet you are not. Eg: women are not always interested or have any intentions at first – but sometimes that comes after spending some time together. Yet even though I, as a man, desire greatly to be held – hugged – sometimes my wife becomes quite interested unexpectly – and I really don’t feel like mechanistically forcing something that just didn’t happen on its own. But that seems to fall into the classification of intention – because I know going in, sometimes, that I really don’t care if I “finish” or not and don’t expect to – that isn’t why I am there, but because the desire for affirmation and affection remains even on days where sexuality is down.
It isn’t like I was doing anything to take the pleasure without being open to life – there are no barriers, no intent to spill anything. etc.
