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Author Topic: Sexless marriages and very small families  (Read 62171 times)

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Offline Ladislaus

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Re: Sexless marriages and very small families
« Reply #10 on: January 23, 2019, 09:31:12 AM »
Quote from: Matthew on January 23, 2019, 09:17:28 AM
Yes, though I would say abstinence to avoid children is at least in line with nature, whereas artificial contraception goes against nature.

Agreed.  Well, at least it's not contrary to nature.  Nature tends to impel people to procreate.

And, of course, this goes for men too when they want to abstain to avoid having children.
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Offline ggreg

Re: Sexless marriages and very small families
« Reply #11 on: January 23, 2019, 09:40:23 AM »
This is a somewhat different problem.  Though it has at its root the same misunderstanding and misuse of sex.

Sounds basic, but maybe bring it up in conversation?

Not sure how effective that is unless it is really thrashed through over multiple conversations.  Bad women/men are deceptive and the kind of woman you want to marry has no practical experience of sex within marriage since she has not been married before and neither have you.  How can she say what her appetite is likely to be and how much is too much.  Women's appetites change by the time of the month, let alone from year to year.  After babies the hormones are all over the place and after a really difficult birth they can be thrown for six.

The hope is that as you age you can keep each other happy in the bedroom.  A happy relationship, with the woman respecting the husband, normally leads to this, not guaranteed.  If there is a big mismatch that is a problem.

Also once people are engaged to be married they are not likely to make this a make or break issue.  Has taken a lot of effort to get to that point.  Takes a lot of confidence and wisdom and bravery to walk away.

Yet... you are unlikely to bring it up as a topic on the second and third dates.

- - -

A more practical method might be to observe the kinds of media she reads, watches.  The marriages of her older sisters, her parent's marriage.

I am a big believer in the old adage, if you want to know what your wife is going to be like in 30 years look at her mother.  This is USUALLY true.

A technique you can use early on is to discuss and dissect OTHER people's relationships, real or fictional.  People are far more likely to expose their true feelings about things if they are not the subject of the discussion and this holds for dishonest and deceptive people as well as honest people.

Skilled salespeople use this technique all the time to get senior managers in one business unit in the company to expose the losses, screw-ups, money wasted in another part of the company.  Then armed with that knowledge they approach that unit and sell to a known point of pain.
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Offline ggreg

Re: Sexless marriages and very small families
« Reply #12 on: January 23, 2019, 10:19:50 AM »
Quote from: Matthew on January 23, 2019, 09:17:28 AM
Yes, though I would say abstinence to avoid children is at least in line with nature, whereas artificial contraception goes against nature.
I am not sure I agree with this completely.
I'd reckon that it was more in line with nature to have 5 children and contracept so they were spread 2-3 years apart, than to have 2 and stop having sex from the age of 30 in order to not have more (assuming the reasons are facile).  The second one seems to me to LESS of an openness to life than the first.  It is certainly pretty unnatural not to want sex with your spouse.
As an example, I know a number of rich families in New York and Moscow who plan when they are going have children, the women comes off the pill at some convenient point to their lifestyle and then goes back on.  I've joked that I just leave it to God/fate to decide and they think I am crazy, like not turning air-conditioning on in my car in a hot day.  They plan everything, when and where their kids are going to school, pensions, who flies coach or business class and what they are eating at the weekend.
But they still have 5 children, because they like children and they see a large family as a good healthy thing that makes their marriage meaningful.  They don't want 2 because they have more of everything and they have tons of energy.
There is the very good argument that it depends HOW you contracept.  Some contraception is abortifacient.  That is clearly not more in line with nature.
The ancients must have contracepted as soon as they understood the natural cycles of a woman (which the Greeks and Romans understood), but they all had reasonably large families.
I guess I am having a hard time picturing Trad men who really want to get married and scrape and save for it, having sex one or two dozen times in their marriage (which is all it would take to have two kids) and then living on the memories of that for the last 50 years of their life.
What a miserable existence.
Why not go on Spring Break, go to confession afterwards, and remain single, or adopt an orphan?  Frankly, you'd probably have better memories.
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Offline Matthew

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Re: Sexless marriages and very small families
« Reply #13 on: January 23, 2019, 10:34:48 AM »
I agree with Ladislaus' clarification of my wording.

I didn't mean that abstaining from marital relations for years on end was "natural" for human beings, from a psychological or emotional point of view -- I only meant it in this way:

marital relations = nature says you might have kids
abstain, no marital relations = nature says you WON'T have any kids

THIS is natural.

engaging in marital relations, but artificially frustrating conception = NOT natural.
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Offline Matthew

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Re: Sexless marriages and very small families
« Reply #14 on: January 23, 2019, 10:42:43 AM »
ggreg,

I'm surprised you haven't brought up a related issue:

how often is "too often"?

After all, Catholic doctrine talks about when the spouses must render the debt, and the expression "reasonable" is thrown in there. But obviously, what is reasonable for one might seem like nymphomania for another. To a large degree, it is completely subjective. I've certainly seen lots of discussion and debate on this point, in pagan, Catholic, and Trad Catholic circles, both online and IRL.

Where do you draw the line between "healthy, having lots of energy" and "nymphomania"? When, on the grounds of frequency, can the spouse (let's just be realistic here -- usually the WIFE) lawfully reject her husband's advances because he is "unreasonable" about his request? Let's assume they're at home, around bedtime, the kids are asleep, etc. so there are no propriety issues there.

The Church is quite vague on this topic, and it seems to tie right in to the topic of this thread.

And I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that this is a more widespread -- and therefore important -- issue than "sexless marriages" per se.
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