Sex Ed and Men and the Marriage Bed

In all the discussions about abstinence-only sex ed  there is much talk about spit and water, licked ice cream cones, and tape that is no longer sticky. Obviously, as many other writers have already pointed out,  that kind of abstinence-only sex ed leaves much to be desired, especially for the women who – for one reason or another – did have sex before marriage and, because of their formation, felt dirty and undesirable.

Fortunately that was not the sex ed I received. In Protestant youth groups I did hear those things but I was also informed about sexually transmitted diseases and the difficulties of being an unwed, teen mother. I was also told, over and over again throughout high school and college, about the beauty of sex, the power of married love, and the dignity I, and every man I’d date, have as children of God. Perhaps the strongest message I heard was from my mom who told me she waited until she was married, that it was a good and unregrettable decision, and that she wanted me to do the same.  This formation helped me make mostly good, chaste decisions and I felt well prepared for a realistic sex life once I was married.

However, the comparable sex ed received by many young Catholic men I know led to a different outcome. They were also taught about the risks of premarital sex and had role models to encourage them to be chaste, pure, and to save sex for marriage. But along the way, as they were taught about the beauty of sex, the power of married love, and the dignity of every woman, they weren’t really taught the healthiest and best way to deal with their natural sexual attraction to women.

They were warned that the woman they were dating might not end up being their wife and so they should help her preserve her purity and dignity, out of respect for her and the man she would marry.

They were encouraged to remember that the women they were attracted to were someone’s sister, daughter, maybe even mother and that they shouldn’t reduce her to a sexual object to ogle.

They were told they could control their urges, lusts, desires, and attractions by going to daily Mass and adoration, by running and lifting weights, and by the strengths provided by the rosary and frequent confession.

All of those lessons were good and the men stopped checking out girls, stopped looking at porn, and stopped having sex with their girlfriends. They learned the lessons and trained themselves to control themselves. They reminded themselves over and over again that looking at women as objects and not people was wrong, desiring them lustfully was sinful, and having premarital sex with them was not okay.

Outside of marriage it seemed great, but once they were married problems surfaced. Each man soon found himself in a situation he had long awaited but now made him uneasy. There was a naked woman – definitely somebody’s sister, daughter, and granddaughter – lying in front of him. She was someone he loved and respected but she was also beautiful and even downright sexy. And there she was – inviting him to look at her and then to come to bed, to touch her, and have sex with her. He knew that suddenly it was okay to do these things but it was so ingrained in him that he shouldn’t look, desire, touch, and embrace that he was often riddled with guilt and confusion. Many times these loving husbands would even turn away from their wives leaving the women feeling hurt, confused, unattractive, defective, and unwanted.

It turns out that what they were really telling themselves was looking at women and finding them attractive was wrong, desiring them in any way was sinful, and having sex with them was wrong.

The man felt dirty for wanting her and she felt dirty for presenting herself. The beginning and the middle of these stories are very different from the stories of girls being told they’d be like backwash-filled glasses of water but the ending is still the same. It is a painful way to begin an otherwise holy, healthy marriage.

Bonnie Engstrom

Bonnie Engstrom

Bonnie Engstrom is a cradle Catholic and stay-at-home mom. She married her dashing husband in 2006 and they now have five children: one in Heaven and four more wandering around their house, probably eating pretzels found under the couch. Bonnie lives in central Illinois and gets excited about baking, music, film adaptations of Jane Austen books, and the Chicago Bears. She was a cofounder of The Behold Conference and she blogs at A Knotted Life.

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8 thoughts on “Sex Ed and Men and the Marriage Bed”

  1. My experience is a slight variation on this.

    I didn’t get much of this growing up. (I had some vague idea that we were supposed to wait until marriage for sex, but I had no idea why except for STDs and unplanned pregnancy.) Where it caught up to me was in discussions of MARITAL chastity after I had gotten married.

    Let’s just say what is good advice for singles will starve a marriage for intimacy. We’re both “touchy” people, so the advice to avoid intimate contact made us both feel unloved. Furthermore, the decision to TTA or TTC is one that should be made with prayerful discernment, not horniness and sexual frustration.

    I have found a large number of people who “hate NFP” have this false idea of marital chastity along with a very legalistic idea of what the Church requires. We certainly did.

    Chastity is not repression of our sexuality. Chastity is proper use of our sexuality. Defeating the sin of lust by embracing the sin of pride does nobody any good. Often repression of sexuality leads to sin coming out in other areas of our lives.

    For us, a more relaxed approach has let us develop the virtue. With the pressure off, we have learned what builds intimacy and our relationship and what isn’t really what we want. Virtue is a life-long process that requires God’s grace, not a simple act of our own will (Pelegianism).

  2. This is true. I have seen it cause issues even in a dating relationship, which in my opinion does not indicate that there is necessarily anything wrong with that approach. It is what I would expect in a world where the devil is trying to corrupt every good thing. I see it as an indication of the need for tempered, moderate, wise spiritual direction for young men and women. And we young men ourselves need to keep this possibility in mind, and remember what we are serving when we pursue purity.

  3. I am a woman who married a man who had the chastity education you describe, I also have brothers, cousins, and friends who also struggled to live chastity by not looking at pornography, trying to view the woman as a daughter, sister, and gift. These men all have healthy marriages and did not have any problems embracing the gift of sex in a marriage. I guess I don’t know what the alternative is…. I think people are smart enough to understand that something can be good and wonderful without it being something they can enjoy immediately. I wonder if these men you describe had parents that did not help them learn delayed gratification in other areas of their life. Like maybe there parents let them eat whenever they were hungry or thirsty or gave them whatever they wanted. So that this one thing, sex that they had to live temperance and abstinence in seemed like it must be bad.

    I tell my kids that from snack until dinner, you have to wait to eat. And they understand that food is not “bad” because they have to wait. They understand that it is a great good. It’s kind of like when we abstain from “goods” during Lent. Chocolate or TV are not bad in and of themselves, people (and kids) can understand this concept.

    The men who have issues enjoying sex in marriage, may have parents that only taught temperance and abstinence in that one area and thus, had the stigma.

    I just know many wonderful healthy people for whom that was not the case!

    1. So what I am saying is that I support educating and challenging men and women about sex in the ways you describe, as long as you continue to emphasize the great good and joy that sex brings to a marriage.

      1. Also, it should be a little uneasy when you first get married. That is natural. The movies make us think that everyone just knows what to do! You should be learning together with your spouse that very intimate relationship. Part of the beauty of waiting until marriage is that you learn this sometime awkward process together with love security and communication..

      2. Yes, this is true, but what I’m talking about is something beyond the awkwardness of figuring things out. I wholeheartedly agree that “Part of the beauty of waiting until marriage is that you learn this sometime awkward process together with love security and communication”!

        Thank you so much for your comments!

      3. I definitely agree with you on this point.

        And I’m sorry if I made it sound like all Catholic men educated in this way had these problems – that is definitely not true. But there are enough that I think there must have been something missing, something they just didn’t *get* that made them have to suppress it in such a way. Obviously I didn’t offer any kind of a solution because I don’t know what it would be. Maybe they weren’t taught temperance and abstinence in other areas, it’s an interesting point to consider.

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