Why Marriage?
Some people think that sex and love can or even should be kept separate. Others want to bring the two together, but they want to keep their future options open. Most people sooner or later want to make a relationship permanent and think about marriage. But if you're only looking for recreational sex, something to simply fulfil what seems an immediate need, love can seem like it needs a health warning!
Like on the previous page, we were happily talking about enjoying sex and making it as good as possible, and then I had to spoil it by mentioning things like love and marriage.
Love is a heavy word, often tied to other heavy words like obligation But on the previous page we found that obligation could be fun? So perhaps love might not be so bad after all? And marriage, might have a use if it delivers on some high goals, like great sex? Confused by the options? Not sure which approach delivers the best sex? Well it's probably time for a bit more honesty..
Sex plus
We're not just biological machines, but people! God gave us a sex drive, as part of our human nature, He tied it into who and what we are. Whether we're healthy, fit, sick or hungry, it all affects how we perform intellectually and physically. We're a complicated and layered package, and that package includes our spiritual nature too. It's all inter-linked. We can't just live on thought alone, not even on money: we have to eat and drink too. It's all inter-connected.
If sex were some minor part of our psyche, we could probably just do as we liked with it, and it wouldn't matter much. But it's not minor - it's major, affecting our mental, physical spiritual and procreative natures. Sex is a big deal and recognising that is the first step to using it well. Get it wrong and it can cause all the other aspects of your nature to go into a bad wobble - and that's putting it mildly. Some people take years to pick up the pieces, and some never do.
Sex power
The honest truth about sex, is that it's a heavy word. Used carefully, sex can be fun, uplifting, exciting, inspiring and more, but sex carries power: power over ourselves and others. Ultimately it carries the power of life itself. Handle with care.
Smart sex
Now whenever you're going to handle something powerful and possibly dangerous, you need a bit of preparation. Maybe some protective gear, and some training? And you need to do it in a safe place.
When it comes to sex, marriage is that place: it is a framework with the right conditions for handling sex well! Not just a safe place, but an ideal one, an optimum framework. Use sex in the wrong place, and you can get into difficulties. It's a bit like driving a Formula 1 racing car - great in the right place (on a race track), but pretty useless on the high-street. Of course it will turn a lot of heads there, but you won't have anywhere to put your shopping!
Sex is like shopping. Sooner or later you're liable to come back with more stuff in your hands than you left home with. I'm referring to children here. Fertility between the sexes actually does exist, it's not a myth and sex can and does result in children.
Of course if you don't want to buy anything, you could padlock your wallet before you leave home, but then you're not really shopping are you? And so it is with contraception. It may feel like you're shopping, but you know you're not buying into the full deal. Or you should know, provided that is, you're 'still in touch' with truth and not just feelings. And of course padlocks can fail. You might not put it on right, forget to turn the key to 'lock', or it might just be faulty.
Sex myths
Fertility isn't a myth, but guaranteed contraception is. If you buy something you don't want you can always take it back to the shop and hope they'll refund you. But once a child has been conceived, they've been conceived. What next?
Well there are all sorts of choices out in the market there, but un-conceiving a child isn't one of them. Welcome to parenthood! Abortion doesn't turn back time. Any action the abortionist can take is a new action, one they do to the little one in the womb (medical fact). The same can go for what has been cynically called emergency contraception. This works beyond contraception, to ensure that if a child has already been newly conceived, he or she has no chance of survival (because the lining of the womb is made temporarily unsuitable for implantation).
Shaping up
But we're getting ahead of ourselves, sex isn't just about children, and neither is marriage. I just wanted to show one reason as a starter, why you need a safe place for sex, rather than 'safe sex' which is a myth.
Although marriage is designed to be a safe place for sex, it's also designed as an optimum place for the best sex, and for lots more good things besides. But none of this is to say that getting married automatically prevents problems arising.
You can get married and still make mistakes. But what the marriage framework does, and the Catholic Christian framework does in particular, is aim to equip people with what it takes. That is, the attitudes and skills to anticipate and deal with issues as they arise. If that sounds very down to earth, then know this too: marriage aims high - for nothing less than total fulfilment. Overall, the framework proposes some radical ideas, like that:
- sex is for marriage, and only for marriage
(separate pages on male and female lust explain why), - two people giving to one another is better than two people taking from one another, and
- the couple can and should aspire towards attainable perfection
(..though not expect it from one another. Perfection is normally unattainable, but with God, all things are possible. In this case the Church proposes a perfection of effort that can bring us individually as close to the ideal as we are able).
Clearly marriage isn't just a magic label you stick onto a partner. It's something much more. Nothing less in fact, than an attempt at a total life-giving union between a man and a woman. Not just material life, but spiritual life too. A union capable of enhancing the material and spiritual life of the couple. Because God ordained marriage, and blesses it, our attempts can carry a genuine hope of success (though not necessarily of a smooth ride).
Experienced?
If sex were just about avoiding problems, you'd be better off without it. But sex inside marriage, is actually about getting something good and lasting. Hence the radical ideals for marriage!
Like with shopping, go about sex the right way and you come home with something that you want, need, and which lasts. Stay home and you won't. Go out without knowing what you want and people will find it easy to sell you what they want, and not what you really need.
The first step to good shopping then, is sorting out where you stand financially and what you need. Likewise with sex, you need to sort yourself out first too. Learn to control your wallet first. Know what money's for and what it's worth. Identify what your desires and impulses really mean, and what they're really for. Control them and not them you. Desire can be exciting and pleasure satisfying, but the feelings will only last if you remain in control of your spending, and that ain't easy when temptation comes your way.
Sorry, the mixed metaphors are getting out of control here! What I mean to say is that lust sounds good, but if desire gets out of control, it can trample genuine self-giving love. The following pages explain why that matters, but for now let's just say that you need some balance in your desire. The trouble with saying that is, balance seems boring unless there's some way to really indulge yourself and still stay in control.
Let's see if there is such a way. Perhaps you've noticed that men and women are a bit different? I happen to subscribe to that theory, so there are a couple of pages here, which explore the question of getting the most out of sex.
There's one page for men and one for the others 
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