Friday, August 11, 2017

Marriage & sex advice -- from a priest?


Couple celebrates 50th anniversary in same wedding clothes they wore in 1966

Actually not! Rather, from a divorce lawyer and a married woman. I just pass it along.

First the sex advice. I won't link it, because it includes an image that is not pornographic, but is...unseemly. But the author is Meg Conley, and her item appeared November 6, 2014, at the Huffington Post. She titled her article, "5 Reasons You Should Have Sex With Your Husband Every Night," and here are the gist of her five reasons:

1. Being a mother, one of the ultimate expressions of womanhood, can often leave a girl feeling stripped of her femininity. There is something about being covered in spit up and attending to the every need of another human being that makes one feel distinctly gender neutral.... There is something restorative about kissing the boy you love.

2. If you want your husband to act like a man, you need to treat him like a man. Hold the eye rolls.  Women need any number of criteria met to feel loved. Men are far simpler. They need to be fed, they need to be appreciated, and they need to have sex. That is it.

3. You need to have a moment in each day that is just about the two of you. Remember that boy? The one that made your heart thump and hands sweat? The one that called when you hoped he would, that made you run hot and high up to the stars until you thought you would never come down? He is still there. Under the years and bills and worries, that smiling boy is still in love with and needs his smiling girl.

4. Sex relieves stress. I don’t know that this one needs much explanation.

5. It is so much blasted fun.

And here's (some of) the divorce attorney's advice (I left out the last point which I cannot endorse). Joanna Molloy wrote: "10 tips from a world-famous divorce lawyer to save your marriage," but the world-famous lawyer, whose advice is recounted, is Raoul Lionel Felder. This appeared August 9, 2017, in the New York Post; and again, questionable images, so no link:

1. Open your ears.

Take a break from talking about yourself. Ask your spouse how they feel, what happened to them at work that day, what their opinion is on politics, or cars, or food — anything that shows you care about what they have to say. I had one husband who filed for divorce, and on the stand he told the judge, “I love my wife; I just wish she would listen to me.”

The judge then called the wife to the stand and asked her if she still loved her husband. The wife said yes. So judge asked, “Well, would you be willing to start hearing him out? Start really listening?”

“Yes,” said the wife.

My client dropped the divorce action.

2. Quit streaming adult sites.

 -- I've read in many places that porn figures in a lot of divorces; this is surely confirmation.

3. Match your money attitudes.

-- This is a subject I discuss with every couple I help prepare for marriage.

4. Don't cheat.

5. Allow for changing bodies.
Wedding vows should really include “for fatter, for thinner.” This is a delicate area, but I’ve seen real conflict occur when spouses drift into different fitness levels.

6. Go easy on the plastic surgery.

-- Agreed, but is this really a thing for most people? Or just upper-income folks?

7. Don’t travel under tension.

-- Yes, but...doesn't this miss the point? The issue isn't the being together; it's the tension. By all means, be together!

8. Don’t shop together.

9. Act your age. 

People are living longer, and those little blue pills can make men behave in hurtful ways. 

-- This I did not know.

And the tenth? "Get a pre-nup" -- i.e., a prenuptial agreement. That maybe good advice for divorce, but it's terrible advice for marriage, because it means you are planning to fail. And, just so you know, it most likely renders the marriage invalid.

So what do you think of this advice? With the exceptions noted, I think it's pretty sound.

Here's the way I put it: husbands and wives should never stop courting each other. Treat each other as king and queen.

Your thoughts? Your experiences?

3 comments:

Jenny said...

The sex advice is fine as far as it goes, but the conceit that you must have sex every night is one that has disconnected sex from pregnancy.

If you have sex every night, you will likely end up pregnant, perhaps within a month. Once pregnant, the likelihood of daily sex is low, very low, especially during the first and third trimesters.

Or you can avoid pregnancy, but that means you aren't having sex every night.

While I agree with the gist of her advice, her actual advice assumes heavy use of contraceptives.

Fr Martin Fox said...

Jenny:

Fair point. So let me be clear: no contraceptives!

rcg said...

I think the advice should have been "have sex every time it helps express true love." Every night would become a chore and result in the couple viewing each other in a sexual way. It should be an expression of trusted intimate vulnerability to the person you are committed to seeing into union with the Body of Christ; it is a statement to that person that you would be willing to take that same responsibility with another person you might conceive at that moment.