Question: What is the purpose of sex?

rob wrote a comment on the post “Question: Is oral sex allowed in a Catholic marriage?” As I attempted to reply to his comment, I found myself writing a whole new post… which doesn’t really answer his comment, but addresses the basic purpose of sex.

I suppose the best way to address the issue of sex is first to ask, “What is the purpose of sex as God intended it to be?”

A careful examination and reflection of the question, which anyone can do in his or her own time and space, will reveal three possible answers:

1. For pleasure
2. For reproduction
3. For bonding between couples

No doubt that sexual intercourse does produce pleasure, but is that its sole purpose? For example, eating is pleasurable. Does that mean that the purpose of eating is for pleasure only? For people who think so, they end up obese and unhealthy, just because they eat for the pleasure of it. Rather, the purpose of eating is to nourish our bodies.

Take another example. Sleeping is pleasurable, especially when one is tired. Does that mean that the purpose of sleeping is for pleasure only? For people who think so, they end up being a lazy slob, and probably end up missing important appointments, just because they sleep for the pleasure of it. Rather, the purpose of sleeping is to allow our bodies to recover.

How about sex then? Sex between a couple is pleasurable, especially when both climax at the same time. Does that mean that the purpose of sex is for pleasure only? For people who think so, they end up being addicted to sex, and can’t think of anything else throughout the day. Rather, the purpose of sex is something else altogether.

You see, for all bodily functions which are necessary for humans to carry out in order to live in a way that God has ordained, God has cleverly attached pleasure as a side-effect to these functions, like eating, sleeping, shitting, farting, urinating (especially with a full bladder), …, and having sex. But to pursue these activities for the pleasure alone is unhealthy.

So we’ve established that answer #1 is not the right answer. True, sex does give pleasure, eating does give pleasure, sleeping does give pleasure, and the same goes for all other natural bodily functions including shitting, farting, urinating, breathing, yawning, sneezing, etc. But pleasure is not the sole purpose of any of these bodily functions.

If you look at it another way, what would happen if a couple engaged in sex purely for pleasure? Well, for one thing, they’d end up with multiple babies. What a bother. You can’t kill them, since that’d be murder. You can’t keep bringing them to the adoption agency – they’d give you counselling. Repeated abortions is dangerous for the mother’s health. So what do you with them?

Society’s answer has always been to address the ‘problem of fertility’ at the root. Maybe in the course of having sex, there was a way to separate the pleasure from the babies? Maybe we can prevent babies from even being born in the first place?

And so society has come up with condoms which prevent conception, masturbation (mutual or otherwise) which prevents conception, anal sex, oral sex, the Pill which either works to change a woman’s natural cycle so that she doesn’t conceive, or affects some hormones post-conception so that the fertilised egg cannot attach itself to the womb. In actually, such a Pill causes abortion of the pregnancy, hence is called abortifacient. The most common of these is Mifepristone also known as “RU-486″ and marketed under the brand name Mifeprex. It is widely known that such Pills induce abortion.

Once you handle that problem of the irritating babies that keep popping up, you’re free to have sex in any form for the sake of pleasure alone.

Actually, society has also come up with a way to deal with the problem of overeating. You want to eat, but you don’t want to additional weight that comes with it. So you either regurgitate the food out, so that you can eat some more (no one would hesitate to call this perverse or an illness), or you take a pill that allows the food to pass through your system undigested. More pills… Remember those weight-loss pills that promise to allow you to lose weight while maintaining your normal diet? This is how they work.

The problem here is, what if you were to do this all the time? For regurgitators, they will end up malnourished, and if it carries on, they will eventually die.

So what happens if an entire society does the same with sex? To separate pleasure from reproduction? To put it simply, society will end with this generation, because there is no more reproduction of the human species. Hence, a culture of death.

I missed out one answer, didn’t I? Answer #3 – sex is for bonding between couples. Well that’s actually incorporated into having babies. If one does not try to separate answers #2 and #3, and answers #1 from answers #2 and #3, one would tend to end up with a healthy marriage and family.

It is no secret that a married couple who uses contraceptives will be more likely to end up in divorce. Why? The reason is spiritual, but saying that doesn’t make it less important. It’s not a secret at all… it’s just not made known well enough…

Firstly, humans are beings made of a fusion of spirit and matter. We are neither completely matter, like animals, or completely spirit, like angels. We are spirit and matter. What we do in the flesh, we affect our spirit as well… which is why sins committed in the flesh can have an effect on our spiritual state, and our spiritual state can affect our physical being. Which is why when you can’t control your addictions (to food, sex, sleep, drugs, etc), you are more likely to be unable to control yourself spiritually and end up living a life of sin… if your addiction does not already lead you there.

In having sex, a couple bonds not just physically, but spiritually as well. A complete physical bonding reflects a complete spiritual bonding. What happens if you put a physical barrier, like a condom or a diaphragm, into a sexual intercourse? The physical barrier is a reflection of the spiritual barrier.

Sex is a time when couples express their marital vows – to give of themselves completely to each other, to receive of the other partner completely, in a free, total, faithful, and fruitful way. But with contraceptives, whatever the form, the couple is saying with their bodies, “I give you all of myself, except my fertility.” or “I want all of you, except your fertility.” Such an action is a reflection of a deeper withholding of something else on a spiritual level.

In the end, contraceptives not only creates a barrier to prevent reproduction (#2), it also creates a barrier to prevent bonding between couples (#3).

Answers #2 and #3 are intrinsically linked to each other; they cannot be separated… just as physical union cannot be separated from spiritual union during sex.

And that, is the purpose of sex.