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Sex: Celebration Or Communication

Fr. Chuck Gallagher

(Excerpted from Summer, 1989 Matrimony Magazine)

Is sex a celebration or a communication between us? Is sex something meaningful that we use to denote to one another that all is right between us; communication has been accomplished so what sex says is 'hooray'? Or, is sex one of the key ways in which we express who we are to one another, what we mean to one another, what we experience with, need from, and want to know about each other?

We restrict most of our personal communication to words. No one is undercutting the importance of verbal communication. It is absolutely essential and beautiful in any marital relationship and we certainly could not do without it. There is an intimacy and an understanding that comes from verbal communication that helps us become more aware of one another and more capable of deepening our compassion for each other. However, by itself, verbal communication is not sufficient for marriage.

We think verbal communication does all those things and sex is added icing on the cake. Sex celebrates what we've experienced with one another verbally, or it prepares us to be more open verbally to one another, but the real understanding that happens in a marriage happens through what we say to one another. That simply is not true, or if it is true, our understanding is sadly crippled. It is through our sexual communication with one another that we say things to one another that cannot be said or heard in any other way. So sex is not simply to dispose us to listen to words better, sex is to be the actual communication itself.

Unfortunately, we don't normally use sex this way. Sex is just sex, something we do, an activity. Sex is much more than that; it's an intimate personal means of communicating through our whole body. It is intended by God to be used to discover things about one another, to become intimately involved with one another to be sensitive and alert to one another in a way that words cannot achieve.

As in verbal communication, we have to ask, What's your wife saying to you, not what words is she using, but what is your wife communicating to you, what are you discovering about her when you speak to her what are you telling her about yourself, not the story or information you're passing on, but what awareness of yourself are you transmitting to her? The same is true in sexual communion. When you have sex with one another, what experience are you having of one another, not the experience of your spouse's body, but the experience of your spouse? What is she telling you by this body? What am I hearing about him? What am I learning about my wife through her physical involvement with me? What message is she giving me? Where is she as a person? Is she happy or sad, elated or down? Is she anxious, depressed, serene, or eager? Is she aware of me or is she lost in her own thoughts? Is she responding mechanically or personally?

Often we get so absorbed in our physical activity that the only thing we pay attention to is our own pleasure or our own thoughts and plans even while the other person's body may be shouting for understanding, sensitivity, forgiveness, or attention. We don't even know there's communication going on. We become like the person who is so intent on how to say something to their spouse that all their attention is on sentence structure, vocabulary and grammar. As a result they lose the message, and even more, the person to whom they are trying to communicate. The only thing communicated in sex is physical urgency and satisfaction and the hope that their partner is experiencing the same thing. A vast wall of silence is created in the very sexual activity itself and it becomes a meeting of bodies rather than an entwining of souls and a communion of hearts.

The man has to ask himself why he is physically urgent for his wife at this moment. You have to get over the propaganda that it's just a physiological reaction, that it's been a certain number of days since your last sexual encounter, or that she is especially enticing right now, or the girls in the office turned you on. There's a deep personal involvement in this physical urgency. It may come from loneliness because you haven't been able to talk, or an alienation from your children, or possibly it's been a tremendously tense time at work. The physical response could be triggered by a feeling of being very much a man and today you're celebrating your manhood, or possibly there is a great tenderness in your heart and you can't stay away from her and want to get as close as you possibly can. You could never put that into words, you just want to envelope her and surround her with your urgency. Possibly it's a sense that life is passing you by. Here you are at 40 or 25 or 52, and you're boxed in and know you can't get out, whether it's your job, your profession or your financial situation. Possibly there's an unknown fear and you need to be close, need to know you are loved. You desire to feel important in her eyes. Of course, these things can be just scratches on the surface of the message contained in a man's physical urgency for his wife.

Why would a woman respond, why would she be physically urgent for her husband? It could be simply a deeply felt need to have his complete and undivided attention. Maybe she has a desire to communicate how full she is of him, how her life is different because he's her husband. Possibly she's feeling very ugly today, terribly unfeminine and needs to have this denied. Possibly she's hurt him and is feeling the pain within herself and needs his forgiveness. Perhaps the children are getting to her and becoming more and more a burden and she needs a reminder they're his, his gift of love to her. Possibly she's confused and wandering within herself and needs a haven. There are countless reasons that could trigger such a physical response in a wife.

So we have to go to one another with listening hands and arms, our skins sensitive to pick up the messages coming through the tenseness of muscles, the jerkiness of movements, the evident relaxation, urgency, or spontaneity. We have to be able to read what is going on inside of our beloved.

There's a whole world of sexual communication that simply is being ignored or only being picked up when the message is so overwhelmingly evident. In most cases what is being experienced and communicated by the spouse is not as clear-cut as the examples I have mentioned above. There are a lot of nuances to them and a lot of mixtures of messages and so we really have to train ourselves to speak the language of sex.

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