I went to an Auckland festival play last night called The Kreutzer. Not knowing much about it, it surprised me by having interesting and human themes about love, marriage, lust and the often distorted ways men and woman perceive each other. It was obviously a secular play but it mirrored in so many of its themes the very human concerns the Catholic Church has explored in depth in the last few years through John Paul II’s theology of the body which seemed quite amazing for a ‘mainstream’ play.
The main protagonist explored what went wrong in his marriage and his final line in the play was a realization he could objectify even his wife, and not know or realise her true person even in marriage. He began with his expectation that he considered true of many males that he could sleep with many women, but wanted to get married to a ‘pure’ woman worthy of his marriage vows at around 30. Yet, his views of sexuality became distorted and he found he could not change at the click of a finger when he got married. While perhaps disturbing, yet I thought very challenging, he handed unrealistic and almost pornographic pictures of woman round the audience and threw out condoms as the means by which he could live his lifestyle and slip into such a trap of objectification of the human person.
It really surprised me how much this play based on The Kreutzer Sonata duet by Beethoven (which gave rise to a censored novella by Tolstoy (for which he was labelled ‘a sexual moral pervert’) that then inspired Leoš Janácek to write his first string quartet) should so clearly mirror the concerns of the Church.
Theology of the Body was a revolutionary message of hope counteracting societal trends which urge us to view the body as an object of pleasure or as a machine for manipulation. People inherently know this about their lives and life don’t they? It expresses itself in the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the theatre we go to, the conversations of people over lunch…the dilemma of many to find a true love and intimacy that seems to slip from their fingers so often.
It’s true it’s so so hard to live in our society. Especially for guys because everything is so sexual – I’m not a guy so don’t have first hand experience of this – but I think guys find it really hard to have so many sexual images everywhere – magazine racks, the internet, the newspaper, billboards – they have to constantly resist their minds moving into sexual objectification I’m sure..
Or am I just giving guys less credit than their due here and this is not something many guys have to be careful not to do…
and I don’t know if there are guys reading this that feel they can sleep with different women now, but become a different person in marriage – does that work? I don’t know…
Great post eW!
As a guy I have to say the Theology of the Body was the most important thing in getting myself out of the types of sexual pitfalls us young people can be vunerable today.
There seems to be a view amongst most men, (and indeed many women), that marriage is primarily an unrestrained outlet for sexual anxiety, where a husband or wife is seen to be the sum of all sexual objectification at that point.
The same misguided view of sex is often used as an attempted justification by the opponents of clerical celibacy in the Latin Rite. Rather than viewed as a repression of sexuality, celibacy should be recognised as a genuine fulfillment of sexuality that both it and marriage are calls to. In doing this, it doesn’t devalue or cheapen the value of marriage, but affirms and supports it. The beauty of the Theology of the Body is that deeper understanding of one vocation, leads to deeper understanding of the others.
I’m sure people do think that they can do whatever with their sexuality before marriage and then begin again, but it is simply untrue.
1. Marriage is about total giving, and exclusivity, every sexual act outside of marriage is a holding back of the gift to a future bride or husband, it splits a part of us everytime.
2. It is possible to forgive each other for wrongs previous to marriage, but it can be hard to break the fondness, attachments and images of previous events (especially for men, who have an incredible ability for imagination and retention of those images). I have heard older friends talk about their horror that images of past sexual exploits haunt them when they are married.
3. A spouse shouldn’t have to have the subliminal images and comparisons of their sexual interactions with their spouse with the past sexual interactions with pre-marriage partners. They shouldn’t have to have the non-committal images of pornography and contracepted and casual sex poison the free, full, faithful and fruitful love they share with their spouse.
I could go on, but I will stop at saying to the Being Frankers, stay pure for your future spouse, be they Christ, the Church or your future husband/wife. If you already have a spouse, live out that free, full, faithful and fruitful love that will lead you to Christ’s side in heaven.
Pax
I feel sorry for rock stars. The temptation must be phenomenal. Lucky for me I’ve been musically retarded since my voice broke.
Thanks for your post, EW. I think your insights about men are pretty good. We do live in a highly-sexualised world and, speaking for myself (male, 18 years married), it takes a lot of effort, including prayer, to stop that world being too intrusive with respect to my peace and serenity. And even then I can never conclude that “I’m safe”, as it were. Even a hint of smugness is fatal.
I have known guys with a casual attitude to women and sex and whose main mission in life was “to get laid”, and as often as possible. But there are also guys who wish to “be good” but are unhappy and/or lonely and find getting the best hard to get (they would love to have a loving, committed relationship), so figure that second best is better than nothing at all. I think this is quite a hidden problem for many men.
Thanks again.
WD
Thanks for you insights worddoctor. I think it must be hard for guys with the pressure, at least it seems to me, in groups of guys to be having sex almost as a status thing… or at least that’s how some guys talk! and when guys are lonely or want to be ‘good’ as you put it, it’s probably not as easy to talk about as it is for girls to talk to their friends… I think underneath their ‘talk’ a lot of guys do want committed relationships and are very loyal people, despite the fact they may talk differently. Girls can definitely hurt guys too… and I am sure a lot of the girls I know who sleep with lots of different people are only really seeking love and intimacy.. It does all come down to having a good enough self esteem and sense of your own self-worth to not settle for second best, but get what you really want out of relationships…which does take some self-discipline too.
EW, I think back many years ago when I was in my teens/early 20s, unhappy, lacking confidence and lacking self-esteem. And much as I wanted to go forward and find a solid, warm relationship with a woman, I didn’t know how. I think there is great scope for some kind of mentoring in this area, but the way our society works seems to make it nearly impossible for that kind of support to be available. As well as which, as you touched on, men tend to find it hard to share this kind of pain. I would have, had the opportunity been there, except for one thing — at that time I just didn’t have the language to describe what I was experiencing.