Am I Using My Spouse for Pleasure?

What does it really mean to “use” your spouse as a means to an end during sex? This article brings John Paul II’s personalistic language into conversation with traditional Catholic moral theology to clarify when the pursuit of sexual pleasure remains within conjugal love—and when it risks reducing a spouse to an instrument.

---

Since the time of John Paul II’s series of Wednesday Audiences which are now commonly referred to as the Theology of the Body, the moral language used to discuss properly ordered sexual relations within marriage has, for better or worse, shifted away from the traditional classification of sinful actions and has tended toward framing those actions within a new personalistic paradigm which, for better or worse, principally and primarily asks whether the spouses are using each other as instruments rather than treating each other as ends, or as whole persons. While I would not necessarily insist on an inherent tension between these two approaches, this shift away from precisely classifying sinful actions has resulted in much confusion over what it precisely means to use the other spouse as a “means to an end”. In this article, we aim to provide clarity on the moral parameters of this disordered tendency drawing from both the insights of John Paul II and the consensus of traditional moralists which characterize the older manualist paradigm.

First and foremost, we should be very precise about what is really meant by using another as a means to an end. While that phrase has been popularized, an overly simplistic reading of it can lead to all sorts of absurd scruples, especially in the sexual dimension of marital life. If taken too literally, it would ultimately mean that sexual relations within marriage could only be sought as more or less an act of charity or justice for the other spouse, without any consideration of one’s subjective desires or even of quieting one’s own concupiscence. The motivations would have to be essentially abstract and exclusively altruistic. If this is what John Paul II has in mind, then this would be at odds with the unanimous consensus of the Church’s theologians which have always understood the role marital relations play in quieting the concupiscence of the spouse who pursues them. Fortunately, a closer reading of John Paul II reveals a more nuanced approach on his part. 

      Elsewhere in his writings, he is clear that he is not referring to the mere intention to make use of the state of marriage in order to satisfy a sexual appetite. This is often ingredient in the very nature of quieting concupiscence. Rather, he is referring to an attitude that would treat the other spouse as nothing more than a means to gratifying a sexual urge. Now how would this play out, concretely? Remember, the consensus of moralists in addition to the opinion of St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus Liguori are all in agreement that if a spouse pursues conjugal relations for “pleasure alone” (ab solam voluptatem) he or she is guilty not of a mortal sin, but of a venial sin. And yet, St. Thomas is also clear that if, for example, a husband were to pursue conjugal relations with his wife in “such a way as to exclude the honesty of marriage, so that, to wit, it is not as a wife but as a woman that a man treats his wife, and that he is ready to use her in the same way if she were not his wife, it is a mortal sin; wherefore such a man is said to be too ardent a lover of his wife, because his ardor carries him away from the goods of marriage.” (ST, Supp., q. 49, a.6. Cf. In IV Sententiarum, d. 31, q. 2, a.3).  This latter passage from St. Thomas, I think, provides the scholastic clarity and precision for elucidating John Paul II’s personalistic norm that may be found lacking in John Paul II’s actual writings on the subject. 

In other words, one is not guilty of using your spouse merely as a means to an end simply because you are pursuing the pleasure of sex by engaging in conjugal relations with her. That is not sufficient to fundamentally violate the personalistic norm, because even though there can be slight disorder in pursuing the pleasure inordinately, such an inordinate preoccupation with pleasure can still take place within a relational dynamic marked by mutual affection for one another as persons and the mutual conjugal charity that flows from this shared personalistic affection. 

What are some concrete, definable signs that this mutual affection is lacking and spouses truly are at risk of using each other merely as instruments for their own ends? If you find yourself persistently neglecting after care following intercourse, if you do not currently harbor true personal affection for your spouse yet still use the marriage to derive sexual pleasure, or if you harbor a desire for another woman but simply use the conjugal act to make up for what you cannot have, these are all indicators that the desire for sexual pleasure has been thoroughly isolated from the conjugal dimension of the relationship. Pleasure can still be intended in the pursuit of conjugal relations, and even if the desire for sexual pleasure is predominant in the order of one’s intentions and motivations, this can still take place within a relational dynamic that excludes a violation of John Paul II’s personalistic norm.