Should Intimacy Be Sought While the Other Spouse Is Upset With You?

In this article, we explore how the desire for intimacy should be handled during periods of emotional distance between spouses.

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Within marriage, it is not uncommon for moments of strong sexual desire to arise during periods of time when emotional intimacy between spouses is strained or perhaps even nonexistent. This raises a delicate and important question for Catholic couples: should intimacy be sought when the other spouse is upset with you? The following reflections are offered as a rationale for addressing situations where sexual desire may be high, but the emotional intimacy between spouses is encountering a stumbling block which prevents true sentiments of mutual love and affirmation.

From a strictly moral standpoint, the Church has long acknowledged that the Apostle Paul’s counsel that the conjugal embrace quiets concupiscence still remains valid during these times, and so it is per se morally licit to request the marital debt even in the absence of healthy emotional intimacy. Marriage involves real rights and obligations which endure throughout marital life, and the physical union of spouses is not suddenly rendered immoral simply because spouses feel emotionally distant from one another.

This being said, I would like to offer a word of caution against this.

The reason for this caution lies in what the conjugal act is meant to be and what it is meant to signify. The conjugal embrace is partially designed by God to physically realize and renew the mutual affirmation of active love between the spouses. It is meant to signify unity of hearts and concord of wills between them. It is also meant to express underlying sentiments of love that are alive and continuously active between the spouses, conveying a definitive “yes” to the beloved.

For this reason, the emotional context within which intimacy takes place matters deeply. If the spouses are experiencing a definite and unmistakable lapse in mutually active sentiments of love and affirmation of each other, pursuing conjugal relations could very easily spring purely from one’s selfish pursuit of physical pleasure. In such cases, even if the act remains morally licit (or at least free from serious sin) in the narrow sense, it risks failing to embody what marital intimacy is divinely intended to communicate.

Therefore, spouses should ensure that active emotional intimacy precedes and gives shape to the physical intimacy between them, so that the physical intimacy can serve its divinely intended purpose of signifying visibly the invisible bond of active love between them. When reconciliation, mutual understanding, and renewed affection come first, the conjugal embrace can once again speak truthfully and authentically unite bodies in a way that reflects united hearts.