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Why Christians Have Lousy
Sex Lives (Originally published in Re:Generation Quarterly, Summer 1995 issue. Reproduced with the permission of the author.) Christians have lousy sex lives and it is high time we admitted it. Burdened with the often misinformed rap that, traditionally anyway, Christians would rather feel guilty than enjoy an orgasm. We have struggled mightily with a sexual inferiority complex. Modern Western society prides itself on being ‘liberated’ and in tune with the “natural,” so we have rushed to protest we can have at least as much fun in bed as we do in church, We have published endless numbers of books and magazine articles insisting that sex is really more pleasurable if you save it until after you are married. Marabel Morgan got rich and led millions of saints into total womanhood by assuring them it was okay to employ (well, quite frankly, to wear) plastic wrap outside the kitchen. I am told that some Christian marriage seminars offer T-shirts sporting the legend, “I’m having a wonderful affair—with my wife.” In short, the most prominent apologia for Christian marriage has become the argument that monogamy is an aphrodisiac superior to free love. For some all this may be evidence that Christians have gotten it together and moved their sex lives to at least the level of the surrounding culture. But that’s just the problem. We have assumed good sex is best determined by standards other than our own. Now we may have as many orgasms as everyone else, but we also have as many divorces, as much marital infidelity, as much sexual abuse, and, irony of ironies, as much all-around sexual dissatisfaction as everyone else. The truth of the matter is, nothing damages the sex lives of Christians so much as romantic love, and we have finally managed to buy into its delusions as raptly as any other tribe. The Myth of Romantic LoveIt is a legacy of the human condition that all people strive to shape and claim their lives amid a welter of competing stories, Or, to borrow James McClendon’s nice phrase, we struggle to become who we are and what we would be in a “tournament of narratives.” I take it that Christians aspire to stake our lives on the master story of the God revealed in the history of Israel and Jesus Christ. But it may well be that the master story of Western culture—and of many actual Christian lives—is the myth of romantic love. Think of it this way: As Eamon Duffy shows in a richly detailed account (The Stripping of the Altars), fifteenth century English folk could hardly make it through a waking hour of the day without encountering the Christian story. Church bells rang. Processions recalling Christ’s sacrifice paraded by homes. Duffy writes, “Within the liturgy, birth, copulation and death, journeying and homecoming, guilt and forgiveness, the blessing of homely things and the call to pass beyond them were all located, tested, and sanctioned. In the liturgy and the sacramental celebrations that were its central moments, medieval people found the key to the meaning and purpose of their lives.” Now think how easy it is to pass through an hour of our day without any reminders of the Christian story, but how difficult it would be to avoid fragments of the narrative of romantic love. Popular, jazz, and country radio stations are saturated with it and herald it in song around the clock, If you wanted to escape it you could hardly turn on the television, take in a movie, or afford to overhear office gossip. It’s on the billboards, a staple of magazines and newspapers, and, as I've observed, barely less prominent in Christian literature and media. Medieval people may have found meaning and purpose via the liturgy. But, as philosopher Diogenes Allen asserts, industrialization and commercialism have leached a sense of adventure from modern life and there is a yearning for ‘high feelings and passion in a world that has become commonplace, petty, and meaningless.” The only chance at high feelings and passion remaining, the only adventure left, says Allen, is the adventure of failing in love. Inherent to the ethos of romantic love is the notion that it is “natural” and universally inevitable. People fail in love as surely as the earth orbits the sun and heavy objects roll down hills. No doubt much of the uncritical acceptance of romantic love among Christians is due to our perception of it as natural, rather than as a contestable narrative. It has become second-nature to most moderns to think of emotions (such as romantic love) as somehow deeper, truer, less contrived than thoughts or behavior. But emotions have histories and social origins too. They are, after all, more than mere sensations— else how do we distinguish between abject fear and cheerful excitement? In either case, heartbeat speeds up, stomach tightens, lungs draw air more rapidly. What sorts of things will frighten or happily excite me? Who should feel fear (or excitement), and when? How do I express fear (or excitement)—do I hide it, demurely show it, weep, or laugh? Emotions are interpretations of objects and circumstances, and as such they are always culturally informed. “Feelings,” anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo has well said, “are not substances to be discovered in our blood but social practices organized by stories we both enact and tell.” Feelings, like selves in general, are shaped by culture and may be understood as the “creation of particular sorts of polities.” The emotional life, it turns out, is no less political than the thought life. Accordingly women and men everywhere may be sexually attracted, have intercourse, and often produce offspring. But romantic love is far more complicated than that, How is sexual attraction experienced? is it considered to be mere animal magnetism (as in paganism); is it simultaneously alluring and a disgusting temptation (as in antiphysical accounts); or is it, among other possibilities, part and parcel of “falling in love”? Is attraction to be resisted, indulged, or somehow channeled.? Where might it lead, what potential does it present—is it apt to suggest a one night stand or marriage, possible and eventual satisfaction or unending though sometimes delicious frustration? This is the level at which cultural and political narratives must come clearly, and profoundly, into play. Searching out the RootsOnce we recognize as much, we may not be in a position simply to shake off the spell of romantic love. It is far too potent a magic for that. But at least we are in a position to assess its narrative in Christian terms and begin concocting an antidote. Then we are poised to remember that it is only since the Middle Ages that romantic love has been prized as an ideal, the sine qua non for marriage and the fully vital human life. Marriage in history has more typically been arranged between families than chosen merely by a man and a woman “in love.” In fact, in most of Western history the sweeping intensity, confusion, and absorption of what we have come to know as romantic love was considered a misfortune. Friendship was the higher love. The roots of romantic love lie in heresy. Denis de Rougemont traces it back to the Cathari, who emerged in twelfth-century Germany. True to their name (which means “pure ones’), the Cathari were obsessed with evil and believed its origins were found in physical matter. Accordingly, they prohibited sexual intercourse even within marriage. Certain of the Cathari’s themes were picked up by twelfth-century court bands. From there they made their way into written verse romances, and finally on into modern romantic literature. Perhaps the tidiest way to lay out the narrative is to recount the story of Tristan and Iseult, memorialized in so many medieval poems and songs. In the tale Tristan, an orphan, becomes the adopted son of King Mark (in some accounts he is the nephew of the king). Early on he proves to be a fine warrior. With this attribute in mind, the king sends Tristan to fetch his bride-to-be, Iseult, from Ireland to Mark’s realm of Cornwall. Returning from Ireland, Tristan and Iseult drink the love potion intended for her and King Mark. They fall in love and succumb to temptation. Yet both attempt to remain loyal to the king, so Iseult is delivered to Mark. ‘Tristan and Iseult’s duplicitous sexual adventures continue in the castle until the couple flees to the forest of Morrois, to live for three years in the hardship of poverty. Then the couple repents and Iseult returns to Mark. But Tristan and Iseult soon enough plot reunion. Before they are reunited and manage to manifest their love in its fullness, both die. Once the core narrative is exposed even in such sketchy detail, several enduring dynamics of supposedly natural romantic love rise into view. True love is something that falls on people, like a spell. The couple on which it falls is special, admirable at least from outside the social circles where their love wreaks havoc, and yet the couple is tragically ill-fated. To the limited extent romantic love can be realized, it is realized fitfully and fleetingly, clandestinely, in poverty, and in opposition to society. Quintessential love is understood as unsatisfied yearning, as desire exquisitely deprived. It cannot end in consummation or steady, unfolding fulfillment, but only in death. According to the myth of romantic love, true love is too good for this sordid world. In an illuminating chapter of his Ethics, James McClendon demonstrates how these themes of the narrative of romantic love remain prominent in such massively popular tales as Erich Segal’s Love Story and in such sturdier, more sophisticated work as the novels of John Updike. For my purposes and more abbreviated space, I will turn to a true life story. Carolyn and ScottThe spring and summer, 1988, odyssey of Carolyn MacLean and Scott Swanson serves my purposes because Carolyn and Scott were students at Wheaton College, that midwestern bastion of Protestant evangelicalism, and as such an institution devoted to the intentional cultivation of the Christian story and its attendant traits of character. So it is all the more striking that Carolyn and Scott, seniors about to graduate the college, fell in love and then disappeared one April day. Both came from wealthy families and Carolyn’s BMW was found abandoned in a Chicago alley. A harried, highly publicized four—month search ensued. Then, late in July. Carolyn and Scott turned up in San Diego. It seems their intended marriage was opposed by their families. In addition, Scott’s education was partly financed by his participation in ROTC, and in a few months military service would separate him from Carolyn. What could this couple, this Christian couple, do? They knew the romantic script well. As a Chicago Tribune headline later reported, “Missing Wheaton couple did it all for love.” Scott and Carolyn eloped and ran off because, Carolyn said, “We loved each other so much that we wanted to give up everything for each other.” They left behind the encumbrances of wealth, lived in a cut-rate apartment, and waited tables in restaurants to experience “unadorned love.” Their safe return was a relief to police, friends, and family, but also the occasion for anger at all the unnecessary worry and expense Tristan and Iseult—I mean, Scott and Carolyn—had put them through. In response, Scott averred that their extraordinary relationship simply wasn't understood: “We feel like we’re on a different level than a lot of people. . . . Carolyn’s my life, and me to her, her to me. I would die for her and she would die for me.” The couple admitted that they modeled the entire episode on A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken’s intensely romantic account of his love affair and marriage, in ‘which he and his wife rejected any interference with their love, including material goods or children. Vanauken creates an admittedly moving account of his and lover Jean’s rapture, replete with starlit nights on a sailboat, and then her wrenching, untimely death. But Scott and Carolyn apparently missed the ultimate point of the book. After Jean’s death, and counseled by C. S. Lewis, Vanauken comes to see that his and Jean’s attachment was too exclusive, too all-encompassing, and finally just plainly and destructively selfish. The book’s title collies from Lewis’s penetrating insight that Sheldon’s forced, agonizing separation from Jean might be perceived as “a severe mercy” rescuing the pair from the poisonous effects of extreme romantic love. But perhaps I should not be too hard on Carolyn’s and Scott’s reading of the book. In the end, Vanauken, and Lewis too, remained a committed if chastened romantic. Though with the help of such brilliant guides as Lewis (and his friend Charles Williams). Christians might well appropriate aspects of romantic love, I suspect our environment is now so completely corrupted by this myth that whatever remains redeemable of it lies only on the other side of a more radical, thoroughgoing critique than Lewis ever suggested. Fruit of the MythFor what the narrative of romantic love tells us is that we are powerless to “make” and sustain real love. Remember, according to this story true love can never last. We simply fall into it and are swept into the arms of that special person destined just for us. (The feeble Christianization of this romantic plotline is the supposition that God has somewhere out there that one person exactly right for each of us to find and marry. Hence widespread and heightened anxiety that “I might be making a mistake,” for well you might if there is only a single person genuinely fit for you in a world of several million. This is searching for a unique needle in a haystack full of needles.) Even at its most sentimentalized, the tale of romantic love ends with the couple living “happily ever after.” The marrow of the fairytale is never about actually living happily ever after: romantic love cannot even provide us with a description of “ever after.” It is all about a goal, a goal that can never be achieved but is by definition best dreamed about and pined after. I think of a friend who tells about warding off her husband’s lovemaking advances so that she might rather read, in bed beside him, her latest romance novel. That’s romantic love in its essence. It is first and finally gnostic, antiphysical, drawn more to fantasies than any actual, particular body near to hand. A pernicious irony of the narrative of romantic love is that, for all its supposed adoration of the love object, romantic love is not really about loving a particular person—it is about being in love with love. Romantic love is based on inconstancy, on feelings unanchored in reality. That is why so many popular romantic love songs protest of illicit affairs, “How can this be wrong when it feels so right?” Of course, many of those who have succumbed wholeheartedly to this myth realize, at least when they’re not in the throes of love’s latest spell, that that is exactly what they said to the earlier lover they’re now betraying. So it is that romantic love leaves us prey to both sensuality and cynicism. And in that regard it’s worth noting how well the narrative of romantic love supports the ethos of late capitalism, which demands that the ideal consumer be perpetually frustrated and never really contented. It’s not for nothing that the story still flourishes in a day far removed from the courtly world of Tristan and Iseult. The now faintly quaint custom of dating, after all, is a preeminently capitalistic practice, a sign of just how far the market has transgressed beyond any proper boundaries. The whole theory behind dating is that a young man or woman does it to grow in the knowledge and ability to make a more informed marital choice. Yet in fact there is little or no sociological evidence that dating, after almost a century of its practice, reliably results in happier, longer lasting marriages. What is clear is that dating’s inexorable consumerist logic has been extended to encompass premarital cohabitation. If romanticized sexual compatibility is so important to the success of a marriage, and if it is more found or “fallen into” than made, it only makes sense to experiment before taking any vows. No sensible consumer would buy a car without test-driving it, or a stereo without first listening to it. So how dare choose a mate without first living with him or her? I say all this by way of suggesting that challenging the myth of romantic love is a matter not merely of confronting Grace Livingston Hill or Danielle Steel; it’s a matter of going toe-to-toe with Wall Street and Madison Avenue And there’s something that may be more interesting than falling in and out of love ad nauseam. Making Love in PublicMcClendon properly reorients Christians for just such a fight when he writes, “While the romantic myth moves from love to death, the Christian master story moves (through death) to newfound life—in the body.” In the shadow of Christ’s death and the light of his resurrection, the Christian master story recasts the story of love so that it does not end at the wedding and the commencement of “ever after,” but instead begins there. As Michael Ignatieff puts it, the Christian marriage ceremony, with its vows to love in sickness or health, until death, replaces the romantic tale of falling in love with the “arduous drama of staying in love.” Romantics make love in private, at best oblivious to the welfare of the surrounding community. Christians make love in public, realizing that Christian love is much more than merely sexual passion, and trusting that they can build an enduring, open, and generous love only through participation in the surrounding community called church. My hunch is that we might best de-idolize romantic love by giving more attention to friendship in the context of koinonia, or churchly community. I have in mind Aristotle’s highest form of friendship—the friendship of those devoted to a common cause. Christians are those people caught up in an adventure involving nothing less than the destiny of the world. As such, we hardly need the comparatively puny and petty adventure of romantic love. Christians do not get married because monogamy is an aphrodisiac; they get married because this is the key way they sexually participate in an adventure far surpassing the potentials of any aphrodisiac, the adventure of witnessing to and building up God’s kingdom on earth The important question for Christians, then, after five, ten, fifty years of marriage, is not. “Am I still in love with my spouse? The better question is, “Are we stronger, deeper, , continuing Christian friends?” That is to say, are we supporting and challenging each other in the faith, in service to one another, to our children, to our church, to our neighbors? In the words of Diogenes Allen, when Christian marriage is friendship rather than romance, “We do not fight dragons or villains, as in ‘love stories’, but fight with ourselves, as more and more of ourselves and our partner is revealed with time and through the ups and downs of life. We face an inward struggle with what we are [and. I would add, a political struggle with what the world wants us to be]. What is won is oneself and the other. Married people become people who love each other.” In short, the sex lives of Christians can improve. But they can improve only once we learn how to make love after we have fallen out of love.
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