Is Physical Intercourse the Heart of Marriage?

Rev. Ernest O'Neill

It has nothing to do with marriage.  You may join two bodies together but it has nothing to do with marriage as God planned it to be and it has nothing to do with happiness of course, as God planned it to be as all of us know who have ever experienced that.  How the thing bursts like a soap bubble in your hands and you have nothing at all left, and you look half at guilt with the other person.  So different from this that lasts forever.  That’s why it is such abject foolishness for the girl who uses her body as a trap or as bait.  It has nothing to do with marriage.  It has nothing to do with partnership as God planned it.  All you’re doing is trying to use the body to somehow stimulate the other person to love you, and to care for you, and it can never be.

So it is really in courtship.  The priorities of courtship are plain in the same way.  You will never loved ones, by working on each other’s bodies, you will never produce the intimacy, and the unity, and the sense of absolute peace and relaxation in the other person’s eyes, and in the other person’s mind.  You will never produce that security by stimulating each other’s bodies.  And so the whole problem of courtship is that we’re playing – we’re like little children playing with bodies.  We know really nothing of what union or marriage is about.  We’re like little children playing with the least important part of each other’s personalities and ignoring the only part that is going to last forever.