Sex isn’t Necessary for Happiness

Last updated on: October 6, 2015 at 12:08 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Sex isn’t Necessary for Happiness 2015-10-06T12:08:05-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Anybody who has single friends, older friends, or friends who have taken a vow of chastity knows this truth: sex is not necessary for human happiness. This is so obvious to anyone who looks around at his friends and family that a man might think it doesn’t need to be said. He would be wrong.

American culture has so associated romance with sex, fun with sex, and the good life with sex that we have become confused. We believe our televisions and not our lives. In fact, if a person is told often enough that one needs sex for intimacy and happiness, then he might believe the lie. Just as commercials can make us think our happiness depends on buying every more “stuff,” so we buy the lie that a flourishing human life requires sex.

Human flourishing requires intimacy, but intimacy does not necessitate sex. Classical philosophy thought of friendship as so intimate that the tendency was to look down on sexual love. They were wrong to do so: intimacy may include or lead naturally to sex at times, but often it has nothing to do with sex. In fact, sex can get in the way of intimacy.

What is intimacy? People are intimate with each other when they share who they are at the deepest level. This necessitates communication, but this communication can take place in many ways. One way might be making love, but there are many other ways. For many people eating a meal together or drinking a fine wine is a means used to facilitate conversation. For other people, exercise or playing a game like cards may become part of the process. Sex, a deeply spiritual act making a man and a woman one in the way that human life is created, is even more important, necessary to human continuation, but not for intimacy. For centuries, poets have pointed out that friends are sometimes more intimate than lovers.

I think this point is lost, because not only have we sexualized everything, but anyone reading this assumes I am about to give a “therefore.” Since the “therefore” (the implications of this truth) are unpopular or contentious, we forget the basic truth: no individual human must have sex to be happy. So for once, let there be no “therefore.” This is not about gay marriage, sex outside of marriage, or any other issue.

Some churches have forgotten this when they act as if the only human happiness comes in the sexual romantic relationship. We forget the “better way” that Paul mentions of chastity. We forget that some not called to chastity do not find sexually romantic relationships. We do too little to train ourselves in real intimacy because we too falsely think that sex will provide intimacy. We simply draw moral lines and then wait for the moral sex to fulfill something it was not designed to do. . . even the married with good sex lives need intimacy. Sex is not intimacy and one may be good at the act without ever finding the deeper intimacy. Intimacy is not easy to achieve, but we rarely talk about it, leaving our education to movies and television.

The truth that I need intimacy is a reminder to myself that many other goods, even important, great goods, are not my “rights” or a thing I must have . . . even if I want it. Experience shows me that sometimes not getting what I want is better for me than getting what I want, even if the thing I want is not bad in itself. This enables me to relax and accept what God gives me. I must have food, but particular kinds of food are not necessary even if I crave them.

Desire is real. I do not minimize that unfulfilled desires are painful. I do deny that happiness is impossible if this particular desire remains unfulfilled. We can relax, accept when things do not go as we would wish, and find happiness in intimacy.

It is intimacy that must be our focus: first with God and then with other human beings.

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