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Notes -
I read it as: it's one spouse's duty to release the other's demons. It's not about you, it's not about having fun, it's a means to an end. I have my own biases, but I don't buy the christian counseling websites spin of 1 corinthians 7 to be a 60s hippy pro-sex message. Cite me some pre-20th century catholic authority that encourages sexual pleasure in marriage.
You should read it like this: It’s one spouse’s duty to help the other fulfill their sexual needs, so that they aren’t tempted to have sex outside the marriage. Millions of dead bedrooms, affairs, resentments, and divorces speak to the wisdom of this provision. If you hate the idea of a sexless marriage, like most people do, St. Paul is simply agreeing with you!
It’s true that Christianity places a high premium on celibacy. But the married have their calling and their vocation, which Paul, though he advises celibacy to those who will accept it, also praises in the highest terms, as an image of Christlike love. And the superiority of celibacy over marriage is also a provision confirmed by experience: not all wish for marriage, not all wish for the responsibility of a relationship. And where the celibate are not celebrated, they are vilified, rejected: see hatred directed towards spinsters, incels, communities not knowing what to do with single people with no interest in marriage, etc.
You can view the Christian approach to sex, particularly historically, as repression. You can view it that way, and even twist yourself into knots interpreting the holy text through the most uncharitable angle, rather than trying to grasp, with sincerity, what was meant and what is understood by it. You’re free to do so. But given what has happened — the conflicts, social upheaval, bitter divorces, mass loneliness, party culture, hookup culture that has resulted from unrestrained sexual norms — I would rather advise looking at Christian sexual norms as a bulwark against grave danger.
You can disagree, or you can even offer a more refined ethic that prizes sexual restraint without restricting sex to marriage, but what I often see is people criticizing Christian moderationism towards sex and offering as its alternative the spirit of the 60s, which is facing mass rejection because it holds up a carrot of free love and sexual pleasure, but gives few people what they actually want. St. Paul, by contrast, says: “you should love one another as yourself, and you should make it an important part of your life — even a duty! — to aid your spouse in fulfilling their sexual needs.” In what sense is this not wisdom?
To the degree that the christian sexuality norms can work for a society, they do so in the compromises, between the cracks, of the true christian vision, which is just anti-sex asceticism. Like paul’s ‘ok fine, if you have to, I guess you can fuck your wife’. Or Thomas aquinas borrowing of pagan aristoteles’ sexual ideas rather than augustine’s. Or all the priests who looked away when young people had sex, or when married men went to prostitutes. That was christian sexuality norms’ finest hour, when they did not insist upon themselves, but accomodated human nature.
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On the contrary: cite me somewhere in the Bible (or authoritative interpretation of it, e.g. Catholic Tradition) which says that sex is bad and not to be enjoyed. The burden of proof is on you here, especially given that the evidence you already cited (Paul) doesn't say what you claim it does. Otherwise, it seems self-evident to me that God would not have made something so fundamentally part of our nature feel good to us if he didn't intend for us to enjoy it. Much like the taste of good food or the beauty of nature are meant to be enjoyed in their proper context, so is the pleasure of sex. It makes no sense otherwise.
Counterpoint: It also feels good to dominate other human beings, but I don't believe God intended for us to enjoy that.
Now, match "domination" to "sex", combine that with the degree that marriage is inherently an exclusive prostitution agreement for sociobiological reasons, mix that with a generally-productive instinct for men to do this sexually more often... and now you know why traditionalists have an emergent, adversarial relationship with sex. For progressives, mix that with the female zero-sum social game, and the result is "yes, all men do that for power reasons, and they all do it on purpose".
I think it would be pretty fantastic if you actually dug into the logic underlying any of your frequent pronouncements on this subject, rather than acting as though your highly-idiosyncratic perspective should be straightforwardly obvious.
A few questions to help the process along:
Is the parent-child relationship also obviously a form of prostitution for sociobiological reasons? If not why not? Or depending on how one drew the lines, is it more analogous to simping?
How does the purported adversarial relationship with sex "emerge" in traditionalist relationships? Is this why their marriages observably last much longer, and why they report much higher rates of satisfaction with those marriages? How does this emergent adversarial relationship with sex interact with the consistent reports of higher sexual satisfaction among such traditionalists?
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That's an interesting point, but is it not also plausible that dominating other people is pleasurable because it taps into an impulse which God does intend that we enjoy? In that case the good feeling of dominating others would ultimately be something which is corrupted by sin, much like how sex outside of marriage still feels good but isn't part of God's plan.
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Aquinas views sexual pleasure in marriage as necessary, natural and good. Going to the sex act with one’s spouse strictly for the pleasure is a sin, but sexual pleasure within marriage and the marital act is a positive.
For Augustine every sex act not for procreation is a sin. Augustine never left any space for healthy sexual desire after the fall. Thomas Aquinas follows Augustine’s opinion when he says that sexuality exists for the sake of propagation and for the strengthening of the marriage bond between a man and a woman. So here again there’s the idea that sexuality is just an instrument, and there’s no inherent value in physical sexual enjoyment itself.
But then Thomas also borrows from Aristoteles’ view that the spiritual and the physical are closely related to each other instead of in conflict, and that reason should ‘coach’ our desires instead of suppressing them, and so accepts that the physical-sensual part of the person has its own longings and joy. Sensual pleasure is good for the physical-sensual and therefore for the entire person.
So I think it's pretty confusing under what circumstances you're allowed to enjoy yourself. As a byproduct mostly.
Your claim has moved from "They're not exactly "encouraged to enjoy sex with their spouse", that's new age degeneracy" to something along the lines of "Christians are not hedonists". The fact remains that Christian teaching has in fact encouraged Christians to enjoy sex with their spouse, and has done so for quite a long time.
In what way is it confusing? Pleasure should not be treated as an end unto itself. We should derive pleasure in ways consonant with an ordered, faithful life, which is no great hardship, nor unduly restrictive; I have lived as a hedonist, and I can say from personal experience that the hedonic treadmill is very real.
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