Marriage Is Not the Answer to Your Desire for Sex

So it’s really hard to read such an article as a Catholic, especially when this is the view of a Protestant Evangelical non-denominational pastor… so there are some hard theological critiques we need to consider here in regards to the author Noah of this article:

He’s reacting to a real problem (a lot of “purity talk” basically says “just wait and then you’ll get sex” as if sex were the cure for lust). Catholic teaching agrees with that critique in part. Where his piece goes off the rails is that it swings from “marriage isn’t a vending machine for purity” (true) to a kind of therapeutic account where sexual desire is mainly a symptom of “wanting to be desired,” and marriage/sex are “poor substitutes” that you must not confuse with “the real thing.”

Christian theology is more ordered, more concrete, and more sacramental than that. Here are the main problems.

1) He treats sexual desire as mostly a “symptom,” not as a natural good with an intelligible end

Catholic view (Aquinas especially): human powers and appetites are for something. Sexual desire isn’t merely a psychological indicator of “deeper illness.” It’s a natural appetite ordered toward a real human good.
• Pre–Fall: sexual desire (eros) was ordered by reason and charity.
• Post–Fall: the same desire is often disordered (concupiscence), but the object of the faculty is still real: marital union open to life and expressive of spousal communion.

So yes: lust can be a counterfeit “I want to be desired.” But it’s a mistake to imply that “beneath your desire for sex is always something else.” Sometimes it’s simply: you desire sex because you are made for spousal union—and the moral question is whether it’s integrated by virtue.

2) He blurs the Christian distinction: desire vs lust, integration vs suppression

Christian chastity is not “don’t feel desire.” It’s the virtue that integrates sexual desire within the whole person under reason and grace.

His framing leans toward: “sexual desire is telling you you want love/acceptance/value; let Jesus fill that.” Again: partly true, but incomplete. Catholic teaching insists:
• You can have deep union with Christ and still feel strong sexual desire.
• The goal isn’t to “replace sex-desire with Jesus-desire,” but to order the desire rightly (virtue, asceticism, grace, concrete habits).

If you treat eros primarily as a spiritual hunger misdirected, you risk turning chastity into a mood-state (“I feel loved by Jesus so temptations fade”), instead of a stable moral formation.

3) He makes a false “symbol vs real thing” split that doesn’t fit sacramental Christianity

He says: “Sex and marriage are metaphors… don’t confuse the symbol with the real thing.”

Catholic response: marriage is not merely a symbol. A sacrament is an efficacious sign—it really participates in what it signifies. In a sacramental universe:
• Created goods aren’t “poor substitutes” for God.
• They are real participations in God’s goodness (ordered to Him, and capable of mediating grace).

Aquinas is crystal here: creatures are good by participation; they aren’t rivals to God unless you idolize them. Marriage is one of the most “real” created goods precisely because it images and participates in divine love in an embodied way.

4) He implicitly downplays marriage as a God-given remedy for concupiscence

Catholic tradition (Augustine → Aquinas → Council of Trent) consistently teaches that marriage has goods/purposes that include a remedy for disordered desire.

Augustine’s classic “goods of marriage”:
• fidelity (exclusive love),
• offspring (openness to life),
• sacrament (indissoluble bond).

Aquinas: marriage helps provide an ordered context where sexual desire is not merely tolerated but directed toward its proper ends, and where spouses help one another grow in virtue.

So: marriage is not the answer to every interior ache. But it is a real answer to a real human need in God’s plan—precisely because God made us bodily and social.

5) His reading of John 4 leans sentimental: “acceptance, approval, desire,” while skipping the moral core

Jesus does not treat her situation as neutral “symptoms.” He names the truth: her life is disordered. He offers mercy and conversion.

Catholic point: the “living water” is not a warm affirmation that dissolves the significance of her sexual history; it is grace that heals, elevates, and reorders. The encounter is not “you’re thirsty for intimacy, here’s acceptance.” It’s: you’ve been seeking in the wrong places; come to the truth; receive a new life.

That difference matters because it changes what you tell people struggling with lust:
• Not “your lust is really a need for validation.”
• But: “your desire is real; your wound is real; repentance and virtue are real; grace can reorder you.”

6) “These prayers will never be answered” is theologically SLOPPY

He’s trying to say “no spouse will be God for you.” Fine. But he overstates it:
• God may in fact answer prayers for a spouse.
• God may sanctify a marriage so deeply that it becomes a profound place of healing and friendship.
• Catholic teaching is comfortable saying: no creature satisfies the heart fully, but creatures can satisfy it truly and partially—and that partial fulfillment is not a defect; it’s how finite goods work.

The Catholic line is not “your prayer for a spouse won’t be answered,” but “don’t make an idol of marriage; receive your vocation and live it ordered to God.”

7) He reduces the struggle to “identity needs,” instead of full Christian morality

Catholic anthropology is thicker:
• intellect & will, virtues/vices, habits,
• concupiscence,
• spiritual warfare,
• ascetic discipline,
• sacraments (Confession/Eucharist) as objective medicine,
• occasions of sin, custody of the eyes, fasting, accountability, etc.

His approach risks becoming: “if you truly grasp the gospel, the deeper thirst is satisfied, and sexual sin loses its pull.” Sometimes that happens—often it doesn’t, quickly. Catholic realism expects LONG formation, and it gives concrete tools.

8) He misses a key Christian balance: marriage is not “God,” but it is a real path to God

Ephesians 5 isn’t just “symbolize intimacy.” In Christian theology, spouses are cooperators with grace for each other’s sanctification. Marriage is a vocation where:
• embodied love teaches charity,
• fidelity trains virtue,
• parenthood images divine generosity,
• forgiveness becomes daily discipleship.

So the correct view is:
• Only God is the final end of the human person.
• Marriage and sex are not substitutes for God (agree).
• But they are real created goods that can truly fulfill aspects of the human heart precisely because they are ordered to God and, in the sacrament, empowered by grace.

9) The Christian “ordered desire” lens exposes Noah’s category mistake

God is not disorder. Christian theology doesn’t need abstract “metaphor vs real thing” language to explain sex. It uses order.
• If sex is pursued against its order (outside marriage; against fidelity; closed to life; reduced to use), it becomes lust.
• If pursued within its order (marital covenant; self-gift; openness to life; unity), it becomes a participation in God’s creative and unitive love.

Why doesn’t God give a perfect spouse? Why can’t we have perfect spouses in heaven. Please don’t refer to Jesus, because I want a female partner, and the idea of men (as members of the Church) having marital intimacy with Jesus sounds gay, or that Jesus is Bi. I highly doubt Jesus was ever tempted by homosexuality while living on Earth. He was only tempted by the opposite sex.
Gay is dull!
Aww, if only the fall of sin hadn’t occurred, everyone would have a perfect opposite-sex spouse.

i agree with so much of the above comments,and as a counselor and sexologist i daily see how The Word reflects even bio physical facts that most Christian couples may not know or utilize.