Sex in Married Life

It is natural for man and woman to be attracted to one another.  This is a God given passion and we know that it is good for "God saw everything that He had made and behold it was very good." (Gen 1:31) After the fall of Adam and Eve and the mortality of mankind, this attraction was essential to perpetuate the human species.  If there were no sexual attraction who would consider having children with all the difficulties associated with this?  

Elder Paisios points out that after Adam and Eve there might have been people with differing intensities sexual desire; some five percent, others thirty percent and others eighty percent.  But where would you find persons with only five percent of such drive today?  We live in a world where the pleasure of sex is glorified. The reality is that we also have been given by God the call and potential to attain what is called dispassion. This is a life based on control of our carnal passions such as sexual desire. To develop this desired state it is necessary to struggle to overcome what we can readily observe in animals who live with uncontrolled sexual desire.  Mankind is more than pure animal as he is also spirit and seeks to be reunited with God. This requires mastering our carnal passions - dispassion.

Some think that Marriage is the justification of uncontrolled sexual activity.  The Elder says not so. 

"The married are not justified, simply because they lead a married life, in forgetting that they are not only flesh, but also spirit, and should therefore, not let themselves be unbridled. The goal is for each couple to struggle with discernment and philotimo, according to their spiritual strength. In the beginning, naturally, the age of the couple will not help; but as the years pass and the flesh is weakened, the spirit can prevail more, allowing the married couples to begin experiencing divine delights. They can withdraw naturally from the carnal pleasures, which they now consider less important. This way the married are also purified and reach Paradise by way of the more comfortable path with its gradual turns.

This is not a matter than can be controlled by one alone, but requires a consensual agreement between man and wife. Its like a dance and a shared growth in spirit. Sexual intercourse is a pleasure give to us by God not only for procreation but also as an expression of our sacrificial love for one another.  It cannot be a desire to simply gain pleasure for oneself but to give pleasure to the other we love so dearly.  This natural passion needs to be used in its proper way and controlled.

This is an issue that will also affect a couple's children if not controlled.  The Elder says,

They have an obligation to struggle to practice temperance, so as not to impart this carnal passions to their children. You see, young children whose parents have a heightened carnal frame of mind, ail, from a younger age, also have these inclinations, because they get their carnal mindset from their parents. At first these passions are very slight, as are all hereditary passions – much like the stinging nettle, very soft at first and easy to touch, but extremely itchy when full grown – and they can be cured by a good Spiritual Father who has discernment. If however they are not treated at a young age, the children will need to struggle mightily when they are older in order to rid themselves of these passions.

When we cannot keep our sexual desires in check it affects our relationship. To seek such pleasure for oneself is selfishness. One becomes a slave to physical desires and love is reduced to sexual pleasure. Love become getting something rather than giving. In this loss of true love, our relationship with God is also lost.  

Physical attraction is a God given passion but it is meant to be controlled. With dispassion that can be developed from childhood, a relationship that ends with a healthy controlled sexual life between a man and a woman is possible. This allows for the full development of our spiritual nature and a growing relationship with God leading to our eventual union with Him in eternal life.

Reference: Elder Paisios of Mount Athos Spiritual Counsels IV: Family Life, pp 66-68

Self-Control to Overcome our Passions

Fasting deals specifically with the passion of gluttony.  We must however deal with all our passions and overcome them one by one.  Fasting is the starting point to controlling the others.  It is a fight that we must steadily engage in. By doing so we will gradually reduce them.


Saint Maximus outlines four steps for this progress:

1. The stopping of their appearance in sinful deeds––the obtaining of sinless in deed is the first dispassion

2. freedom from passionate thoughts caused by appetites in our consciousness; victory over them bring us to a second dispassion, without such thoughts they can't become deeds.

3. The control over our natural appetite so that it doesn't move toward the passions––this is the third dispassion

4. The complete removal from the mind of perceptible images––this leads to a fourth dispassion.  No longer having them in the mind, they can no longer enter the subconsciousness to move an appetite to a passion.

He goes on to advise us that there is one further step.

We must reach a state where we can receive images of things without creating any passion within us.  This happens when through them their divine logoi become transparent.  Only after this does the mind unite with God in a state higher than prayer.

Ref: Orthodox Spirituality, pp 153 

Self-Control as Fasting

The act of fasting is a conscious act to glorify God and his creation as it helps us overcome our actions based on our passions and bodily desires for pleasure.  It is an act that restrains our egoism and heightens our spiritual appetite.  Fasting demands will-power and the reestablishment of the domination of the soul over the body.


Fasting is seen by our Church Fathers as the primary passion to overcome. Mastering it you can then master the others.


Fr. Dimitru Staniloae says,
Self-control from gluttony is what makes restraint from the others possible...

Fasting is the antidote against this pathological extension of our appetites and or our egoism.  It is the humble return of the ego to itself, but by its transparence it sees God and is filled with a life consistent with God. This is the growth of spirit in man, from divine sprit....Because man's egoism wants to grow without God, without loving relationships with his fellow creatures, it grows only in appearance and for a little while.

Through self-control eating can become an act for reflecting and thinking about God.  As we contemplate on our food we can seek the Logoi that is behind its creation. We can see the beauty in God's creation realize how it was provided for our benefit to come closer to God.


This is why the Church in her wisdom from its earliest days prescribed fasting on Wednesday and Fridays as well as other extended periods for fasting such as the 40 day fast of Great Lent.  While it is helpful to follow the program of fasting outlined by the church, one cannot see it as a "law" but as a aid to help us grow spiritually.  It is a means to help us overcome our enslavement by our bodily passions, so we can be freed for higher spiritual growth.


Your personal rule for spiritual growth should include regular fasting.


Ref:  Orthodox Spirituality, pp 150 - 153

Self-Control lifts us to see the infinite in things of this world.

"Self-control freely exercised by a believer isn't a restraint from the ascent to God, but the departure from evil things.  The purpose is to keep him from total submersion in the world."

Between the time of creation and the present time there has been a shift in the proper use of things created.  Originally food was given to us to eat, but it became something that was seen as a pleasure for the body.  Our passions transform what was useful for our ascendence to God into a chain which binds us to the earthly world.

Fr. Dimitru Staniloae says,

The world of things and of persons is thus meant to be a ladder to God, the support in the ascent to Him.  But by the passions man takes this brilliant depth, this transparence, which reaches infinite, from the world.

Instead of freeing mankind in the world, things turned him into their slave.  His passions for pleasures change their intended purpose.

Fr Dimitru advises,

The restraint which Christianity urges man to exercise is for man's spirit to claim its rights from the lower impulses which have overwhelmed him.  By self-control which limits the passions, man reestablishes the limits and freedom of the spirit in himself.  But in so doing, he awakens with himself the factor which sees int he world something else besides objects to satisfy these passions.  By self control man removes from the world the wave of darkness and givers it once again the attribute of making it transparent for the infinite.  So disrespect for the world ins't shown in self-control, but rather the will to discover the entire majesty of the world; self-control isn't a complete turning away from the world, to see God, but a turning away from a world narrow and exaggerated by the passions, to find a transparent world which itself becomes a mirror of God and a ladder to Him.

Ref: Orthodox Spirituality, p 148 - 149