Reflecting Upon the Problem of Cohabitation & Sexual Relations

In reflecting upon cohabitation and sexual relations before marriage, it may appear that critics over-accentuate the role of passion or sex. However, this highlight has been necessary given a definition of the sexual (bodily) being as a thinking and loving human person. We are not ghosts. What our flesh does, we do. I do not intend to sound heartless or unreasonable. WE need sound reasoning in an area where blind compulsion and misinformation have ruled the day. I well realize that the phenomenon of couples living together is reflective of the problems of our times. Modern men and women, like none before them, feel alienated and alone. Technology has often given them more leisure and pleasure at the cost of separating them ever more and more from the real trials and joys found in a more natural harmony. The pace of our market-place society has often relegated the human person to a secondary status behind success and profit. Despite the way we crowd our cities, men and women are the loneliest creatures to walk this small planet. I suppose, surrounded by strangers, uncertain about the future, finding many insensitive to their needs, that many men and women choose to cling to one another in the hope of finding some refuge against the storm of indifference and intolerance. They seek on the one hand, to create something of a semblance to a stable home, while on the other, continuing to grasp greedily into an uncertain tomorrow. After all, even though people are marrying later in life, the inner need for belonging cannot be forestalled. Overjoyed to be independent and leaving the nest offered by their parents, they swiftly discover that no empty house or apartment makes a home. Home is only home, when there is someone with whom to share it, waiting for you and wanting you. Trying to escape the alienation and hardness of life, they postpone or rationalize the values which their consciences would admit for consideration.

They give the gift of their very selves to each other, even though it may not be the right season for giving. In their attempt to find some consolation and healing in life; they might inadvertently cause more tension and hurt. If love is real, it will wait. If it is not, then its prerogatives would best never be started.

God loves us all more than we can ever know. He wants us to be happy and whole. The struggle to keep love within its proper limits, as testified by the Scriptures and the Church, can only make us stronger in living out this love fully when it is consecrated in marriage. This is the way that God would have most of his people deal with the deep isolation they experience. Much more than secularized alternatives, it offers couples the companionship of each other, and that third to get married, Jesus.