Java with Juli: #407: Masturbation: The No. 1 Question You’re Asking Us! (Member Exclusive)
Some married people will ask me whether or not masturbation is wrong to engage in within marriage. I think a lot of it depends on how are you using that. In many cases, one spouse is not getting their sexual desires or needs met within marriage. And so instead of working on that issue, instead of working towards intimacy, they just say, well, I’m gonna go take care of my own needs. And if we look at the purpose of sexual intimacy within marriage, it’s not primarily for self pleasure, it’s to celebrate together. It’s to share pleasure with one another. And so masturbation in that situation can take you away from really enjoying one another and working through the conflicts that need to be addressed in order to really experience intimacy.
Now, in other situations, people might use masturbation within marriage because they’re separated. For example, a long deployment or, somebody who’s traveling often for business, and a couple says, ‘Alright, this is a way that we wanna focus on one another.’ And I would say, really be thoughtful and prayerful about that to make sure that’s something that you both agree on. But the spirit of it is we really wanna focus on one another and fight off temptation, then that might be something that’s helpful within your marriage.
You know, another aspect of this is not necessarily masturbation, but what some people will actually call outercourse. You know, we often think of sex as only intercourse, and so couples can feel like, all right, if I am sick or there’s something wrong with my body, or for example, if there’s emotional triggering because of past trauma, and intercourse isn’t possible, then the whole sex life shuts down. Instead of saying that, hey, God has given you lots of ways to experience sexual pleasure together. And so if that’s part of how you’re using what you’d call masturbation, then that’s actually building intimacy within your marriage.
