David Matzko McCarthy

“The same local orientation and limited purview hold for sex in marriage. Through any given sexual act, spouses might express love, desire, generosity, frustration, fatigue, or a manipulative intent, but they will do so in the semantic context of a day, week, a stage of life, and series of specific events, and all set within the broader context of a shared life. Any particular sexual encounter need not say anything earth shattering; it need not point to the fullness or full meaning of a sexual relationship. We need not be completed by our sexual complement. Most sex within marriage is just ordinary, a minor episode in a larger story. One set of sexual expressions may need to be redeemed by another, and can be. One-night stands and passionate affairs, in contrast, need to be earthshaking and splendid because they are the whole story. They are manic attempts to overcome the fact that there is nothing else. The true superiority of sexual intercourse in marriage is that it does not have to mean very much. Expressed sexually or otherwise, our 'humanity' is something that accumulates quietly through small steps and comes to us as a whole only when we step back, in order to look back and to imagine the future.”
― David Matzko McCarthy, Sex and Love in the Home: A Theology of the Household