At the end of the day you can ask yourself two questions about your life and the way you lived the day. " How much was I concerned about what I was getting from others, and how much was I concerned about what I was giving?”.

A lover is a giver, and so can see the world through the eyes of their beloved, and wants to give to them what they need for health, growth, and fulfillment. A lover wants only to in-crease true, mature, responsible, and joyous fulfillment and satisfaction about life in their beloved. A lover, therefore, does not give in order to be loved. A lover gives because of the joy of loving, ...whether it is returned in like manner or not. In other words, it is unconditional.

That love takes maturity. That love also takes time to develop. That love is more than just a feeling. That love is divine. We need a lot of God in us to love that way. No wonder Catholics have discovered so much of God in Marriage! Those who think more of "getting", ironically, are never satisfied. They just never seem to get enough. There is always the sense of debt, of being "owed" more from life, of always feeling "a quart low."  They are the victims in life, always upset at life’s unfairness. They resent another’s good fortune and always feel used and drained by others.

Paradoxically, "givers" never feel empty! Giving provides a sense of fullness, completeness, and satisfaction that can never be drained. God designed us with this paradox. If we lose our life we will find it, if we die to ourselves, we will live. Love becomes it's own reward, and we don't feel drained at all.

Sexual Expression

Your love will not last very long if you only gaze at each other's eyes from across the room. You need more than that. God designed us to live through our bodies, to be physical in our love. We are physical people and we need to express our love physically through a touch or an embrace. After all, you need to hold and caress your fiancee, and talk to each other through your bodies. God designed us to be sexual in our love with our lifetime partner. This means our physical acts have an important intention or purpose. What does our body say to our partner in sexual behavior?

Sexual activity is really another form of talking. 

Sexual behavior is a form of communicating your desires, thoughts, and feelings, but using mainly your body to talk for you. Usually not much is verbally said during intercourse or while embracing, but certainly a lot is being communicated. Definite messages are sent!  What is it that you are saying with your bodies at these times?  What are you actually communicating? What thoughts or feeling are being sent to your partner by this or that sexual behavior? Our physical,  sexual actions should speak the level of our relationship. They should speak the truth.

What we do with someone physically should match the way we feel about them emotionally.

Each level of our relationship has a natural physical act that matches or balances with it. For example, when you first met your fiancée, your relationship was just starting and so there was very little emotional commitment. You were just acquaintances. The physical sign was simply to shake hands or nod your head in greeting. Of course, as your love grew, your physical sign for each new level of friendship became more intimate. A deeper love then matches a deeper more intimate physical expression.

We feel awkward when they don't match!  After all, you would not like a total stranger to grab you and kiss you, and you don't want to just shake hands with your fiancée. Each situation like that simply doesn't feel right. No one tells us to feel awkward in those cases. We just naturally do. We feel more at peace when the relationship and the physical sign match.  God designed us to be balanced in our sexual expression!

Our Faith simply says the same thing. Our relationship and the physical expression of it should match and balance. Sexual intercourse is certainly the highest and most intimate of physical expressions. It simply makes sense that it match the highest and most intimate rela-tionship. That most intimate relationship is marriage. There is no other combination of words in the English language that says more than your wedding vows. There is no other act more in-timate than sexual intercourse. Total physical commitment meets total emotional commitment. They match. 

When there is a miss-match, or an imbalance between what we do and what we feel, we say it is immoral, sinful, or wrong. It is easier to say it just doesn't make sense. What makes sense is to be in balance. We know that saying "sinful" is a very powerful word. It is a highly charged word that can wound, and shame, and hurt, but also challenge and heal. It is not very precise, though. We use it to describe stealing a nickel, and stealing one million dollars!  "Imbalance"  is a more precise word that describes intercourse without marriage.    

A one-night-stand is a gross miss-match or imbalance. Sexual intercourse between good friends is also a miss-match but it's better than the one night stand.  Even intercourse for an engaged couple is a mismatch as well, but it's better than the "just good friends" case. How great is the imbalance is important to our feelings, to our sense of how the relationship is going. How great is the imbalance reveals our level of honesty and respect in the relationship. To the degree there is a mismatch is the degree of our maturity as honest and giving people.

To the degree there is a miss-match is the degree to which behavior is sinful, immoral, or wrong. 

Remember, as Christians, we are not afraid to be honest with ourselves. If there has been intercourse in our relationship, we acknowledge all that was good about the experience; for ex-ample, the caring, the affection, and the love , and at the same time honestly admit the degree of imbalance or what was not given, namely total commitment. A person may deeply love their partner, be very affectionate, and care a lot about the other, but if there is no public commitment to be a wedded couple forever, then it doesn't make sense to engage in the physical activity that says commitment forever.

For Catholics, marriage is not only a private affair. You make your vows for two reasons, (a) to feel for yourselves the presence of God who is love, and (b) to show that love to others. To want to share your love with others is the highest form of love. That happens first at the marriage ceremony, so it makes sense even for engaged couples to wait for that public commitment.

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