Two Ways to Objectify a Spouse

Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a man who didn’t understand marital intimacy very well.

This man married two women.

This was a time and place in which polygamy was a norm but there was more to the story.

He had a “use” for each wife, both purely physical.

One was for procreation, and the other was for recreation. (Mainly his own.)

One wife was given ancient birth control potions but lots of beauty products and fine foods.

Her body was prioritized for aesthetics and pleasure.

The other wife was more neglected, seen only as a means for breeding, nothing more.

(In the end, they both had children, because life doesn’t always go as planned, and they eventually separated from him for a while.)

This particular man’s name was Lemech, but he was apparently following a common practice of his generation- the one preceding the flood of Noach, of bifurcating marriage in this utilitarian and dehumanizing way.

It may sound primitive, but humans are humans and we offer struggle with similar challenges in different iterations.

To this day, there are some people who feel that a partner only chose to marry or cohabit for the purpose of bearing children.

There are also some who feel that their partners only want to be with them for their own physical, erotic pleasure.

Neither procreation nor pleasure are intrinsically bad reasons for sexual activity.

But they generally don’t feel great as the only, or chronically primary, motivators.

So what’s missing?

We often refer to the physical relationship between spouses euphemistically as “intimacy.”

But intimacy really means knowing, attunement, closeness, caring.

When one partner is using the other, or one partner feels like s/he is being used, that’s not intimate; it's exploitive.

When the erotic connection is built on a foundation of mutual knowing, caring, paying attention to the other - not just as a body, a means to an end, or a source of only self-focused pleasure- but as a full human, mind, body, heart, and soul, that’s when it becomes intimate.

Sometimes this union can generate times of lighter, more playful, mutually enjoyable physical connection, and/ or a couple choosing to focus a particular time frame on trying to conceive, but that too works best when it’s embedded (no pun intended) in the context of a relational, intimate foundation.

Note: The above case is based on some verses with Rashi’s commentary in the Torah portion of Bereishis/t / Genesis. The women’s names were Ada and Tzila. Later, when Lemech may have accidentally killed two people, including his own son, they understandably wanted some distance from him. Instead of expressing his remorse over the tragedy, he appealed to them as follows: “Listen to my voice, oh wives of Lemech” (I’m guessing the grandiose intro didn’t help the cause) “hearken to my words! Have I killed a man with my wound, and a boy with my injury?” (This was a rhetorical question, a defensive response to imply that since the deaths he caused were unintentional, he shouldn’t be deprived of his conjugal rights. Lemech is not a relationship role model. It would likely have been more appropriate and effective to show remorse and empathy.)

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