The Key to a Great Relationship Is...Temperance?

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“If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.”

Temperance is the virtue that governs our reaction to our appetites and desires. By it we modify our attachment to pleasure and bring our appetite under control. In layman's terms, it means taking the right amount of pleasure at the right time and for the right reason.

This can be an especially tricky virtue for us today, for an interesting reason. Traditionally, in the west, men understood the mind to be roughly divided into Reason, Passion, and Appetite, with Reason being the highest part and Appetite the lowest. In the modern world, however, we understand it more after Dr. Freud’s variation of Id, Ego, and Superego, where the Id (Appetite) is the most basic element that the Ego and Superego grow out of.

The right order of things has been reversed

You see, the order has been reversed: we’ve been taught (through innumerable movies, books, and songs) to think of our Appetites as the truest and most real part of ourselves, while our Reason is merely a set of conditioned responses imposed by our environment.

The trouble is that, as even Freud understood, our Appetites are unruly and unreliable. Not only are they at the mercy of whatever stimuli happen to come along, but they can’t be counted on to rule even their own ground. We don’t become healthy by eating whatever we want whenever we want it. We hear too much about the obesity epidemic in our society for this point to need much demonstration. A moment’s reflection will tell you that our Appetites, if given their head, will lead to impotence, lethargy, idleness, and sickness.

The point of temperance is to put Reason back in charge

Now, the purpose of Temperance is to bring our appetites under the control of our reason. To continue the example of eating, the temperate man would neither gorge himself nor starve himself, but eat as much as he needs for the health of his body and no more.

You will note that this says nothing about what he eats: he may enjoy his food as much as he likes (indeed, temperance tends to increase our enjoyment of pleasure). The point is not to eat what you don’t like, or not to enjoy eating. The point is to keep the purpose of eating and its place in your life in mind as you do so.

In short, our appetites are meant to be our servants, not our masters. They have their place and their duties, but ought always to be under the command of reason. As C.S. Lewis succinctly put it, it’s not about denying our desires, but telling our desires where they get off.

So...what's the connection to dating?

The application of this virtue to dating and marriage seems obvious: we ought to mortify our desire for other women or other men so as to remain faithful to our spouse (that is, in order to be Just to them. See how the Virtues support and guide one another?). This means controlling our desire to look at other women, cutting out pornography and similar vices, and so on.

As I say, that much is obvious. What might not be so obvious is that we need to mortify our other desires as well, whether they be for food and drink or for sports and video games. Every pleasure or comfort in our lives ought to be brought under the control of Temperance.

This is for two reasons. The first is that morality is a continuous process: you can’t seal off different parts of your life into watertight compartments (remember how well those worked on the Titanic). Overindulgence in one area encourages overindulgence in another. This is, again, due to the nature of the soul: if you let yourself develop a habit of being directed by appetite rather than reason, you can’t expect to be guided by reason when you really need to. There’s a saying among self-defense instructors that you don’t rise to the occasion; you sink to the level of your training. The same is true in Virtue.

Any uncontrolled desire is dangerous to a relationship

The other reason is that sexual indulgence isn’t the only thing that can wreck a relationship. Any uncontrolled desire can be dangerous. Porn and womanizing obviously cut more to the heart of a romantic relationship, but just for this reason a man may think his other indulgences harmless, even if he spends years of his life plopped in front of the TV or makes his weekly football game the center of his universe.

Again, the point isn’t to cut these things out entirely but to keep them under control and in their proper place. That said, in some cases or at some times it may be necessary to drop them entirely. If you’re the kind of person who can’t drink at all without drinking too much, that may mean drink has no place in your life. If you find you can’t watch TV without sinking a quarter of a day into it, that may mean you have to stop watching it at all, at least for a while. If we’re not even to spare our right hand on the path to righteousness, we can’t very well plead that we need our TV.

The means to acquire this virtue is simple, though difficult. It is simply to begin, today, to mortify your desires. For instance, if you spend hours and hours a day on the internet, try to limit it only to set times of the day. Or if you’re always snacking, set a limit to how much you’ll eat at any one time, or don’t eat between meals at all.

You’ll probably find you can’t do it at first. That’s a sure sign that it’s out of your control and needs to be brought to heel. Keep working at it and make a habit of making your desires serve you instead of the other way around. If they serve you, they’ll serve your spouse as well.

This is the third in a series of essays explaining the cardinal virtues and how each applies to our everyday lives. If you missed the introduction, go back and read it here and then read the first post on the cardinal virtue, justice, here!

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