Marriage Requires Mutuality and Consent

Due is mutual, timed, and never a claim against someone's will.

They wrote, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman.' Paul answers the actual world: because of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her due, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does — and the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. The sentence runs both ways on purpose.

Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Paul says this as concession, not command. He wishes all were as he himself is, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. Marital due is not rape, pressure, entitlement, reproductive coercion, or sex without freely given ongoing consent. Singleness is a gift, not a defect to be shamed.