Two weeks on, two weeks off. That’s the recipe for a happy Jewish marriage. Here are a few quotes –
“The Torah teaches, “Do not come near a woman when she is tamei with her menstrual flow to uncover her nakedness”. (Leviticus 18:19) The period of being tamei from a menstrual period lasted seven days (Leviticus 15:19). Such a woman is called a niddah. In the second century C.E., Rabbi Meir attempted to give an explanation for this law. “Why did the Torah teach that a woman was in a period of niddah for seven days?…So that she will be beloved by her husband as on the day she entered the chupah (wedding canopy) (Babylonian Talmud Niddah 31b). For my wife and myself there is some truth to this teaching; mikvah night has become a kind of monthly second honeymoon.” – “A Fresh Look at the Mikvah” By, Michael Gold
“How does G‑d expect us to stay married if he programmed us to crave the pleasure of a fresh relationship?
There is a manual for this program. It’s called the Torah. In it G‑d tells us to keep to the cycle of family purity. G‑d says, for two weeks don’t have a physical relationship with each other. Don’t even touch each other. During that time you are not romantically available to each other. You are not ‘entitled’ to his (or her) physical affection. Nothing is taken for granted.
You relate cerebrally, yet you yearn for a closer relationship, and it’s just not available. Sure you’re still married. You still talk about your day and plan tomorrow. But you can’t experience physical intimacy. It’s almost like dating. You relate cerebrally, yet you yearn for a closer relationship, and it’s just not available.
And then you go to the mikvah and you can reunite. The first touch after two weeks of separation is charged with sensation. There’s an innocent excitement, even after all those years together. You walk around with a secret twinkle in your eye the morning after.” – “Continual Newlyweds: The Power of Mikva” By, Rochel Holzkenner
“A great positive exists in relation to conjugal relations. Since a husband and wife are forced to be separated for at least 12 days a month, the couple experiences a virtual honeymoon every time the wife returns from the mikveh. It is anecdotally well known that couples who keep mikveh report a new zest in their relationship. This is so true that after pregnancy (during which the niddah cycle is interrupted) couples report to Rabbis that they eagerly anticipated the return to the separation periods and the monthly “honeymoon” which the niddah laws provide.” – ”The Mitzvos of Mikveh” By, R.L. Kremnizer
The last quote touches upon an exception where a couple deviates from the two weeks on/two weeks off cycle. When a woman is pregnant, she doesn’t use the mikvah. Also, when a woman is nursing a baby and not menstruating, she doesn’t use the mikvah. If a woman has had a hysterectomy and no longer menstruates, she doesn’t use the mikvah. Also, after a woman reaches menopause, she ceases mikvah usage.
At the end of the day, the purpose of the laws of niddah have to do with being ritually impure due to menstruation, and not with providing couples a blueprint for a good sex life or a happy marriage. If the latter were the case, every couple, no matter the wife’s ability to menstruate, would have a two weeks on/two weeks off schedule.
The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine published an interesting life expectancy chart, marking the expected life span of 15 year old women in England and Wales from 1480-1989:
The theory of niddah creating a monthly separation throughout the entirety of a couple’s marriage was certainly more achievable when pre-menopausal women only lived until a maximum age of 48, than in 1989 when her life expectancy rose to 79 (in 2014 the age of life expectancy for women hit 81).
Making a generic example, if a married woman enters menopause at the age of 50, and she lives until the age of 80, that means that she and her husband will be living without a monthly mikvah honeymoon renewal for 30 years of their marriage!
A married Jewish couple could very well live longer together without the laws of niddah than they did with the laws of niddah pre-menopause. Despite this reality, virtually no marital books on orthodox Jewish sexuality account for this situation. Perhaps intimacy is supposed to end when periods do?
Today, due to the same factors that have led to increased life expectancy (e.g. better nutrition, healthy exercise, and improved medical care), both women and men are more vibrant in their later years than ever before. Additionally, for those that need a little extra oomph, Viagra and estrogen therapies have helped many couples retain their libidos.
If an enforced separation is so vital to the health of a marriage, why aren’t loads of post-menopausal couples getting divorced? If being off limits to each other half of each month is the secret to an exciting intimate life, doesn’t it follow that older couples whose marriages do not revolve around the niddah cycle have stale sex lives?
Those of us who still experience a monthly horizontal honeymoon should enjoy it now, because apparently we are looking forward to a 30 year post-flow sexual famine later – suffering the same supposed fate as those couples who never observe the laws of taharas hamishpacha at all. Is this the lesson to be learned? I guess we’ll all find out eventually.
