Picture a Puritan couple hauled before their church congregation—not for having too much sex, but for having too little. In 1632, a Massachusetts court excommunicated a man named James Mattock for "denying conjugal fellowship unto his wife for the space of two years." The community wasn't embarrassed to discuss this. They were outraged on behalf of his neglected wife.

Everything you think you know about Puritan sexuality is probably wrong. These supposedly joyless religious zealots actually believed that passionate, frequent marital sex was a sacred duty—and that denying your spouse pleasure was a punishable sin. The real Puritan bedroom was far steamier than the stereotype suggests.

Here's where it gets deliciously ironic: Puritans promoted enthusiastic marital sex precisely because they took sin so seriously. Their logic was brutally practical. If spouses weren't satisfied at home, they'd be tempted to seek satisfaction elsewhere. Better to have couples enjoying each other thoroughly than risking adultery, which could damn souls for eternity.

Puritan minister William Gouge wrote extensively about the "due benevolence" spouses owed each other—and he wasn't talking about polite conversation. He meant physical pleasure, freely given and enthusiastically received. Another minister, William Whately, described marital sex as producing "a sweet contentment in each other's arms." These weren't private journals; these were published sermons meant for entire congregations.

The theological framework actually elevated sexual pleasure above mere procreation. While Catholics of the era technically permitted sex only for baby-making, Puritans argued that mutual satisfaction was itself a spiritual good. A married couple enjoying each other's bodies was actively doing God's work by strengthening their bond and fortifying themselves against temptation. Sex wasn't just permitted—it was practically prescribed.

Takeaway

The Puritans remind us that attitudes toward pleasure often serve practical social purposes beneath their moral language—societies regulate desire not because pleasure is inherently wrong, but because they fear the chaos of unregulated desire.

In an era when most of the Western world considered marriage absolutely indissoluble, Puritan New England offered something radical: divorce for sexual failure. If a husband couldn't perform his conjugal duties, his wife had legitimate grounds to dissolve the marriage. This wasn't theoretical. Courts actually granted these divorces, and the community considered them just.

The case records are startlingly frank. In 1686, Mary Drury successfully divorced her husband after testifying he was "always unable to perform the act of generation." The court didn't blush. They investigated, confirmed, and freed her to remarry someone who could actually fulfill the marriage contract. Women's sexual satisfaction was considered legally protected under Puritan law.

This wasn't feminist enlightenment—the Puritans were thoroughly patriarchal in most matters. But their theological commitment to marriage as a complete union, spiritual and physical, created unexpected protections. A marriage without sex wasn't really a marriage at all. It was a fraud upon the spouse who'd been promised intimacy. And fraud, the Puritans believed, deserved remedy. Women trapped in sexless marriages could escape them in ways their Catholic counterparts in Europe simply could not.

Takeaway

Religious strictness and personal liberty aren't always opposites—sometimes intense moral frameworks create protections and rights that more permissive societies fail to guarantee.

Now for the genuinely uncomfortable part. Puritans believed your sex life was everybody's business—because your soul was everybody's responsibility. Neighbors testified in court about bedroom sounds. Ministers counseled couples on frequency. The community felt entitled to know whether marriages were being properly "consummated" on an ongoing basis.

This sounds horrifyingly invasive to modern ears, but the Puritans had a coherent logic. They'd built what they called a "city upon a hill"—a model Christian community whose collective salvation depended on individual virtue. Your failing marriage wasn't just your problem. It was a crack in the spiritual armor of the entire colony. A sexually frustrated spouse might commit adultery, which would bring God's judgment on everyone.

The surveillance worked both ways, though. Community involvement also meant community protection. Wives whose husbands neglected them had witnesses to call upon. Husbands whose wives refused intimacy had recourse beyond suffering in silence. The total lack of privacy came with total accountability. Whether this trade-off was worth it depends entirely on your values—but the Puritans found it perfectly reasonable. Your bedroom door was never fully closed because your neighbors' souls hung in the balance.

Takeaway

Privacy and protection often exist in tension—communities that know everything about you can help you, but that help always comes with the power to judge and control.

The buckle-hatted prudes of popular imagination never existed. Real Puritans created a sexual culture that was simultaneously more permissive and more invasive than anything we'd recognize today—demanding pleasure within marriage while demanding everyone know about it.

Their strange combination of enthusiasm and surveillance reminds us that every culture's sexual rules serve social purposes beyond the bedroom. The next time someone invokes "Puritan values," you'll know exactly how little they understand what those values actually were.