My husband and I have been happily married for over 25 years. (We were married and sealed in the Temple.) Unfortunately, he has had to take a job that requires him to be out-of-state for long periods of time. What are your feelings on using Skype to express our love and arouse each other and then both of us masturbating (while on Skype) to still be able to have sexual intimacy as a part of our marriage? I know it’s not very “intimate” through Skype, but sometimes that’s all we have available to us through these long periods of time. There is never masturbating alone and it is never done without both of us being on Skype. I assume it would be the same for people who are in the military, for example, and have to be apart for very long periods of time.

Julie

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Dear Julie,

I am not sure I am going to provide you with the consolation you were looking for regarding the separation you have from your spouse and the current activities you and your husband have agreed upon. However, as Joseph Smith taught, I will provide you with true principles and doctrines as given by the Lord’s servants, and then you and your husband can review them and govern yourselves.

President Spencer W. Kimball once said,

Self-abuse

The early apostles and prophets mention numerous sins that were reprehensible to them… They included all sexual relations outside marriage—petting, sex perversion, masturbation, and preoccupation with sex in one’s thoughts and talking (emphasis added).

President Kimball has also declared:

Masturbation, a rather common indiscretion, is not approved of the Lord nor of his church, regardless of what may have been said by others whose “norms” are lower. Latter-day Saints are urged to avoid this practice. Anyone fettered by this weakness should abandon the habit before he goes on a mission or receives the holy priesthood or goes in the temple for his blessings.

Masturbation is considered by many in the world to be the harmless expression of an instinctive sex drive. Teach your children that the prophets have condemned it as a sin throughout the ages and that they can choose not to do it…. The sin of masturbation occurs when a person stimulates his or her own sex organs for the purpose of sexual arousal. It is a perversion of the body’s passions. When we pervert these passions and intentionally use them for selfish, immoral purposes, we become carnal.

Masturbation is not physically necessary. There is already a way by which the male system relieves excessive spermatic fluid quite regularly through the nocturnal emission or wet dream. Monthly menstrual flow expels the female’s egg and cleanses the womb. For both sexes, physical or emotional tensions can be released by vigorous activity. Thus, in a biological sense, masturbation for either gender is not necessary. In a gospel sense, it is a sin: “Masturbation, a rather common indiscretion, is not approved of the Lord nor of His Church regardless of what may have been said by others whose ‘norms’ are lower. Latter-day Saints are urged to avoid this practice” (Spencer W. Kimball, Love Versus Lust, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year [Provo, 5 Jan. 1965], p. 22).

In my personal thoughts, I would rather wait to see my wife over a long separation, and a loving embrace, rather than spoiling it through an imitation of our love over Skype.

Sincerely,

Gramps