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3. Sexual Attraction (Desire), and Conjugal Attraction
In virtue of their complementarity, the sexes naturally experience an attraction to each other that does not always take the form of a physical desire (though, as we have mentioned, unbalanced desire may in our present state be just below the surface). Ability to appreciate and admire well-developed masculine or feminine characteristics is a sign of growing human maturity. As young people meet in the context of normal social friendships between men and women, more particularized one-to-one relationships develop in response to what could be called the "conjugal instinct" or attraction. In its essence this "instinct" is more spiritual than physical; in the Christian understanding it corresponds to the natural desire for forming a committed and exclusive life-long partnership with a spouse.[70] As the conjugal instinct inspires two persons in preparation for marriage, it leads them to avoid any physical relations that would express a permanent union which they have not yet freely and mutually ratified. This is the human and anthropological sense of premarital chastity. Once they are married, their physical conjugal union becomes the conjugal act which, when realized in a human way, gives true and unique expression to their spousal relationship. In participating in it in its full significance, they express their marital chastity.