Nesivos Shalom (letter after 3 months translation by Dr. Benny Brown) The early chasidim of the previous generation, whom we were privileged to witness, had shed their sweat and blood in the struggle against permitted pleasures, in just the same way as those who struggle to refrain from the most strictly prohibited acts. They struggled more to resist a commandment that pleasures the body than they struggled to resist a transgression that gives the body no pleasure at all. The Sages had said: “He should love his wife as his own flesh,” and. the early chasidim interpreted it - but not as his own soul. When someone once said to Rabbi Avraham the Angel, who practiced strict sexual abstinence, that by this he was bound to lose his share in the World to Come, he replied: “The World to Come is worth losing in order to avoid the pleasures of This World.” Some of them would weep copiously every leil tevilah. They would repent the required [and permitted sexual act] just as one repents a grave sin, lest their bodies experience physical pleasure. They feared the kelipah [evil force] of permission more than the kelipah of prohibition. [...] and our Rebbe [the Beys Avrom], of blessed memory, told us that Rav Mikhl Sofer of Kobrin did not realize that his wife was lame even after three years of marriage. Such was their holiness. And we—what are we by comparison, whose hearts are weak and whose brains are dull?! For when the heart and the brains fail to function, the liver, where lust dwells, takes hold of the body. The boiling, impure blood overflows, and the evil inclination burns like fire, even among those who are engaged in Torah study and mitzvos all day long
Netziv (Bereishis 30:23)Rachel called the baby Yosef because she said G-d stopped her degradation According to the simple meaning all creature that have not accomplished their purpose are lacking and thus degraded in particular a childless woman. Consequently all intercourse with them that doesn’t result in children but is done for pleasure is also a degradation.
