Question: I cannot believe that Jewish law prohibits making love with one's wife in daylight or with a light on in the room. Part of the beauty, excitement, and romance of the marital act is seeing the person you love and experiencing her completely. The Torah itself says that Adam "knew" his wife. How can you truly know the woman you love without seeing her?
Answer:
Knowing someone implies a deeper knowledge than mere surface appearance. Sometimes an outwardly attractive person can be filled with undesirable character traits, just as there are many physically unattractive people who possess sterling moral characters. Don't forget that the first sin between Adam and Eve was brought about through sight, when Eve saw that the fruit "was a delight to the eyes."
One must be careful to make a distinction between love and physical desire. Seeing a woman's physical beauty incites feelings of lust, not love.
"A man is not to conduct marital relations in the light, for reasons of modesty, whether by daylight, moonlight, candlelight, or electric light, etc. Married couples who conduct relations by candlelight are liable to cause problems in their offspring, even if the wife is already pregnant. In the instances when it is permitted to have marital relations in the daytime, he must do so in a darkened room whose windows are curtained, even if there is not total darkness. [This permission is only in extreme cases of need, such as when the man's urge overwhelms him, or when he notices that his wife is acting seductively and is desirous of his attention to her needs].
A Torah scholar who is modest in his ways, and who is certain not to look at immodest places, is permitted to have relations in the daylight when he and his wife are covered by a covering, but he can only do this when there is a great need. Likewise, men who are not Torah scholars, and who may come to sin (by fantasizing about other women or spilling semen in vain), may cover themselves like a Torah scholar when the room is not dark, but they must be very careful to keep the ways of modesty like a Torah scholar. The covering must be pulled over the heads of husband and wife, and reach down below their feet, so that nothing at all of them can be seen; and the covering material must be opaque, so that no light can penetrate it. If there is moonlight shining in the room, but not directly upon them, some authorities permit having relations under a cover, while others prohibit this. Therefore, it is best, right at the beginning, to shut the shutters of the windows, or the curtains, window shades, or blinds" ("Darke Taharah, Chapter 22).
From the wording of the halachah, we can see that marital relations are to be conducted in the dark. Feelings of love and excitement should stem from a deep spiritual and physical connection between husband and wife that does not depend on the more superficial, sexual arousal triggered by sight.
Our Sages understood that attraction which is based on physical beauty will disappear when the physical beauty fades. Innumerable marriages have been dissolved because the husband no longer felt physically attracted to his spouse, either because she aged, or because he wanted the excitement of change, or because he found a more physically attractive woman, or because his wife's sexiness couldn't compete with the beauty and lure of media models. Only by establishing the bond of love on a deeper spiritual level can the excitement and ever-newness of love be preserved.
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