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this past week has been very scary. i have come to terms with my carnal nature or to paraphrase: “my sexual-mindedness”. i have taken lightly my sexual-minded permissiveness until i realized that if i continued along the same mindset that i would lose my fiance.
when i first began dating my fiance over 2 years ago i didn’t feel ready to see just one woman. finally, 2 years later, i have come to realize i have to break thought patterns that cause me to be carnally minded or i will lose my fiance. i didn’t think it would come to this but it has. it scared me to think i’d lose the woman i love because i couldn’t control my thoughts and feelings in regards to other women i found myself attracted to.
i admit i have looked at pornography and i am realizing that that is exactly what is feeding the carnal mind and that is what i have to stop doing. i have a wild sexual imagination and that too i have to curtail. But at least now i have hope and i believe i have things i can do to stop the old thought patterns that are causing me to feel fearful of losing a special someone.
anyone else go through these kinds of things ?
Sincerely,
Mike (BeLikeChrist)
Mike (BLC) thank you for your post. What did you mean by:
Quote:i believe i have things i can do to stop the old thought patterns that are causing me to feel fearful of losing a special someone.
If it’s too personal, than you don’t need to respond. I need to understand more before I respond further.
Mike from Milton.
Most of you know my story, the challenges in my marriage, and sure, I was attracted to other woman, and felt emotionally involved (although it never went physical, thanks to both of us at different times) with one woman in particular during the difficult period. To get over it? Run like He_ _ whenever you feel tempted. Go do someething else, change position, and take a deep break. Move to a new set of surroundings. Use cold facecloths (sorry if that’s TMI), and rely on your fiance after you get married for some kind of relief. I agree that you should stop getting near porn. You can put safe search on Yahoo if that’s your search engine, and also google so you don’t inadvertently run into content that triggers desire. Also, when you’re tempted to do something that feeds the desire. Say to yourself (whether you believe it or not). “I’M NOT DOING THAT”. I say that to myself even now but it’s in relation to eating since I’m on a weight loss program. So far, only one minor infraction in 3 months. When I feel tempted to eat something I say “I’M NOT DOING THAT” to myself and then walk away.
The action, the motion, tends to pull the spirit along the path your conscience is trying to beckon you. At least, that’s what I do.
The other thing you can do is start visualizing a time when you walked away from temptation. Visualize how it felt after you walked away — the strength, the self-respect, etcetera. Couple that with action and you find yourself in that same state of self-mastery you achieved last time you walked away.
I wish i could say i agree with what has been posted. but I don’t. i don’t think one can supress sexuality or the feelings thereby. I think we need to understand our sexuality, and as the feelings come up, decompose them, embrace them: not to action per se, but rather, to stop and investigate why we’re feeling the feelings, and get to the cause of them. Only by embracing the cause of our sexual temptation can we be free of it. That said, we are sexual, and some degree of thought is going to happen. i don’t think it wise to feel guilty about it, or to feel compelled to act on it, to relieve the ‘tension’. What if I said that sexuality and the thought is divinely inspired, but that the act degrades the thought? to transform the thought into a higher thought, to recognize the full sense of humanity my thoughts embody — this, to me, is to be enlightened. In other words, when I take delight in my sexual thoughts for the brief moment to realize the entertaining value of them, and then to laugh them off as I would a television commercial and move on… I don’t need to buy the product in the commercial, and I don’t need to act on the thought. I am free.
Another item I would be VERY careful about in the posts above. I do not think in morally right or maritally prudent to ‘seek relief’ in my partner. While i think it important to meet the needs of the other person, seeking my own sexual gratification at the expense of another is wrong. love and the sexual expressions thereof are freely given and freely received, but never taken.
I apologize if my words offend — i just feel strongly, from personal experience, that repression of sexuality, and seeking relief through marrying young and using one’s spouse is a bad formula for happiness.
I actually agree with wayfarer about this. While I do think avoiding porn is important for someone who borders on (or is fully in) addictive sexual tendencies, I don’t believe in denying sexual tendencies or seeking to “suppress” them. I believe in transferral when it comes to things like that – as wayfarer has said. I think a change in view and focus works, where a sheer effort of will doesn’t.
My heart goes out to you, and I hope and pray you can find a way to be successful in what you desire.
BeLikeChrist wrote:this past week has been very scary. i have come to terms with my carnal nature or to paraphrase “my sexual-mindedness”…i have taken lightly my sexual-minded permissiveness until i realized that if i continued along the same mindset that i would lose my fiance…
when i first began dating my fiance over 2 years ago i didn’t feel ready to see just one woman.finally, 2 years later, i have come to realize i have to break thought patterns that cause me to be carnally minded…it scared me to think i’d lose the woman i love because i couldn’t control my thoughts and feelings in regards to other women i found myself attracted to…i admit i have looked at pornography and i am realizing that that is exactly what is feeding the carnal mind and that is what i have to stop doing…anyone else go through these kinds of things ?
Personally I think trying to eliminate your carnal nature and thought patterns completely is basically impossible and there is no lasting cure for this so the best you can do in most cases is simply try to control it enough to stay out of serious trouble. I cheated on my girlfriends in the past and I still feel bad about it but once I was engaged I thought it was time to settle down and stop messing around. Once I was married, the whole idea of cheating sounded much worse to me than before in terms of the guilt I would feel, the stress involved with trying to hide a secret relationship, and the risk as far as what could go terribly wrong.
Of course, I also haven’t had to work that much with very many women so far so at this point I would have to really go out of my way to pull a stunt like that because it wouldn’t just be a casual relationship that starts out innocently. On the other hand, porn has been much harder for me to avoid because it is so fast and easy to access and hide and on top of that I never really believed it was that bad or harmful to begin with even when I was a TBM. Basically, I rationalized that my wife just didn’t understand so I thought the easiest thing to do about it was to lie and hide it because what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. If I ever get divorced I definitely wouldn’t feel very good about marrying someone else that thinks porn is so serious and vitally important to avoid because it has been a nightmare and I hate pretending to agree with things I don’t.
earlier i said:
Quote:i believe i have things i can do to stop the old thought patterns that are causing me to feel fearful of losing a special someone.
the old thought patterns i am talking about that are making me fearful of losing a special someone is– dwelling on sexual desire of women i am attracted to
– thinking it is ok to look at porn
i guess what initially scared me was that i didn’t see a way i could stop the thought patterns. i just saw a “cause” and “effect” relationship in regard to where i felt my thought patterns were leading me. i didn’t realize until after some “pondering” that there were things i could do to stop the dangerous path i was on. once i realized there were things i could do to stop the thought patterns that were causing me to feel “hopeless” about the “momentum” my thoughts and sexual feelings were taking me or leading me, i began to have hope.
– i deleted porn pics from my pc
– i realized i could stop getting sexually worked up about women i found attractive who i was coming in contact with
those two steps above was all i needed to stop the same old thought patterns that were causing me to feel fear.
for the longest time i didn’t think it was a big deal to look at porn or to dwell on a woman’s physical attractiveness – but i saw a problem coming down the road of my life if i continued on that path of permissiveness and i realized if i didn’t get off it someway or somehow i was going to end up losing a really good woman in my life. in other words i snapped out of my “carnal-mindedness” and realized the damage it could lead me to.
All i can say is “Hallelujah !” and thankfully i “snapped out” of carnally-minded thinking that was leading me down a path of unhappiness.
i think the kind of thinking i had fallen into is probably a pretty common thing for some men(maybe some women) to fall into. why do celebrity men end up cheating on their beautiful celebrity wives ? probably because of the same type of thinking patterns i had fallen into ! of course these gentleman probably have temptation way worse than i do and are in contact with women who are simply excited about the man being a celebrity – a double whammy that makes it even harder for them to resist temptation.
i do agree with a lot of what you guys said above. SD you had some really good strategies to fight temptation. I liked the strategy you suggested of remembering how it felt to overcome temptations in the past.
i guess in my situation it wasn’t so much what i remembered what GA’s were saying in past conferences about keeping your thoughts clean that got me thinking about my carnal nature. it was more because of a practical life situation. did i really want to lose my fiance to my own infidelities ? that was when i needed to do something to get off that wrong path that i was taking.
The thing is what you do isn’t who you are. In writing about man as evil, vile, carnal sensual, and devilish and that the natural man is an enemy to God and has been from the beginning the BoM prophets betray their calvinist roots. It’s an interesting way of looking at things but not the only way. I personally like the more positive approach from psalms about man being a little lower than the angels… Coming to peace with our less-enlightened nature seems to be a long and complex process. I don’t think we can control our thoughts. I am not sure we can completely control what we do with our thoughts. I dobelieve though that the struggle creates a tension that propels enlightenment. It seems like as long as we view it as a war, it is spiritually violent and damaging. Sure, we win some battles, take some hilltops here and there, but losing THAT war is inevitable. I mean specifically seeing it as a war between the body and the spirit. There’s no escape from the procreative instinct. Well … for the vast majority anyways. I suppose there are some asexual people out there, but that doesn’t really create the solution. It’s just a different problem IMO. We can’t escape. Procreation is a key survival instinct. It’s right up there with wanting to find food and having shelter as far as being expressed. It will be expressed in some form — functional or dysfunctional.
In the end. I really think we all need to take a chill pill when it comes to sexuality. I think I understand the roots of the “rules.” There are a lot of long term potential consequences for people, from children they can’t support, to disease, to unwanted advances (to name a few). I think we lost our way among the rule book and worship the rules over the reasons. IMO, it’s helpful to split that back apart. And again, we need to cut ourselves some slack (like no, it isn’t better to be dead than to lose one’s “virtue,” etc.).
Mike, I really like what you said in your last comments, because it points out that you found the motivation – the reason – that works for you in order to redirect your instincts and change your patterns. It sounds like you realize it’s not the instincts that are the problem – and that the solution isn’t suppressing those instincts. It’s accepting the instincts and refocusing them, if you will. Quote:anyone else go through these kinds of things ?
I went through my Endowment thinking how attractive the woman who played Eve was. Is that even allowed?!
Seriously, I’ve taken this vow of chastity, but I’m still very much prey to my physical urges. Not much is likely to happen in the near future, but who knows.
I’ve also had attraction ?problems to female missionaries (never acted upon!) and twice I’ve come across nice looking women in the church, and then discovered they’re married.
Brian Johnston wrote:Coming to peace with our less-enlightened nature seems to be a long and complex process. I don’t think we can control our thoughts. I am not sure we can completely control what we do with our thoughts. I
dobelieve though that the struggle creates a tension that propels enlightenment.
the great paradox of enlightenment is that it isn’t sought for or achieved. It’s a realization of the unity of all things. Struggling with one’s nature stems from dualism and dualistic thinking, as GBSmith notes, derived basically from calvinism and the total depravity of carnal nature. I’m not sure that such dualism and the tension created thereby propels someone to enlightenment; it seems like the answer almost always is to run away from one dual and embrace the other. I think Chuang Tzu says that this is like preferring all yang and no yin, and this is clearly not possible.The way is made by walking it. Some people get it upon embracing the way, others take a while. It’s not really a long and complex process; it comes in a moment, and can be gone in the next. Holding on to it, retaining the peace of mind that unity provides — now that may take some practice.
Brian Johnston wrote:It seems like as long as we view it as a war, it is spiritually violent and damaging. Sure, we win some battles, take some hilltops here and there, but losing THAT war is inevitable. I mean specifically seeing it as a war between the body and the spirit. There’s no escape from the procreative instinct. Well … for the vast majority anyways. I suppose there are some asexual people out there, but that doesn’t really create the solution. It’s just a different problem IMO. We can’t escape. Procreation is a key survival instinct. It’s right up there with wanting to find food and having shelter as far as being expressed. It will be expressed in some form — functional or dysfunctional.
Abraham MaslowBrian Johnston wrote:In the end. I really think we all need to take a chill pill when it comes to sexuality. I think I understand the roots of the “rules.” There are a lot of long term potential consequences for people, from children they can’t support, to disease, to unwanted advances (to name a few). I think we lost our way among the rule book and worship the rules over the reasons. IMO, it’s helpful to split that back apart. And again, we need to cut ourselves some slack (like no, it isn’t better to be dead than to lose one’s “virtue,” etc.).
I’m not sure LDS Christians can set aside the self-condemnation that arises from negating our natures. I say LDS Christians, because of the triple-whammy of Augustinian contempt for sex (he considered it the original sin, promulgated by women as if it were a venerial disease), calvinist total depravity, and LDS puritannical views of sexuality. Such a trifecta becomes a perfect storm, and it’s very difficult to set aside all these messages.BeLikeChrist wrote:…there were things i could do to stop the dangerous path i was on…
– i deleted porn pics from my pc
– i realized i could stop getting sexually worked up about women i found attractive who i was coming in contact with
those two steps above was all i needed to stop the same old thought patterns that were causing me to feel fear…for the longest time i didn’t think it was a big deal to look at porn or to dwell on a woman’s physical attractiveness – but i saw a problem coming down the road of my life if i continued on that path of permissiveness and i realized if i didn’t get off it someway or somehow i was going to end up losing a really good woman in my life.in other words i snapped out of my “carnal-mindedness” and realized the damage it could lead me to…All i can say is “Hallelujah !” and thankfully i “snapped out” of carnally-minded thinkingthat was leading me down a path of unhappiness. I hope you’re right and all you really need to do to overcome your distress is to just think about it differently and stop doing this. In my case, I proudly declared victory over my low-brow instincts many times only to have them return with a vengeance. For example, on my mission it wasn’t that hard to control my thoughts most of the time but that didn’t last very long after I got home. Then after I was married I thought I shouldn’t need to view porn anymore but that didn’t stop me for long. After that, being afraid my wife would leave me over this scared me enough to stop for a while a few times but that didn’t last very long either because I always thought I could get away with it without her knowing about it. At this point, I’m starting to think this is just who I am like the saying, “what you do when no one is looking defines you” and if my wife can’t deal with that then it looks like we are headed for disaster. I don’t really know what to do about it anymore because just saying no hasn’t worked very well so far and I am really starting to resent the fact that I am expected to say no in the first place.
this is kind of a personal message – i remain concerned that the attempts some of you are trying to do here will fail, for they certainly did for me. i do not look at porn any more, and haven’t for some time. Not because I exclude it, but simply don’t want to do so. I say this not to be better, but to say that this was a result of a process.
For me, all techniques I tried to suppress sexuality simply resulted in a return to them with a more virulent interest. It’s really strange that way — the more I supress, the deeper the sin, or so it occurred.
The same was the case for me with alcohol. The more I avoided it, the worse my binges returned, years ago. Any
permanentcommitment to avoid something usually results in the same: a return to it with all the associated guilt and blame. It’s really rather ugly. In AA, the statement is usally said, ‘what we have is a daily reprieve, contingent upon a fit spiritual condition’. this leads me to a better process, in my impression. First of all, i think it’s essential to decriminalize (de-sin-ize?) porn and addictive substances, at least for my own sake. Human sexuality and enjoyment of the human body in all of it’s nude glory is not sin by itself. Exploitation, lust, uncontrolled desire leading to uncontrolled action — these are wrong, but not sexuality or nudity itself. When I define sex, sexual words, nudity, or art as being pornography, I bring the bar across into the natural, and in doing so supress natural and god-given characteristics.
Hence, for me, avoidance is not the answer, but rather, acceptance of a moderate level of enjoyment of the human body, of sexuality within bounds, and of good-hearted fun takes the sin aspect of pornography away. Watching most R rated movies is part of this — i find almost nothing purielent in most R rated movies, and enjoy the drama, the fun, and a lot of serious lessons learned therein. More importantly, I have needed to demystify the human body and act of sex: I’ve had to come to an understanding of the beauty of nature’s most significant act. I celebrate it.
On the other hand, there are bounds: most of what could be considered hard-core pornography never is found in R or even NC-17 movies. Hard core pornography is an industry that exploits and demeans, and for moral reasons well beyond sin, i find it contemptable. By changing my frame of reference from ‘sin’ to what I consider legitimate morality, I have no desire whatsoever in participating in hard-core porn. but you know? when I drew the bar to none, eventually I even tolerated and enjoyed a progressive level of hard core porn — which ultimately really shocked and shamed me. When the bar is drawn too hard, the result of such supression is much worse than I ever thought possible.
So a sexy book, words, thoughts — yes, if that results in arousal and (god forbid) masturbation, this I allow and have no issue with. If I see a beautiful woman, or if I think one of the ‘eve’s in the temple movie is attractive, I’m not inclined to go to bed with her (as if…), but I don’t consider the appreciation of beauty sin. I enjoy it, am open about it with my wife, and don’t apologize–and in so doing, it doesn’t have any hold at all on me. It hasn’t been easy to get here and reprogram all those past feelings of guilt, but I find this place much more desirable than when I condemned myself over and over for natural human failings.
so there is a paradox here. When a fence around the law makes it impossible to feed one’s soul, the fence comes down, and then what? Where then are the limits? Jesus taught a different standard — he tore down the fence, and replaced it with love and acceptance. To my mind, fear of sexuality is often tied up with a lack of true self love. When I love myself, celebrate my sexuality as a god-given creation, then what need is there for a cheap substitute?
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