Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Memories – forgetting those things that are behind, especially past sex thoughts Counseling Solutions

Memories – forgetting those things that are behind, especially past sex thoughts Counseling Solutions

Link to Rick Thomas

Memories – forgetting those things that are behind, especially past sex thoughts

Posted: 18 Oct 2011 09:05 PM PDT

Andy had an active sex life during his college years.

One of his relationships lasted for two years.

Her name was Shelley.

Many assumed that Andy would marry Shelley.

After he graduated and took a job in another city, his pace of life picked up and Shelley slowly drifted from his mind and his life.

Enter Trina

Once he settled into his new career, new apartment, and became more of a local, he eventually began to think about companionship again.

Trina was a colleague and though he was initially turned off by her, being with her each day softened his heart toward her.

Trina liked him from the beginning and was persistent in her own sly way about getting that first date.

Andy did not have a long line of girls seeking him out, so he went on another date with Trina. …and then another. …and then another. Though he wasn’t that interested in her, it was something to do and she was a girl.

Before long people were making similar assumptions as they did with Andy and Shelley. Andy didn’t mind. He loved the idea of romance and fun because it brought back memories of a good time in his life, a carefree time.

And Trina was better than nothing. Living in an apartment alone was never that appealing anyway. So, he hung with Trina. Soon they became inseparable and he even began to like her.

Five years later

Andy and Trina were married. They stayed in their careers and were working long hours. They eventually bought a fixer-upper. They put off children, saying they were not ready for the “next big step.”

Unbeknownst to Trina, Andy’s commitment to her was not that deep. He “loved” her, but was more committed to his job than his wife. The kinda sweet things he initially liked about Trina were becoming annoyances.

But because of his lack of commitment, he could mostly put the disappointment and annoyances out of his mind.

Besides, he had a fall-back plan. He loved his job and was on the rise, a promising new star in his company. Deep down though, he was not happy, especially with Trina.

It is one thing to date, but he never realized the commitment and the ever-present attachment of marriage. Even with all of these good things coming his way through his job, there was a growing emptiness along with a desire for less attachment to his wife.

Memories

Andy was set-up for personal struggle:

He had a superficial commitment to his wife
Without a deep commitment, her annoyances were magnified
His job was fun, but not satisfying
Because his relationship with Shelley was broken due to the move, her “perfect” ways remained alluring

Andy was a Christian and he knew even though he was self-centered, God was somewhere in his mess and he was wrong to struggle the way he did. Therefore, he went to talk to his pastor to get help for the secret thoughts that he could not shake.

He gave his pastor the scoop, which is what you have just read, and his pastor began to address some of the significant areas in his life that needed to change.

Doctrine of sin in relationships

Many times when a person dies young or younger than expected, the person can become fixed in time, in a perfect kind of way. JFK was such a person. His life was cut short and to many people he is one of those “near perfect” American icons.^[1]

People ignore his womanizing and poor politics. He was on the move, up and coming, and then suddenly, by an assassin’s bullet, he was tragically frozen in time.

Because of his early death and a lack of technology that was unable to tell the whole story of JFK, he is generally remembered in a perfect kind of way.

That happens with people who are frozen in time and their true selves do not become known or popularized. Shelley was like this to Andy. She was a lover who was frozen in time because of their innocuous break-up and permanent separation.

This made her frozen in Andy’s mind. They had a fun-filled relationship that was mostly problem free because they were in college, drinking in the party scene, rocking out at football games, and enjoying timely breaks from each other.

Andy had his life and Shelley had her life. They came together for two to six hours a day, but not every day, and when they did come together, they had fun. The life he lived with Shelley was not real world.

The life he lives with Trina is real world. With Shelley, it was a fantasy world. With Trina, it is reality. Andy finds it easier to think about the fantasy than his present reality.^[2]

And because his relationship with Shelley was prematurely terminated, they did not “go the distance” by entering into the challenges of relationship building through marriage. Therefore, all of his memories are good, which is why they are so appealing.

If he truly understood the doctrine of sin, he would know that Shelley is a sinner too. Just because what they did as friends and how they went about doing it, did not challenge their patience or “love” for each other, it does not mean that Shelley is the better gal.

Both Shelley and Trina are sinners …and Andy is too. It’s not as perfect as he would like to believe.

This is the temptation with many men and women in poor marriages or marriages struggling due to past memories. They either think about a past relationship or dream about a future one and begin to believe that the grass is greener on the others side.

They blind themselves to the statistical reality that second and third marriages are more than likely to end in divorce than their first one. In such cases, their view of sin is trumped by their lust for self-centered relational gratification.

Lack of relational aggression

Whenever a person struggles with past thoughts, in the way that Andy was, it’s a sure-fire clue that there is a lack of aggressive, other-centeredness in the current relationship.

Andy’s pastor pointed this out to him. Andy knew it, but he was not willing to be honest about how he presented his thought life to his pastor. He liked Shelley better because of how Shelley made him feel.^[3]

Let’s think about the Gospel for a minute: suppose Christ picked who He wanted to be with based on how the person made Him feel (Romans 5:8). If so, then there would be no Gospel. He would be like all of the other gods from all of the other religions: we would have to merit His love.

Andy’s wife has to win his heart, rather than Andy winning his wife’s heart. The Gospel is the opposite of how Andy functions in his marriage. Christ won our hearts rather than expecting us to make Him happy first.

Christ had relational aggression because it was not about what He could get out of the relationship primarily, but what He could pour into the relationship. This is not how Andy thinks.

I know, I know…he says, “I love Trina.” To a degree and in his own way, he does. But he does not love her according to the Gospel. That is why her “annoyances” are so annoying to him.

He has forgotten that Shelley is a sinner too
He has forgotten how Christ loved him

Our minds are not victims that hold us captive. We choose what we put into them. Andy is stuck in a fantasy of the mind that satisfies him while he lives with a woman who cannot compete with his fantasy.

What he is doing is also the essence and the snare of pornography for a man. Porn is largely a fantasy world of the mind, where perfect people, with perfect bodies perform for the addict.

Andy has not been careful with his thought life. He finds himself slipping away to that fantasy world, even during board meetings. As time goes by, he grows in his disdain and acceptance of the real people in his world, especially the imperfect ones who are the closest to him.

This is why Andy needs to shake himself violently, while reorienting his mind back to the Gospel.

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. – Philippians 2:3 (ESV)

Andy has set-up rivals in his mind: Shelley and Trina. The former one he likes and the latter one he is growing in resentment. The bad news here is that the latter one is his wife. He needs to repent.

One of the ways he can repent is by reading the rest of the Philippian text from above, which talks about how the Gospel came to become just like us in order to save us from our sins (Philippians 2:5-11).

Andy needs to spend every day of his life asking the Father to purge his mind of self-centered thinking and to give him an affection for his wife. He needs to fall in love with his wife.

The only way he can do this is by first coming to terms with the Gospel.

What did Christ do for you?
Did you deserve what He did for you?
Why did He do what He did for you?
Ask God to give you the empowering grace to do for your wife what Christ did for you.

Historical revision

Our thoughts are not accurate. That’s a bottom line truism. We skew our thoughts. How many times have you been in a situation where you were recounting history and someone else, who happened to be with you during that historical moment, and had a different perspective than you?

We should approach the historical moments in our lives with humility. Let me make two absolute statements–universal truths–to help us to get our minds around this idea of historical revision:

You are not omniscient - Though this may be disarming to you, it is true. You do not know everything. Only God knows everything. Andy thinks things would have been different with Shelley.

He is wrong. He is dead wrong. Andy is a sinner. Shelley is a sinner. There would have been their own unique version of dysfunction in their relationship if they were married.

You are not infallible - You are fallible in your thinking. What you thought was true, may not have been true. You and I view things through a skewed lens and the lens is always skewed to our advantage.

If we consistently seek our advantage in things, don’t you think it would also be true in how we think about things? Of course it would. We are loyalist, who are loyal to ourselves. This self-centered realism will affect how you think about your past.

I remember a number of years ago having a conversation with my brother about our childhood. It was interesting to hear his perspective. At one moment in our conversation I thought to myself, “Was he even in my childhood?”

The way he talked about our life together and the way I thought about our life together were, at times, not on the same planet.

Here’s the point for Andy: he needs to hold his past humbly and with suspicion. The humble heart holds things loosely. The proud heart is inflexible. To be inflexible in your past thoughts can lead you into a mental trap.

The will of God

The only way you can know with absolute assurance the will of God is by looking in the rear view mirror. What I mean is that you cannot know what God’s will is for the future, but you can know what it is by looking at what has happened.

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.

Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. – James 4:13-17 (ESV)

The future is unclear, but the past is certain and we now know that God wanted Andy to marry Trina. How do we know this? Because he did marry Trina. I do not know all the particulars regarding how he came to that decision, but I do know he came to it and that is God’s will for his life.

Dreaming, hoping, thinking, and maybe even strategizing about another relationship is arrogance and a blatant dismissal of God’s will for Andy’s life.

He needs to know this and he needs to respond to God through humble repentance. God led him to Trina.

So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. – James 4:17 (ESV)

If he will humble himself to these truths and mightily pursue God and his wife he will begin to experience a change in his thought life (Matthew 22:36-40).

It will be key for his pastor to address the secret motives of his heart. There will be levels of dishonesty, hypocrisy, and cravings that will keep him “hooked on a feeling” from his past that he really does not want to let go.

Gollum called it, “My precious.” He really, really, in his heart of hearts, did not want to let go of the ring of power.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. – Philippians 4:8 (ESV)

^[1] John Lennon is another. ↩
^[2] Laziness is another issue you will have to address with Andy. As you examine his life, you will more than likely find laziness in other places than just his thinking habits. ↩
^[3] You will have to explore a gut-level honesty with Andy. He may even be self-deceived about this, thinking his motives are pure and not tainted by self-serving sin. ↩

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