Overcoming Lust...how?

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Pray the Rosary and ask Our Lady for the graces you need to overcome this.
 
“ Chastity involves lifelong processing of learning to understand your sexual urges. Often times, this knowledge comes about through sin–through engaging in sexual mistakes .”

Chastity is NOT learning, or gaining knowledge, or engaging in sexual mistakes.
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You’re being incredibly dense. I did not say chastity is anything but self-mastery. What it involves is not what it is.
Chastity is abstaining from sexual mistakes !
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Chastity is not the abstinence. It is the strength that allows them to freely choose to avoid sexual sin.
 
Spend time before the Blessed Sacrament. Get to know Him better. Let Him talk to you.
 
Yes, this!

I remember once an impure thought began to pop into my head, & almost instantaneously, an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe entered my mind to combat that thought! And it was a beautiful image of her!

Combatting an evil thought with a beautiful one…How about them apples? 😃
 
Maybe work so hard that all you want to do at the end of the day is sleep.
 
Reuben_J said:
It is not a bad thing if you do not sin because of it but direct it to your wife as a healthy desire
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not always. If your desires are bad sexual fantasies, even practicing it with your own wife, you would be committing a sin.
On the other hand we do not control our feelings, it may happen that naturally you have no desire for your wife, but that you have desires for another woman.
And finally, it can happen that your wife leaves you, for another man! in this case you will be forced to live chastity as a single, as long as your wife does not change her choice again to come back to you, or as long as your wife is alive.
So marriage as a solution to the sin of lust, has too many flaws in my opinion.
 
As a matter of interest my priest told me that he asks himself sometimes if an act has been done maliciously or out of weakness. I quite like that. There are other ways to look at things too, for example by reference to the fundamental error of determining that a persons act was due to their personality when it was most likely due to their circumstances. Again I refer to a video I watched whereby a Capuchin friar explains that when we judge we make assumptions and that actually we never really know why someone has done something unless we ask them. That only works if they do actually know why they did it as well of course.

As for God not being a bean counter, we actually don’t know that He isn’t but I think when we are told that eventually we will have to account for every act and word it’s most likely that our own souls have kept the record, I’m sure.
 
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Not sure what this has to do with Chastity?

More about culpability.

Not sure sexual sins are ever done out of malice.
 
Admittedly I wandered off the point but I was commenting on something someone else had said priorly. Apologies.

Some sexual sins have been done maliciously but perhaps not by a Catholic or Christian.
 
Daily prayer.
Avoid triggers (books, movies, websites)
If you are tempted, get up and go do something else. Go for a walk or a drive.
Remember, if you are a visitor on porn websites, someone had to make those videos. And the porn industry uses up people and discards them as I would a tissue when I have a cold.
I recently heard a very powerful sermon about porn and it’s effects on people and families. It is frightening.
 
A simple idea my priest gave me is to make a habit of asking yourself, “Is this right or wrong?” So far, I am finding this extremely helpful, as it avoids all the mind games I usually try to play to convince myself that some particular action isn’t really all that bad.

I am trying to do this not only when I am tempted to mortal sin, but in the face of venial sin as well, because I find that lust usually begins with more seemingly benign temptations and quickly escalates to much worse.

For example, if I pass a pretty woman on the street, my temptation is to steal an extra glance over my shoulder. If I ask myself, “Is it right or wrong for me to steal that extra glance?”, I am more apt to realize that the desire to steal that glance comes from a place of lust. And sometimes I might fail anyway, but the more I can resist those occasions of venial sin, the less likely I am to be overwhelmed by temptation toward mortal sin.

One caveat: I do see how this approach could be problematic for scrupulous people. You don’t want to be second-guessing every step you take, and if you have been advised that you are scrupulous, this might not be for you. But the fact is that opportunities for lust abound, especially in our culture, and those of us who have an attachment to lust need to be on guard.
 
rcwitness said:
Not sure sexual sins are ever done out of malice.
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With respect, I would argue otherwise - at least from a biblical standpoint.

Genesis 1:27 teaches us that we were all created in God’s image. From that point forward, the Bible is replete with references to the respect with which we should treat our - and our neighbors - bodies. For example, St. Paul writes that our bodies are a temple for the Holy Spirit (!) given to us by God in 1st Corinthians 6:19.

When we lust, we turn people - who were made in our Creator’s image and designed to be temples for the Holy Spirit - into objects for our pleasure. Even worse - we turn them into idols. I think it’s very difficult to argue that objectification of God’s special creation can be done without malice. Perhaps if one had no knowledge of such a thing - but Paul tells us in Romans 1 that all of us know because God made it plain to us (Romans 1:19).

Jesus puts a fine point on this in Matthew 5:28 where he tells us that when a man looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Adultery is always done with malice of forethought, ergo lust is malicious - at least according to our Lord.

Sin - all sin - is malicious. And that’s why our King hates it so much. It turns his beloved creatures into debased, wicked, selfish, idolaters. Thank God for Jesus.
 
1860 Unintentional ignorance can diminish or even remove the imputability of a grave offense. But no one is deemed to be ignorant of the principles of the moral law, which are written in the conscience of every man. The promptings of feelings and passions can also diminish the voluntary and free character of the offense, as can external pressures or pathological disorders. Sin committed through malice, by deliberate choice of evil, is the gravest.
 
Sexual sins are most usually seeking pleasure, in a manner which does harm to ourselves. It’s not maliciously hurting someone, but indirectly hurts ourselves and those objectified.

Knowledge of this increases culpability and guilt.
 
Most always. What have we to do with judging sins of non-Christians?
 
Fair enough. I suppose we have to hold loving our neighbors as ourselves in tension with how Jesus and Paul (and a whole bunch of other folks in the Bible) talk about sin. Said another way, maybe there’s a good reason behind why someone is acting in a certain manner (external pressures or pathological disorders). Jesus also said (in the same sermon no less) that we should focus on the sequoia in our own eye before we worry about the splinter in our neighbor’s.

Having said all that - I don’t think you can go wrong treating all sin as malicious and deadly. Baby rattlesnakes are cute - but they can’t control the amount of venom they inject and thus are every bit as dangerous as their parents (I think I might’ve just made that up - but you get the idea) 🙂
 
That’s another thing, rather than pluck out my eyes lest they lead me to damnation I avert my eyes. Probably an old monk trick! Admittedly it’s not always easy and I’ll be glad when fashions change again to accommodate modesty. But until they do I’ll keep my focus firmly on heaven.
 
I would argue respectfully that any time we treat people as objects, we’re harming them. Take pornography for example. If nobody looked at pornography, i.e. objectified God’s creation, there would be no money in it and therefore - no pornography. Prostitution - what if nobody objectified people by paying for sex?

Ah - but what if I just look at another person lustfully? Again - Jesus said that we have committed adultery with them in our hearts! He makes it tough to wiggle out of that one, no?

We haven’t even started talking about idolatry. Idolatry is - at least as far as the Bible’s concerned - always malicious - towards God! When we lust, we put our own pleasure on the altar instead of God. We are being malicious to the person who should be the most important being in our lives (see the greatest commandment).
 
I suppose someone can commit a sexual sin out of spite, knowing it will hurt someone. That would be malicious.

But normally, one doesn’t intentionally commit sex acts to hurt others.
 
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