SSA and emotional fantasizing

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I wanted to know if it’s a sin for someone who has SSA to fantasize about receiving only emotional affection.
For example, if someone who has these attractions fantasizes about receiving fatherly love from another man or from a male fictional character, is it a sin?

I tried to find a thread that’s similar to this one but i fail to find it.
 
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Depends on how you define “Fatherly Love”. If it stops at support, mentoring, encouragement, “I’m proud of you son” etc, with no sexual element involved, then fine.
If it crosses the line into fantasies of romantic love, cuddling, sleeping in the same bed etc then not fine.

Unfortunately, there are people who pervert the father-son or father-daughter relationship into something else in their minds.
 
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I’ll add my own life experience here (as someone who has OSA, but I think the principle is in this case the same): fantasies about receiving emotional affection can have an unfortunate tendency to morph into fantasies of a different kind.

Just a word of caution there, as a matter of prudence. Because OSA people long for emotional affection too – but it’s equally risky to fantasize about it, if one finds that such fantasies gradually turn sexual.

That’s down to your own experience and judgment though, about whether your fantasies do morph – or whether they stay strictly at the level of imagining, say, an absentee father returning and telling you he’s proud of you.
 
If you’re modifying your fantasies and removing the sexual component just to fantasize about someone you’re attracted to, aren’t you still playing with fire? I think your time would be better spent utilizing the imagination to draw closer to Jesus…meditating on the Mysteries of the Rosaries, on Scripture, etc. God the Father can give you all the fatherly love you can want.
 
Phil said:
fantasizes about receiving fatherly love from another man or from a male fictional character
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Fatherly love? It’s not a sin but if there is some sort of sexual desire or actions, yay! It is a sin.

It’s not bad to dream of fatherly love. All of us deserve it and may want this kind of love. It may sound gross for some people but God gave that fatherly love too in some way.
 
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I cannot stress enough that there is no sin in wishing and desiring for fatherly affection.

There is no sin in sexual desire either. It is an offense to act on these desires, whether by unduly dwelling on them in your mind or in your outward behavior, but one for which you may not be culpable due the reasons stated in the Catechism:
Imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullifiedby ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and otherpsychological or social factors.
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Your desires from your past (as I have read from your previous posts) will not disappear suddenly after your conversion, nor is it within your power to control them. God heals through time.

Also you must recognize that in the Church there are different personalities. Some people will read your questions about finding the Lord attractive and they will not give you an unbiased response because it is not within their personality to have that kind of affection for the Lord. Not everyone is like John who rested on the breast of Jesus. Some people would rather shake hands with Him. You may have a more intense emotional life than others, and that is good. Take other’s points of view with a grain of salt.

Everything good is found in the Lord. The Lord was and is physically attractive.

Praying for you.
 
Thank you all for your wise responses. i have been struggling with this since my conversion and my decision to live a chaste life. But in these past days i have just been having these things on my mind again.
 
Thank your for your very kind response. The problem I seen to have is that sometimes I catch me wondering if I am or not on a state of grace, and these thoughts just make me feel more guilty.
 
I’m praying for you friend. Your scruple is close to my heart. Being in a state of grace is having the Lord’s love in one’s heart. I am not God, nor your spiritual director, so judge this as you want, but I cannot imagine how someone posting on these forums for spiritual instruction and aid and trying to lead a life of conversion could possibly not be a state of grace. I have no difficulty believing that you are very pleasing to Jesus.

It is common for people with a past full of all sorts of sexual relationships to go too far in the other direction after their conversion, and begin to scruple and repress their emotions. Try to think about the words of St John XXIII: “Give time a chance!” All will be well.
 
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Phil said:
I wanted to know if it’s a sin for someone who has SSA to fantasize about receiving only emotional affection.
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No matter if you have SSA, opposite sex attratction or bisexual, we are all called to purity.
I cannot say is it sin because I cannot see your heart and I think that you should explain to priest, in all details, what you fantasize about. Only he can for sure tell you where you are.
Phil said:
For example, if someone who has these attractions fantasizes about receiving fatherly love from another man or from a male fictional character, is it a sin?
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Why there is connection between SSA and fantasizing of fatherly love? Our sexual attraction shouldn’t have impact on our view about fatherly love. When it does then it seems like there is something wrong.

I suggest you to meditate or think about fatherly love of Our Father in Heaven but with help of some good book.
We can sometimes have disordered view on fatherly love because of our experiences and wrong teachings. I have been through that.

Love of God Father cannot ever be replaced by any love of human beings. It is only perfect fatherly love that exists and it is never sinful.
Seriously, find a priest for spiritual direction. He can help you with scruples and your questions.

🙏 🙏

Here is book by st. Bernard, Doctor of Church, on The Love of God. You can read it online.

 
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