Struggling with Lust AGAIN

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Hello everyone! If you look through my history, you can see that all I post about is the struggle with lust.

Well, as I’ve been surfing on my faith journey, I have found that I am becoming more religious AND more lustful. It’s really quite terrible in more ways than imaginable.

I am a freshman in college. In high school, I found the Catholic Church in a way that I can’t even describe. However, I committed the acts of masturbation and watching pornography each and every day (or at least most). I eventually stopped, but then started dating a girl who was not very firm in her restrictions. We started to go from kissing, to making out, to sexual gestures, to all out oral sex. For some reason, my brain always stated no to intercourse, but yes to oral sex. Long story short, I broke up with her because I saw what I was causing in her life and how sinful our relationship was.

Fast forward two months to freshman year of college. I’m involved in the Catholic Church here. I go to the Catholic Student Association’s meetings and attend many of the religious events held by them. I just became a Knight of Columbus yesterday, and I have been attending a FOCUS bible study regularly.

Through all of this, I struggle with masturbation and pornography at least once per week, if not more. Sometimes I don’t even slip up to pornography, but I slip up at least on masturbation. I find myself in situations where it’s convenient and my body urges me to do so, and so I cave in after some minor struggling.

I am here today to make ANOTHER commitment–and hopefully the last one–to stop my lustful behavior and become a holier man. I want to be Christ’s servant, but I know lust is holding me back. I am not currently in the state of grace, so I will be attending confession in the near future. It seems that, even though I realize that I can distract myself from caving into sin, I procrastinate until it’s too late and cave in. I am just requesting that you will all pray for me on my journey to sainthood, and I hope that you can leave a helpful comment if you are/were struggling with masturbation, not necessarily pornography.

Thank-you, and have a blessed day.
 
I think this is an area where a lot of people struggle with…females or males…
 
Hi, cwp587
I think you should go to the Confraternity of the Rosary website that is based out of Portland Oregon. If you look at the booklet section in the catalog, there is a group called the Angelic Warfare Confraternity. This group is specifically focused on chastity, you can order the packet for about $3, it comes with a lot of helpful information and is a devotion that was created for the purpose of strengthening anyone who deals with severe temptations against chastity.

I will keep you in my prayers, don’t ever give up the good fight.
 
The ability to overcome the temptations of the flesh is not in tapping into your own strength. It’s faithfully and with perseverance requesting from God the necessary grace to do so. i.e., prayer.

Lust is also not defeated by gaining an absence of any desire. Quite the opposite: it is defeated by an increase in the abundance of charity. A eunuch might lose his sex drive, but the fundamental temptation to use other people as objects for one’s own glory is still there, and if that evil doesn’t rear its head through sex, it will rear its head in other ways.

Like St Paul, we may petition to God to remove temptation from our life, and yet God permits these temptations to remain. This is because through these temptations, God sees the opportunity for rapid spiritual growth, and by crying out to God for sanctuary from these temptations, and being appalled by our own vulnerability, we flea from the even greater evil of pride. It is extremely difficult - I would say even impossible - to find a man that is supplicating to God for protection from temptations of the flesh, and for him to be blinded by pride at the same time.

I recommend St Alphonsus Liguori’s, A Short Treatise on Prayer. I think if you take this book seriously it will be an enormous comfort for you.
 
In addition to frequent Confession, Mass, reception of the Holy Eucharist, and daily recitation of the Rosary, I highly recommend joining the Angelic Warfare Confraternity and adhering to the prescribed outline of daily prayer. Please Google search this. It is a world wide Dominican Apostolate. “Fighting the Good Fight” means surrendering your life to Jesus Christ EVERY day. You are most certainly not alone in this “war” of struggle to remain chaste. I and others reading this thread agree that very much fervent DAILY PRAYER will give you the mental, physical and SPIRITUAL strength needed to eventually gain the promise of Heaven. ETERNITY IS FOREVER ! OREMUS ! :signofcross:
 
I also struggle with masturbation. although I cannot drive yet so it is very hard to get to confession 😦 just today I gave in to the temptation, after only 3-4 days after confession.
I’m not going to lie to myself it wasn’t an accident, though not entirely on purpose.
I wish that I could go to communion. Please pray for me. edit - if it is not full consent when you sin against chastity are you able to go to communion safely?
 
Hey!

My husband is 117 days porn free for the first time in his life. He’s been addicted over 20 years and throughout our marriage. He uses Reddit porn free and it’s a great community!

Praying for your struggle and healing towards it!

reddit.com/r/pornfree/

Kat
 
Take a look At my thread. You’re not alone on this. In fact, It’s quite common.
You see, lust and temptation come differently to each one of us. I’m my case, I think I’m using it to avoid engaging in real relationships. In your case, during your high school years, you were tempted by dating someone.
I think a good advice to give you is: engage in several activities. Sports, sports, sports. Voluntary work (something that makes you feel giving something to society and in peace with yourself); study groups; joining a research group (you’re there to study, right?) and dating a girl who thinks the same way you do.
There are some tips, also: if your friends send you porn videos to your mobile phone (whatsapp ou snapchat), what about leaving the group, or muting them or simply not downloading the pictures and videos?
If you see porn on your gadgets (phone, tablet, laptop), why not blocking those webpages and adding a password for accessing them?
If you occupy your mind and body with other joyful activities, you’ll succeed.
Ah, of course: pray. Liturgy of hours, mercy chaplet, rosary, daily examen (take a look at a book called Examen prayer, by Timothy Gallagher).
Meditation is also good: take a look at Christian Medidation practice (wccm.org/). It helps you focusing and become acquainted to God.
 
All the suggestions so far have been so well phrased. As someone who repeatedly struggles myself, daily, and often finds myself back in Confession only days after having receive absolution for the same sin, and who tends to fall into periods of “binges” even and other presumptive recklessness… let me share some personal thoughts on the subject.

A sin like lust only separates me from God to the extent that I persist in it. If instead I cease from it and resolve to do so even a million times over if need be, it becomes precisely the thing assuring me of just how much I am loved by God. He lets me look and see the depravity of my flesh over and over again and therefore know that when I see the imprint of the nails in His hands, I am loved to an even greater extent than I am lost (as great as that seems at times). I am convinced of God’s mercy precisely because He has convinced me through this exercise of my continued depravity. Sin is therefore an instrument of repentance because God values nothing more than contrite souls. Therefore I can say with St. Paul “Who can save me from this law of sin and death (wretched man that I am)? I thank the Lord Jesus Christ!” It seems sometimes they only reason I can say it with any degree of faith.

I’m going to repeat some advice that I also gave to others on this board, that I have learned in my experience with this sin (that I still struggle with)… it’s important to start small. If we try to take on too much, we will see the task ahead as too frightening and will resort back to lust because it is familiar and how we’re used to dealing with these deeper issues in our soul. Sometimes we need to start working on just getting into a rhythm of daily prayer and make changes to our daily patterns that always snag us (as others here have suggested). After that, it is hoped, we can then tackle the problems that cause us to flee into lust to begin with… and then perhaps start reaching out to others in our parish or elsewhere (prayer groups and such) and start to fill in the gaps in time with non-sinful things that we used to give away to sin.

A piece of scripture that I’ve found helpful in the battle against persistant sin is Jeremiah 20:9: "But if I say, “I will not remember Him Or speak anymore in His name,” Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire Shut up in my bones; And I am weary of holding it in, And I cannot endure it."

Notice Jeremiah says something about his thirst for God here that is very akin to something someone who can’t hold back their lust will often say, and indeed it’s what struck me so profoundly about it, especially the “I am weary of holding it in, and I can not endure it.” Essentially what God is trying to teach us is that our desire for God should be at least as strong and if not stronger than our desire to sin, which if you’re anything like me, can be incredibly strong, to the point where I find myself saying “I can’t endure it any longer!” The point is, after a while of struggling with temptation and subjecting oneself to the near occasions of sin, it gets to a point where the despair it casts upon every avenue of grace in life gets to such an extent that you can no longer subject yourself to it… in other words, you can no longer “bear” to subject yourself to it. It’s just too painful to keep doing it. At that point, “cutting it off” doesn’t seem so painful anymore.
 
Pray to Mama Mary to help you regarding this because She is the Mediatrix of All Grace.

You should really believe that it is the devil who is showing you those tempting images and that he truly exists. This is a very important INSIGHT to believe.
Prepare a blessed Rosary near you. Like when you are surfing the internet, have the blessed rosary beside the computer. The devil will attack you first by showing you initial images in your psyche. At that first instant get your rosary and KISS it, and make the sign of the cross! If the temptations are still strong, fight it and say the Hail Marys. Temptations like these last for 5-10 minutes so you should persevere in grace.

The devil’s last temptation to say to you is “well this is your last mast… and you will never do it again tomorrow” which is of course a lie.

Never NEGOTIATE with the devil and the dark thoughts.
Do not be IDLE like lying on your bed, it is the best opportunity for the devil to attack you…
Be virtuous in your prayers and as much as possible make some sacrifices like fasting or abstinence, alms giving to the poor to make your prayers more powerful.
 
Dear brother/sister in our Father Jesus Christ,

Good loving wishes for your path towards loving God.

I would have said the same things as TK421 and mortifiedgirl. Along with others, they said some wonderful things.

Something else replacing this habit is the best. The most effective one is pure Love.

The best place to ask for pure Love is our Lord Jesus Himself. Ask our Lord to help you Love Him more. Apart from formal prayers, as moritifedgirl pointed out, talk to (or converse with) our Lord every now and then during these days. Please do this very sincerely and truthfully.

Please pray for and to establish a (2-way) connection and relationship. Once you get to feel and taste the responses from our Lord Jesus, then you will be kind of addicted to get help from Him. Our Lord will teach you (through Holy Spirit and/or through others too) and He is the best teacher.

With a prayer and wishes.:gopray2:
 
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