R
RoyNeary2001
Guest
I know not where to go with this struggle other than to remain anonymously further in hopes of some solace and comfort.
I struggle with sexual tempation for a very long time. I am a 43 year old virgin man who is hardly pure from falling into doing things from masturbation to fooling around without intercourse. This past weekend was the closests to almost losing my virginity, but could not come to doing so, mostly out of anxiety and emotional difficulty. I still felt the lure with enough drive to become involved.
I am discouraged and depressed with frequent flights of lust out of this mental-emotional state.
I lack the trust and confidence in the Church as the intermediary of truth and grace to help me cope with this struggle. I felt as if the Church was never there for me in the beginning to evangelize and catechis me in the faith, so as to learn about my sexuality in transformative union of it. I have had to pick up bits and pieces of knowledge about sexuality through a very difficult period of my life when so alone and isolated with this struggle. I never felt abandoned by the Church, until scandals in the media made me even more ashamed and frightened. Once the scandals arose, I began to feel more angry for the Church’s absence or omissions during a time when I began to develop bad sexual habits in masturbation and pornography. I only had recourse to justifications that sex was natural and pleasurable, but still only experienced it alone in shame and embarassment.
I had not much success with relationships with women over a period. I had more women friends than dates or girlfriends. I fell in love with one woman friend after she was dumped by her boyfriend. But she was rebounding from that loss and hurt, by sleeping with sex buddies, and then coming to me about it to talk as a friend. I was embarassed and jealous. My heart was blown apart by the passion of it all.
Other friendships with women were comfortable because there was no pressure, since most of women have known would involved in bad relationships before. I felt comfortable without crossing any boundaries of sexuality and intimacy. I was going along well enough to view women as other persons too, rather than objects.
Yet, I could not further deny my need for love, and the accompanying feelings of sexual desire, and the shame and embarassment for having them. I have learned from the work of Catholic therapist Dr Conrad Baars, that there are conditions where emotional repressions occur. Certain feelings like fear repress other feelings like desire, burying feelings below conscious level. Such feelings then manfiest themselves in various ways according to individual dispositions. The will is not able to guide and direct the feelings adequately because the repressing emotion intervenes due to false education from culture and upbringing.
If the will is not nurtured and strengthend, then it cannot have the efficacy as should. Thats the whole point of a lack of formation in the faith, amongs the confusing and bewildering claims for truth in the culture about God and Christ’s way.
I feel sadly deprived, where my emotional repression has been dissipating, and the sexual desire cannot be adequately be directed and guided by a weak will and poor conscience. I cannot see clearly through the smog of scandal to have confidence of any help within the Church, since I never really felt like belonging to it beyond the formality of receiving Confirmation in obedience to family and conformity to friendships outside of Church too.
Many within my family who were Catholic, my elders and relatives, have fallen from the faith, and are either not practicing it, or just going from one denomination to another. Meanwhile, I agonize about converting but finding it very burdensome with the doubt and insecurity.
The sexual scandal in the Church, and the tempest surrrounding it only exacerbates the inner tension within me, where I feel compelled to satisfy my sexual desires, but realize deep down, I really need to feel loved and desirable. I have always desired a girlfriend so much to love me, and didnt realize that this was a manifestation of an absence of God’s love in my life that was not filled within the Church.
I do not want to swing back and forth between mutual exclusivity by repressing my desires and love for women, and striving for some ascetic ideal that borders on a librarian monkish existence. This desire for life and love within me is strangling me emotionally and spirituallly. I need so much, but feel the frustration and despair given the circumstances. Anything more to say will just be rationalization without truth. I just need confidence, which is not in me hardly at all, and I need help so much. I am so ashamed to be hiding safely here online to find someone to trust.
I struggle with sexual tempation for a very long time. I am a 43 year old virgin man who is hardly pure from falling into doing things from masturbation to fooling around without intercourse. This past weekend was the closests to almost losing my virginity, but could not come to doing so, mostly out of anxiety and emotional difficulty. I still felt the lure with enough drive to become involved.
I am discouraged and depressed with frequent flights of lust out of this mental-emotional state.
I lack the trust and confidence in the Church as the intermediary of truth and grace to help me cope with this struggle. I felt as if the Church was never there for me in the beginning to evangelize and catechis me in the faith, so as to learn about my sexuality in transformative union of it. I have had to pick up bits and pieces of knowledge about sexuality through a very difficult period of my life when so alone and isolated with this struggle. I never felt abandoned by the Church, until scandals in the media made me even more ashamed and frightened. Once the scandals arose, I began to feel more angry for the Church’s absence or omissions during a time when I began to develop bad sexual habits in masturbation and pornography. I only had recourse to justifications that sex was natural and pleasurable, but still only experienced it alone in shame and embarassment.
I had not much success with relationships with women over a period. I had more women friends than dates or girlfriends. I fell in love with one woman friend after she was dumped by her boyfriend. But she was rebounding from that loss and hurt, by sleeping with sex buddies, and then coming to me about it to talk as a friend. I was embarassed and jealous. My heart was blown apart by the passion of it all.
Other friendships with women were comfortable because there was no pressure, since most of women have known would involved in bad relationships before. I felt comfortable without crossing any boundaries of sexuality and intimacy. I was going along well enough to view women as other persons too, rather than objects.
Yet, I could not further deny my need for love, and the accompanying feelings of sexual desire, and the shame and embarassment for having them. I have learned from the work of Catholic therapist Dr Conrad Baars, that there are conditions where emotional repressions occur. Certain feelings like fear repress other feelings like desire, burying feelings below conscious level. Such feelings then manfiest themselves in various ways according to individual dispositions. The will is not able to guide and direct the feelings adequately because the repressing emotion intervenes due to false education from culture and upbringing.
If the will is not nurtured and strengthend, then it cannot have the efficacy as should. Thats the whole point of a lack of formation in the faith, amongs the confusing and bewildering claims for truth in the culture about God and Christ’s way.
I feel sadly deprived, where my emotional repression has been dissipating, and the sexual desire cannot be adequately be directed and guided by a weak will and poor conscience. I cannot see clearly through the smog of scandal to have confidence of any help within the Church, since I never really felt like belonging to it beyond the formality of receiving Confirmation in obedience to family and conformity to friendships outside of Church too.
Many within my family who were Catholic, my elders and relatives, have fallen from the faith, and are either not practicing it, or just going from one denomination to another. Meanwhile, I agonize about converting but finding it very burdensome with the doubt and insecurity.
The sexual scandal in the Church, and the tempest surrrounding it only exacerbates the inner tension within me, where I feel compelled to satisfy my sexual desires, but realize deep down, I really need to feel loved and desirable. I have always desired a girlfriend so much to love me, and didnt realize that this was a manifestation of an absence of God’s love in my life that was not filled within the Church.
I do not want to swing back and forth between mutual exclusivity by repressing my desires and love for women, and striving for some ascetic ideal that borders on a librarian monkish existence. This desire for life and love within me is strangling me emotionally and spirituallly. I need so much, but feel the frustration and despair given the circumstances. Anything more to say will just be rationalization without truth. I just need confidence, which is not in me hardly at all, and I need help so much. I am so ashamed to be hiding safely here online to find someone to trust.