I understand why stealing and pornography would be sins. But why would having a crush on a married person be a sin? I can see how it I sinful if you try to break the marriage up or try to seduce a married person. But I don’t see harm being done if a person just has a crush on a married person with no intention of trying to be with that person.
I see a twofold problem in this situation. :compcoff:
The first, which I only came to realize as I decided to live a chaste life, is that Love is Love. Love has no clauses, or 'if’s, nor does it need special actions in order for it to be Love - Love can be a kiss for a lover, a hug for a friend, or a
SLAP on the hand of a child. Love needs no special conditions. Love is Love period.
Our society, however, sees a difference in marital love, friendship love, family love… When you phrase it like that - a “crush” - you make it clear that what you are
feeling is not Love; it is ‘something else’. Then, our society would go to explain that something else involves
feelings, needs to touch, to kiss, to ‘love’ in a way that Love isn’t. :dts:
As I said, Love is Love period. There is not “I love X more than Y”; you either love or you don’t. You don’t get to Love your wife more just because you can touch her in a way it would be wrong to touch a friend - you Love both, and that is it;
only the WAY of SHOWING that love is that changes, but not the Love.
And, when you say you are “crushing” on someone else’s wife, that means that you want a different WAY of loving her - which, since she is married, would be wrong on your part.
When you ask for validation on your “crushing”, you are not asking for permission to think about Loving her (you can do that already) - you want permission to think about touching her, kissing her, and so on. 
uch:
The second problem I see pertains to the HARM it causes. You don’t see the harm it causes and, thus, can not see the sin. I hope I can give you a different perspective.
When you “crush” on her, you don’t necessarily Love that woman (as we also Love our friends and enemies), but rather
want something to do with her (even if you don’t pursue it). Whatever it is you want from her, it is something you can’t have, and because of this, YOU will suffer.
You will long for her, pine for her, fantasize about her - you will waste (yes, WASTE) time daydreaming, instead of using that to pursue nobler goals. Instead of finding another person to, perhaps, marry. Instead of Loving the spouse you may already have. This is suffering, this is pain caused by that seemingly inoffensive “crush”. This is how sin works.
The cure? Learn to love chastely. Learn to discern your physical/mental needs from your spiritual needs. You HAVE to Love her, but this doesn’t mean you have to dream about “what 'if’s” or just hugging her in an improper way. As innocent as it seems, you need to learn how to truly Love her, by letting go of all YOUR needs for affection.
By wishing anything beyond friendship, you are already, by default, NOT loving her. Neither are you loving YOURSELF.
What if you are the type of person who just cannot attract members of the opposite sex? …] You go home and realize nobody is yours and nobody wants to be yours. It is sad that it is bad enough you can’t attract anybody of the opposite sex but you can’t have a crush on a married person.
This has “depressed me from 2 years ago” all over the place… I felt like this, once upon a time.
All that suffering comes precisely from the misunderstanding of Love. As in, “Love as God Loved us”.
You are struggling with “lack of Love” because you are not able to recognize Love where it is: in our relationships with our friends, in our actions towards our co-workers, in our words and actions towards strangers, in our care for our enemies.
You are scared of going on without “love” because you forget the very first Commandment, the most important teaching of our faith as Christians, the Golden Rule!!:
- First and most important is that God Loves you; He loved you before you were even born, and He will continue to love you until forever. He Loved you when He created time, space and matter. He Loved you when He created you. He Loved you when He created the people you would come to meet, love and lose. He Loved you on the Cross, when he died for your sins. He Loved you in special, as an individual, with all your sins and imperfections. He loved you for you.
- Second, and no less important, that you are called to Love first God, above all else; and that, in order to Love Him, you need to Love all that He created, from your friends, to the dust, to your enemies, and all in between, including the harsh truth and the painful losses.
In fact, the Greatest Love didn’t involve hugs nor kisses. It involved a pray while in Agony in a Garden, Scourging at a pillar, a Crown of Thorns, Anguish in the way to the Calvary, four Nails, one Lance, and a Cross.
You want to truly Love that woman? Learn with the Master.
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