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I’m
. . . married over 20 years, have [several] great kids and a wonderful
wife. Here’s the deal: For the past 27 years I have not been able to
stop thinking about my high school girlfriend. We were young, ignorant, sexually
active. For me it was an excessive love. When she dropped me at 18, I spiraled
into severe depression, anxiety, sexual addiction, and drug and alcohol abuse
for some 5 years. When I married, I was an emotional wreck but covered up
pretty well. Over the years, I have improved slowly in fits and falls but
consistently so that today I make it through my day. I am a faithful Catholic
and have tried to be during my married life.
Now, I was a very sensitive, idealistic, narcissistic adolescent, and being
rejected by my girlfriend (my world, my love!) and the pathetic aftermath
remains for me a trauma that seems to affect or define my every waking moment.
I feel like I will take this unnatural “love” for this woman (that
I do not even know) to the grave. This loss is overwhelming, and I feel like
all I can do is just try to accept it. I’ve heard of pining for someone
for a few years but never this many unless the person was a stalker type,
which I was not, so I have difficulty placing it all. I have not spoken with
anyone about it because it seems to me to be a pathetic excuse for a deep
trauma. But it has affected me that way. Have you seen something like this
before?
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 see it all the time. But anyone
who is Christian should know that love for God is
more important than anyone or anything in your life—including your own
life. Sadly, most Christians—and most Catholics even—don’t
know this. And that’s why I was told to make this website.
So let’s read Luke
14:26.
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If anyone comes
to Me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and
sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. |
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—Luke 14:26 |
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Now, hate as used here
does not mean “to wish harm to.” Instead it means “to remove
your emotional dependence on.”
And that’s why Holy Matrimony
is not based in romance. Romance is a secular
medieval literary concept that seeks emotional fulfillment in another person
to compensate for the emptiness that results from a lack of religious
faith. But if you know—and
believe—that God loves you, then you don’t
need to look for recognition through other persons. So instead of trying
vainly to fill yourself with fantasies of romance, you can . . .
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. . . know the
love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all
the fullness of God. |
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—Ephesians 3:19 |
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So if Holy Matrimony is not based
in romance, then what is it all about?
Well, imagine two small weights,
joined together by a length of string. Notice that the string joins the weights,
but does not draw them together. Now, however, if you pick up the string
in the middle and lift it up, then the two weights, drawn upward with the
string, will swing together.
That’s Holy Matrimony. In
the sacrament of matrimony, a man and a woman are drawn together when they
are mutually lifted up by God’s love through the sacramental presence
of Christ.
Holy Matrimony, therefore, is
an act of service to God, to bring children into the world for one purpose:
to lead those children to God by teaching them to love
God in the context of the love for God shared by both the mother and the
father.
Intimacy
Now don’t get me wrong here about
intimacy between a husband and wife. Even though they must not be dependent on
each other, and even though they must not seek to draw themselves together, a
holy marriage requires emotional intimacy, physical intimacy, and sexual intimacy
between the man and the woman.
Emotional intimacy
enhances all human relationships, and so it must be present in Holy Matrimony
as well, as a concrete expression of one’s mystical intimacy with
God. This intimacy is the basis for honest communication and for mutual
cooperation.
Physical intimacy
serves to strengthen the bond between the husband and wife in their service
to God. Still, contrary to popular opinion, physical intimacy does not have to involve
genital arousal and satisfaction. Hugging, holding hands, a compassionate caress, or a
kiss on the cheek are all physically intimate behaviors that can be free
of lust.
Sexual intimacy
is necessary for conceiving children. But once sexuality is stripped of its essential
procreative nature and made into a recreational sport, it degenerates into a
seductive flirtation with lust
and death that defile matrimony.
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In the book of Tobit
we learn that Sarah had been married seven times, but that as each husband approached
Sarah on the wedding night, he was killed by a demon. Guided by the archangel Raphael,
Tobit married Sarah, and because he and Sarah prayed together and renounced lust,
God’s mercy protected Tobit from the demon. |
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—Tobit 6:14–8:18 |
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Thus it can be said that the sexual
relationship with your old girlfriend has opened the door to a
demonic obsession that
has been defiling your marriage all these years.
True Christianity
So, considering all this, then,
your attachment for your old girlfriend is just a romantic
illusion you are keeping alive because you are afraid
to renounce lust as Tobit and Sarah did. You fear the consequences of loving God with
all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind. In essence, you
fear dying to the world.
I know it’s hard to
hear this because I had to hear it myself once. But that letting go is
what it takes to set
out on the mystic path to true Christianity. You simply cannot get to God
if you cling to anything in this world—whether it be another person,
a social identity, a substance (such as
alcohol or drugs or
cigarettes or
food), or wealth and riches. Christ said that
plain as day. Still, most of Catholics refuse to believe
it—and then their lives, the lives of their spouses, and the lives of their
children wobble on the brink of doom.
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