What I am trying to say is that the more you try to control your emotions, the stronger they become. Sadness, and physical attraction are prime examples. The harder you fight feelings of sadness, the more painful they become. The harder you fight the physical desire for sex, the stronger that desire becomes. Your fight against it can make it so strong that your mind misinterprets it as love.

If you truly want to control your emotions and your urges, you should not try to suppress them but relax into them knowing that they are a part of what God has created in you. If you can accept them for what they are you can experience them in the moment. Even feelings of sadness, can be blessings if you know that you are safe in the hands of God and that all things work together for those who love the Lord and are call to His purpose.
Sometimes we react to physical desire by having sex, not to iincrease the pleasure, but to end the feeling. If we distrust our feelings, and if we distrust our God, we must end feelings, even feelings of pleasure. The impulse to extinguish feelings must be especially strong in adults who have been sexually abused as children because sexual pleasure must have been confused by the pain of shame. Physiologically speaking, the neurons may have established disrupted patterns which will continue to misfire unless somehow corrected. I personally believe only the power of God can correct a disrupted life.

If we fear our own feelings so much that we must end them by reacting in ways that we know to be destructive, then we are not in control at all, but we are being controlled.
But if we relax into the moment, accept the feelings for the blessings that they are, and experience them without fear we can enjoy them for the moment. If we stop attempting to sever our sadnesses, our urges, and our emotions we can move on to the love which God intends for us.

Of course you must bear in mind that this advice comes from a woman who married a guy a little over a year ago simply for sex. Yep. I admit it. We talked about it yesterday and we both agreed. It was sex that forced us to elope only a couple weeks after we met.
We were totally sex crazed and I had made a promise to God to never again have sex outside marriage. The promist came about one day when I was hurt and praying, I'm sure I heard God tell me that I was hurting myself by giving my body away. It strengthened me and I promised God to stop hurting His child (me) by doing things that I knew would hurt me.
When I met Dan I was afraid not to keep a promise to God and Dan respected that so marriage was the only option. We eloped.
We are getting to know each other physically, mentally and emotionally and we're doing it inside the marriage. I think we already knew each other spiritually.
So far, the desire increases daily and though I'm half afraid to speculate, I think it is turning to real love. Of course I think time is what determines if love is real so only time can tell.
smile

[ July 25, 2004, 12:38 PM: Message edited by: smilinize ]