Apology to My Readers

I try to get these posts out on a fairly regular basis (weekly), and at times it is difficult because I am also doing whatever I can to help prepare for the birth of my first child. My wife is in good health and good spirits, though she does seem to be one of the minority of women who apparently experience morning sickness throughout their pregnancies, so she is not quite as positive as she could be. (She once said to me, "How would you feel if your penis were constantly growing in size over 9 months so that you could pass a baby through it?" and I have never since had a problem understanding how uncomfortable and frightening pregnancy has been for her.)

However, the two week interval between my previous post and this one stems from something more serious: namely, a spiritual struggle I have had during the past week or so. I have never been secretive about the fact that my sexual mores before marriage were questionable at best--I was emotionally promiscuous, I dabbled in pornography (soft- and hardcore), and I even had transexual fantasies--and my wife and I have worked hard to establish a very safe, open, and honest mode of communication between us, knowing that we both came into the marriage with these issues. I still have the temptation to "protect" her by keeping things quiet--she said a couple of days ago that I have, in her words, a "real secretive streak"--just because it's the way I chose to deal with the turmoil inside of me for so many years.

Last weekend, I had some fantasies that, while pretty conservative, did not involve my wife. They were unexpected, they did not result from exposure to pornography, and they revolved around a real person (female) toward whom, until last weekend, I had no inkling of desire. I was so overwhelmed (I felt like I was being spiritually assaulted) that I had no idea how to respond, and I did not, unfortunately, refrain from masturbating.

I know that some of you reading this blog are probably shocked at the extent to which I describe the above situation so graphically--perhaps others of you are rolling your eyes, as I would have a few years ago, thinking "come on, you didn't do anything serious"--but I want all of you out there who are husbands and fathers to know that sin, even if it appears to be light sin, will be destructive to your family. I have said before that the sharing of bodies between two people also involves a sharing of spirits, and if you are masturbating about a woman who is not your wife, you are inviting spiritual turmoil into your family, and yes, you are cheating on your wife, even if only in your imagination. By allowing myself to fall, even when the spiritual assault was so great, I allowed the temptation--and the evil spiritual energy behind it--to gain a foothold inside of me, and it has taken far more effort on my part to quench it than I would have had to expend if I had refrained from giving in to it 6 days ago.

My wife knows about everything I am revealing in this post (with the exception of the identity of the person--and if I haven't yet had the heart to say it to her, I am sure not going to say it on the internet), and we have talked about how she and I can communicate better so that she can help me in times of temptation. It is, I will say, difficult to have a very strong desire for your wife and not be able to fulfill it (to the extent you want) because she is pregnant. To me, it is not a matter of "getting my leg over" as some would crassly phrase it--I love my wife, and my sexuality is truly motivated by a desire to please her, especially now when she is going through so much discomfort in her pregnancy. I take solace (most of the time) in the thought that (1) the suffering we are both going through will only last 9 or 10 months and (2) that a little personal agony is worth going through for my wife as she embarks on what is, for women, the most difficult period of their lives.



Some of you may think I am taking too much liberty in revealing so many details about my personal life and the sexual dynamics I have encountered in marriage, but the Christian community in the United States seems completely insensitive to the need for young men and women to learn from their spiritual and physical elders about sexuality and about raising a family. So few "mentoring couples" talk about their experiences in a personal way that, I fear, an entire generation of men and women will be doomed to spend their lives over the next 20 years learning lessons the hard way, lessons that could have been learned through the counsel, wisdom, and inspiration of their elders.

As a result, it falls to me and others like myself to write from a personal perspective about matters that our culture has said are best left private--even though we are not elders, even though we have, at least in our own eyes, so little to give.