3
The Faces Behind Sexual Fantasies
At least a couple of times each week, I go on a four-mile bike ride along a nearby community trail. I pass dozens of people along the way, always announcing, “Passing on your left,” as a courtesy and to avoid a collision.
Occasionally I’ll approach someone walking along and think, Hey, do I know that person? But I simply can’t tell from the back. So as I pass by on my bicycle, I glance sideways to see the person’s face. Only then will I recognize him or her as a familiar friend or complete stranger.
Looking into people’s faces is the only way to identify them, and the same is true with our fantasies. However, there are several faces to consider, not just the object of our intimate thought. There are five faces we need to examine if we are to fully understand the multiple layers of our fantasies: Satan, the object, the archetype, the self, and God.
While it’s easy to assume that all of our sexual fantasies are simply Satan’s way of attacking us, let’s be real. Sometimes Satan doesn’t need any help. We are perfectly capable of falling prey to inappropriate fantasies on our own. Jesus said that evil thoughts come not from outside ourselves but from within our own hearts (Mark 7:21). But it is so much easier to pass the buck and blame Satan, isn’t it? That way we don’t have to take responsibility for our own thoughts and actions.
Although Satan is definitely responsible for many sexual distortions, which we will discuss in a moment, let’s not be paranoid enough to think that there is a devil waiting for us behind every bush. I have learned that Satan and his band of demons are limited in size and strength. Their population has not grown because demons are not physically capable of reproducing themselves.
Satan and his demons are not omnipresent or omniscient like God is. In other words, they can’t be everywhere at all times, and although they may be able to see our actions, they can’t read our minds or know our innermost thoughts. We can rest secure in the truth of 1 John 4:4, that “He who is in you [God] is greater than he who is in the world [Satan]” (NKJV).
However, we can’t make the mistake of completely underestimating Satan’s power. Let’s recall how quickly he made his move to mess things up for us and how our sexuality was his prime target.
In Genesis 2:24–25, we see how God gave Adam and Eve the perfectly sublime gift of their sexuality, and He gave them free rein to fully enjoy one another’s bodies without guilt, shame, or inhibition:
So a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one body.
The man and his wife were naked, but they were not ashamed. (NCV)
God’s first step toward fulfilling His divine, overall plan was forming the heavens and the earth, providing a place for mankind to dwell. His second step was the actual creation of man and woman, marriage, and sex. This pattern and plan would produce what God longed for most—people to whom He could reveal Himself and with whom He could be in relationship.
But it didn’t take long for Satan to try to build a very different kind of relationship with these same people. In the very next chapter we see Satan slither into the Garden of Eden with a crafty plan to confuse Eve first, then Adam, about God’s expectation that they should not eat from the tree of knowledge (Gen. 3:1–6).
Scripture tells us that once Adam and Eve disobeyed God, their eyes were opened to their own nakedness, and they were filled with such shame that they felt the need to cover themselves and hide from God (Gen. 3:7–10). This was the first fallacy that Satan introduced into the human mind—that our bodies and our sexuality are something we should be ashamed of.
But he didn’t stop there. As the book of Genesis continues to unfold, we see Satan distorting sexuality all the more through the introduction of seven further fallacies:
• polygamy (Gen. 4:19)
• homosexuality (Gen. 19:5)
• fornication (Gen. 38:16–18)
• rape (Gen. 34:2)
• prostitution (Gen. 38:15)
• incest (Gen. 19:30–32)
• evil seduction (Gen. 39:7)
Having more than one marriage partner, engaging in sex with someone of the same gender, indulging in sex outside of marriage, having sex as an act of force, using sex as an act of bartering, being intimate with someone young enough to be your child or old enough to be your parent, using sex appeal to lure someone into a forbidden act—aren’t these the very things that most illicit sexual fantasies are made of? It’s time that we woke up to the fact that we play right into Satan’s schemes when we accept these types of fantasies as normal or simply as fodder for more intense orgasms.
Some of our sexual fantasies fall directly in line with this distorted thinking simply because we are fallen sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. However, understanding the deeper meaning behind why these activities would appeal to someone in the first place can be incredibly insightful—perhaps, even freeing, believe it or not. If that’s hard for you to imagine, the next several chapters may hold a boatload of surprises for you.
But for now, let’s move on to consider other, more obvious, faces.
THE FACES IN OUR FANTASIES
People commonly assume that when we experience a dream, fantasy, or random thought, the mental experience is really all about the persons whose faces we saw or about our relationships with them.
Who are these people invading our fantasies? That can change from day to day or even hour to hour. As we mentioned in the previous chapter, these faces are most often people other than our spouses—usually someone else’s partner, a neighbor, a friend, a coworker, a celebrity, or perhaps no one we recognize at all but more of a mysterious figure or composite image.
At first glance into our fantasy world, if we recognize the face we may panic and wonder, Why would I dream/fantasize about that person? What does this mean? But more than a first glance is needed. We fantasize as a way to fulfill unconscious psychological needs, so the actual identifiable face isn’t nearly as important as the role that face is playing in our mental scenario.
A better question to ask would be, “What role does this person play in my fantasy? What is this person doing, and why would my brain venture in that direction?”
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
Psychologists call these imagined roles archetypes, which are defined in Jungian psychology as “a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.”1
In the book Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth, Robert Johnson gives further insight into archetypes and the roles they play in an individual’s mind. There is often a war within among various characters, like the child or the mother, the knight and the fair maiden, or the monk and the drunk, and so on.
We might say that these represent human possibilities, aspects of human characteristics that are common to all.
Here we encounter the archetypes: the universal patterns or tendencies in the human unconscious that find their way into our individual psyches and form us. They are actually the psychological building blocks of energy that combine together to create the individual psyche. Here are the type of the child, the type of the mother, the universal virgin, and the universal tart, all flowing through the personality of one individual.
In our dreams [and fantasies], they join the archetypal hero or heroine, the priest, the scoundrel. Each of them adds a different richness to our character and has a different truth to tell. Each represents our own, individual version of the universal forces that combine to create a human life.2
Another way to understand archetypes is simply to imagine the faces in our fantasies as nothing more than projection screens. The roles that we assign these faces/screens come from our own collection of mental movies. So the fantasy isn’t about that particular person. It’s about what that person represents in your mind or how you recognize certain characteristics about that person that are either present (or absent) inside of you.
It’s these projection screens and mental movies that provide the richest material for coaching sessions. Many clients come to me after they’ve crossed a line, having acted out sexually with the object of their fantasy. They gave this other person way too much power and focused on the projection screen instead of the movie that was playing in their own heads at the time. Whenever you pursue another person as the solution to your fantasy problem, you’re only complicating the problem, adding more layers of emotional baggage to sift through.
Think of the nature of a projection screen. It’s an inanimate object. It can’t hurt you. It just hangs on the wall and lets you project whatever you want onto it. The screen has no preference or will of its own, so it doesn’t pose any threat or harm. If we recognize it for what it is—just a screen, and that’s all—we won’t feel the need to panic when our mental movies begin playing on it. Instead, we can focus on the movie, not the screen.
If we all treated our fantasies in such a way by taking the shock and sting out of them and recognizing the real dynamic at hand, we wouldn’t feel the need to act out inappropriately with the person we are fantasizing about. We would simply focus on the movie we are playing, not the object, screen, or face the movie is playing on.
Put another way, consider your reaction if you walked into a room and caught a teenager projecting a pornographic movie onto a screen. You wouldn’t get mad at or blame the screen, would you? No, you would take issue with the movie being projected and, more specifically, with the one who chose the movie, correct?
When it comes to our fantasies, we are the ones who choose the movie. The screen simply allows us to recognize what movie is playing. This process provides clues to the plots we are trying to project onto others, clues to the personal “soul work” that the unconscious is inviting us into.
So will you pay attention and watch and listen to your life’s movies? Will you accept the invitation to expose the deeper meaning behind your sexual thoughts and let them heal you, rather than hurt you?”
I faced these very questions over a decade ago. I was thrown for a loop by my own scary thoughts as I began involuntarily fantasizing about a particular man who lived nearby. I’ll call him Zach. This man would frequently knock on the door and ask to hunt wild game on our land. But before heading to the woods with his rifle, he’d bend over backward to engage me in lengthy conversations.
I confess, I initially soaked up the attention like a dry sponge. It felt good to have someone wanting to talk to me. It eased some of my loneliness. But it also stole too many of my brain cells and began gnawing away at my soft conscience.
Rocking in the porch swing with my husband one evening, I tearfully confessed that I had been having emotionally charged thoughts about Zach, and I asked that he make me responsible never to act on them.
Greg responded, “Shannon, you’re the one studying counseling and Imago therapy, which teaches that certain people fit a ‘mental mold’ based on your childhood relationships. Don’t you get it? Zach fits your mental mold. He looks just like your brother, and he acts just like your dad. This isn’t about Zach at all. It’s about you and your relationships with these important men in your life. Fix those, and you’ll fix the fantasy issue.”
I was stunned by how Greg had hit the nail on the head. Zach was merely my projection screen. I didn’t need to fear the screen (although he may have been projecting a few of his own mental movies onto my screen as well, so caution wasn’t a bad idea). I needed to pay attention to the movie I was projecting onto him.
After prayerful consideration I recognized the plot of my movie. Attention and conversation were things I had always longed for more of from my dad and brother as I was growing up. But letting Zach try to fill that hole instead of going to the source not only was a dangerous proposition but also, ultimately, would have been a fruitless endeavor. It most likely would have led to some sort of emotional or sexual affair, which would have made me feel horrible about myself and driven an even bigger wedge between me and the men in my life—not just my dad and brother but also my husband. No, I hadn’t lost my keys to fulfillment under Zach’s streetlight. I’d lost those in my family of origin, and that was the only logical place to search.
So instead of letting myself get caught up in conversations with Zach, I consistently kept things short, sweet, and to the point, then would walk back into the house, leaving him standing there in the yard with hunting rifle in hand, if necessary. I also began inviting my extended family over for social gatherings more often so that we could begin making more memories together and building stronger relationships.
So in a way I have to be grateful for that fantasy. It was an incredible learning experience about what my soul was really craving. It revealed to me a felt need in my life, fortunately, while there was still an opportunity to heal this hurt. Many folks never come to this realization until after their loved one is no longer alive to build a better relationship.
In addition to recognizing those other faces in our fantasies as mere projection screens, let’s look a little more closely at the common denominator among most all of our sexual thoughts—ourselves.
THE MAN (OR WOMAN) IN THE MIRROR
As previously mentioned, blaming Satan for inappropriate thoughts would be so much easier than what I am about to suggest, but if we are really going to expose the deeper meaning behind our sexual fantasies, some soul work is required.
In order to consider the roots of our thinking, we must allow ourselves to descend into the dark places, the hard places, that we (ourselves and the church) have tried diligently to avoid in the past. We must learn to live in the tension that our fantasies often create. We must identify not just the surface of the fantasy but the very source of the inner tension—in other words, why we feel the way we do about the thoughts that we have. That can be found only as we descend into some of the soul’s unexplored chasms.
In A Little Book on the Human Shadow, Robert Bly says that when we are born, we receive a long bag we drag behind us.3 We spend the first half of our lives filling this long bag full of our personal paradigms and secrets. We spend the last half of our lives removing those very things, one at a time, holding them up to the light, examining them, and trying to make sense out of them. In doing so we are sometimes able to unlearn the fallacies we have adopted along the way, becoming healthier, safer people in the process.
One of the things I believe we often put in that long bag is the notion that we are either “all good” or “all bad”—one extreme or the other. It doesn’t take much to realize that we can’t be all good, all the time, so we deduce that we must be all bad. This idea that we must exist on one end of the spectrum or the other is yet another example of extreme thinking. Such a dichotomy hearkens back to what I explained through the lion dream in the introduction to this book; we can’t be too liberal or too legalistic. We must find a healthy balance in the middle of these two extremes.
The way to remedy this dichotomous thinking is to accept the fact that we aren’t one or the other. We are both. We all possess an internal “bright light” because we are made in the image of God, but we also possess an internal “shadow self” because of the fall of man. We are a combination of good and bad, light and dark, hope and hopelessness. Our fantasies certainly reflect that, don’t they?
Ignoring this shadow self is going to have the same effect as ignoring a child who’s desperate for attention. It’s only going to get all the more unruly until it is recognized. I believe that ignoring this shadow self to the point that it demands attention is exactly what has caused many Christian leaders (and followers) to stumble and fall headlong into sordid affairs and humiliating sex scandals. What if leaders such as Bill Clinton, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Ted Haggard had paused long enough not just to ask but also to answer the questions, “Why am I tempted to act out sexually with this person? What mental movie am I trying to project onto her?”
Sometimes the smartest thing to do is stop ignoring your shadow self, turn and face it, acknowledge its presence, and say, Okay, I see you. You don’t have to keep pestering me. You have my attention. What is it that you want exactly? What are you here to teach me? How can I help you?
Whatever feelings arise, greet them, regardless of how scary or painful. Pick each emotion up like a crying child. Hold it. Attend to it. Comfort it. Befriend your shadow self rather than reject it. With this level of personal honesty, you may be able to bring into consciousness what your unconscious has been trying to say to you all along through your thoughts and dreams.
In the book Inner Work, Robert Johnson explains the reasoning behind the relationship most of us have with this shadow self:
How the shadow appears in a dream [or fantasy] depends on the ego’s attitude. For example, if a man’s attitude is friendly toward his inner shadow, and he is willing to grow and change, his shadow will often appear as a helpful friend, a “buddy,” a tribal brother who helps him in his adventures, backs him up, and teaches him skills. If he is trying to repress the shadow, it will usually appear as a hateful enemy, a brute or monster who attacks him in his dreams. The same principles apply to a woman. Depending on her relationship to her shadow, she may appear as a loving sister or as a frightful witch.4
I do believe it is possible to befriend the shadow self and bring healing into these unexplored gorges of our souls by being mind-ful of them, by giving them time and space to tell us why they even exist. I don’t believe God created humans so that we could stick our heads in the sand when we saw something in ourselves that seems scary or shame inducing. After all, there’s nowhere we can run, nowhere we can hide, to get away from ourselves or our sexuality. But perhaps we can learn to boldly face our unexplored depths, observe our sexual thoughts and fantasies, and assign them accurate meaning without getting caught up in them or swept away by them.
With the Holy Spirit’s guidance we can hold these recurring mental images outside of ourselves, objectify them, and analyze them with the wisdom of not just a researcher but the inventor. Yes, we have invented these figments of our own imaginations, and we hold the key to unlocking their mysteries.
As the author of this book, I authorize you to explore these chasms. No one else can do it but you, not even the best counselor or spiritual leader. No one else can connect the dots that need to be connected in order to recognize the big picture. No one else can accurately narrate the story that is uniquely yours.
THE FACE THAT DRAWS US
The final face we need to explore is obviously the most important— that of God. As bizarre as it may sound, I believe that if we peel back every layer of every fantasy, what we will discover at the core of our sexual longings is a much deeper spiritual longing.
What we ultimately crave isn’t an intimate encounter with flesh and blood that will eventually age and rot. That’s a poor substitute. What we ultimately crave is an intimate encounter with the eternal life-giving spirit of God. We will never be satisfied settling for less.
The pursuit of purity is not about the suppression of lust, but about the reorientation of one’s life to a larger goal.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Yet sometimes we do. We settle for what this world has to offer us in the here and now because we lose our vision of what the next world will be like— our perfect heavenly home, where unresolved pain will no longer exist and the gravitational pull of sin and separation from God will no longer have any effect on us.
And when we do settle, what is God’s attitude toward us? As He witnesses the plethora of provocative images that prance through our brains, trying to medicate the pain of being a fallen creature living in a fallen world, does His face possess a look of shock? Horror? Disdain? Disgust?
Absolutely not. To get a crystal-clear picture of God’s face as we wrestle with our sexual thoughts and temptations, we need only look to Hebrews 4:14–16:
Since we have a great high priest, Jesus the Son of God, who has gone into heaven, let us hold on to the faith we have. For our high priest is able to understand our weaknesses. He was tempted in every way that we are, but he did not sin. Let us, then, feel very sure that we can come before God’s throne where there is grace. There we can receive mercy and grace to help us when we need it. (NCV)
Did you catch that? Jesus has walked this earth, wrapped in the same hormonally charged flesh as God has wrapped us in. He’s been here, experienced that gravitational pull. He understands. He sympathizes. He welcomes us into His presence. He offers mercy, grace, and unconditional love. The look on His face is that of sheer compassion.
Seeking the Face of God Through the Body of Christ
People with sexual struggles often find it difficult to connect on an intimate spiritual level with others, but this is precisely the best prescription for understanding and overcoming any issue. Our sexual wounds originate in relationship, so we’re more likely to find healing in relationship.
But it’s easy to look out into the sea of faces filling the pews and assume, These people have really got their act together! That sweet family with six homeschooled children and a minivan, no way have they ever had to deal with any sexually inappropriate thoughts or behaviors in their holy household. That immaculately groomed guy in the finely tailored suit and shiny shoes, surely his money has insulated him from sexual dysfunction. That woman in the green polka dot dress and string of pearls, surely her husband is the only man she ever thinks about kissing her ruby red lips.
It’s easy for most people to step into any church and think, There’s no one here who struggles with sexual thoughts, feelings, and fantasies like I do. Not a single person who could possibly understand, so why bother coming here? So I can hide behind a mask and wallow privately in my personal guilt? No, thank you. I can do that at home alone.
If this is your thinking about church, I would like to confidently assure you that your impression is, quite frankly, dead wrong. Those homeschooling families often have sexual skeletons in their closets dating back multiple generations. Many of those well-dressed businessmen are dragged into my coaching office by their wives to peel back the layers of their pornography addictions. And those ladies with ruby red lips are often confessing to me that they’re wrestling with sexual thoughts and fantasies that would absolutely make your toes curl. They are really no different than any other sexual being on the planet.
We all have our struggles. We all have our secrets. We are far more alike than we are different.
I would love to wave a magic wand and completely influence church culture all over the world, making the church widely known as the Go-To Place for sexual healing and wholeness. But I am not that influential. I am one writer, with one voice.
I am ambitious enough to believe that if I can influence just one spiritual leader to open the lines of communication about all-things-sexual with his or her congregation . . . or one follower of Christ to open lines of communication with a spouse or child or friend or fellow believer, then we can truly change the world one marriage, one family, one church and one community at a time.
God recently gave me a crystal-clear glimpse into that face of compassion while I was speaking at a women’s retreat. As ladies from all walks of life worshipped together, the lyrics of a particular song struck a slight chord of regret in my heart. As we sang about longing to sit at the feet of Jesus and share intimate moments with Him, guilt from my past reared its ugly head as if it still had a place in my life. (It doesn’t since Jesus removed that guilt on the cross long ago, but it still likes to pretend on occasion.)
I whispered to God, “I’m so sorry for the way I’ve run to other men in the past, seeking to share intimate moments with them for satisfaction rather than running to You, Lord!”
A mental vision came to me of a lost little girl in a grocery store, searching for the security of her mom or dad, mistaking a stranger’s leg for that of her parent’s, wrapping her arms around tightly, then looking up and realizing her error in judgment, feeling mortified, scared, and more lost than ever, and then recognizing her real parent down the aisle and running at breakneck speed into welcoming arms.
I sensed God asking, Remember when your daughter made that very mistake? Indeed, I remembered it happening with both of my children on more than one occasion. And what did you feel toward your child in that moment, Shannon? Anger? Betrayal? Disgust? God asked. Of course not. Neither do I feel angry or betrayed or disgusted by your mistakes. You delight Me greatly by recognizing and running to Me now, and that’s all that matters to Me, our heavenly Father lovingly explained.
We often fantasize about and run toward many other sources for the comfort and solace that only God can give. And we still end up lost and longing for more than is possible on this side of heaven. But isn’t it wonderful to know that regardless of what we have wrapped our arms around in the past, God presently and will forevermore welcome us with open arms? He alone can fully satisfy the desperate desires of the human heart. Even mine. And yes, even yours.
BEHIND THE CURTAIN:
SOPHIA’S LAYERS OF LONELINESS
While Sophia was dating Simon, she absolutely idolized him. Visions of white wedding dresses and white picket fences danced in her lovesick head night and day. She couldn’t wait to become his wife, just like in the Disney fairy tales she had been mesmerized by as a child.
But as she fantasized about what married life would be like, she never dreamed of several bitter realities that eventually surfaced, such as the fact that when Simon came home stressed over work, which was often, he’d seek refuge in either his video game system or the television.
Many weeks he would waste fifteen to twenty hours engaged in these mental escapes, leaving Sophia feeling incredibly lonely and rejected. Because she had been taught to “submit to your husband” by her Christian parents, she didn’t feel as if she had the right to demand a better relationship. As her feelings of isolation and desperation grew deeper, Sophia’s brain naturally gravitated far beyond her white picket fence. She began fantasizing about some of Simon’s friends, who seemed much more mature and emotionally available in comparison. Not only was one in particular more emotionally available, but he also made himself physically available at opportune times.
“I knew in my heart that fooling around with one of my husband’s closest friends was a foolish move, but my head justified it in such a wide variety of ways:
• No one has to know.
• Even if Simon finds out, how can he blame me?
• He’d do the same thing if given the chance.
• I deserve to feel loved and desired.
• Perhaps this is my ticket out of this miserable marriage!”
Unfortunately it wasn’t Sophia’s ticket out of the marriage because the friend was so racked with guilt afterward that he stopped coming around. Another of Simon’s friends, completely oblivious to what had previously transpired (or was he?), saw that Sophia was incredibly frustrated in her marriage and assumed correctly that she must be sexually frustrated as well. He pursued, and Sophia loved the attention and made it easy for him, in spite of the fact that she knew how painful such a mistake had proven to be last time. History repeated itself, and this friend eventually stopped coming around as well. That’s when Sophia drew another close friend into her emotional void.
“After the third affair, I knew there would be no salvaging our marriage. ‘Cheat on me once, shame on you; cheat on me twice, shame on me; cheat on me a third time, it’s divorce time.’ I was so filled with bitterness and animosity toward Simon for all that he’d done—or not done!—but he also had every right to feel the same way toward me for all that I’d done,” Sophia tearfully conceded.
Although Simon certainly played a large part in causing Sophia to feel so lonely in their marriage, I challenged Sophia to consider why the fantasy of being with another man felt so overwhelming that she’d actually act on it—three times—which had done far more damage than good to her self-esteem. I wondered if she recognized how she had used her sex appeal and her body to barter for the attention and affection she craved.
“The fantasy was never as much about having sex with these guys, although it occasionally drifted in that direction, as it was about them simply wanting to be with me, to talk to me, to get to know me and find me interesting . . . no, to find me absolutely irresistible,” Sophia realized.
“Wasn’t this something you could have expected more of from your husband?” I asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t know how to fight for it. I didn’t even know how to ask for it. I assumed he should just know. But when he didn’t catch on, I chose to pout and act all passive-aggressive. It didn’t work. It just enabled him to keep his head in the TV or computer screen,” Sophia explained.
Although the temptation is always to figure out what the other person did wrong and why, it’s usually a much better use of time and energy to figure out why we act the way we do in relationships and why we fantasize in certain directions. Sometimes the only way to peel back the layers of disillusionment and disappointment is to completely get away from all distractions. Then we can more readily discover this core driving factor behind our fantasies and temptations, and we can mentally tap into our innermost thoughts and feelings about ourselves, and most especially about ourselves in relationship with other people.
I suggested Sophia take a four-day sabbatical to spend time alone with God, her own thoughts, and the hurting little girl trapped inside her adult body so she could discover her core driving factor. After completing my sentence, I literally heard her gasp for air over the phone; then there was dead silence for several seconds.
“Sophia, what are you thinking and feeling right now?” I inquired.
It took her a few moments, and then she responded, “Panic.”
“Why are you panicked? What is it about this exercise that scares you?” I asked.
Taking plenty of time to sift through her thoughts, she eventually spoke up. “I’m having a hard time breathing right now. The idea of being completely alone scares me.”
“Why, Sophia? Did something happen at some point in your life when you were left alone?”
“No. It’s just that I’ve never been alone, at least not successfully,” she responded.
“Tell me what you mean by ‘not successfully,’” I coaxed.
“I was a middle child, so there was always an older or younger sibling around. My mother didn’t work outside the home, so she was always around too. Whenever I got punished, my mom would send me to my room to be alone, but I’d pitch such a fit that she’d cave in and at least leave the door open and turn some music on to soothe me. I was a very well-behaved child simply because the idea of being sent to my room alone was petrifying to me.”
“And how old were you when you married Simon?”
“We were pretty young, but I thought I was totally ready for marriage. I think that, maybe, I married Simon so early in life partly because I couldn’t stand the thought of ever living by myself, not even in a college dorm room,” she deduced.
“And when Simon’s attentions were completely consumed by something other than you, did you feel alone even though he was in the living room?”
“That’s exactly how I felt, but I didn’t put two and two together that his emotional disconnection was making me feel as panicked as if I was physically by myself.”
“Did Simon have to travel often with work?”
“No, very rarely. But the one time he was gone overnight was when the first affair happened. I didn’t realize that my eagerness to let this friend into our house while Simon was away was more about alleviating my panic over being alone than about having sex with someone else. I don’t think that’s what I really wanted, but it was obviously what he wanted, so I went along to keep him around as long as possible.”
“So when the first friend disappeared, how did you handle that loss and the return of your loneliness?” I asked.
“Rather than sit around and stew over it while Simon watched television, I chose to go out with my girlfriends. This is how the second affair got started, when I ran into another of Simon’s friends while out that night. It really wasn’t about sex with him, either. I just wanted to keep him interested in getting to know me . . . in hanging around. Boy, did that backfire,” she acknowledged. “Now Simon is incredibly lonely, too, because I’ve scared his two best friends off by having affairs with them. I feel horrible.”
I asked Sophia if she thought history might continue to repeat itself if she didn’t get a grip on her overwhelming fear of being alone. She recognized the pattern and could easily predict that the future would be more of the same if something didn’t change in the present. “I guess I can never rely on any husband to be 100 percent physically and emotionally available to me twenty-four/ seven, huh?” she realized.
The sabbatical was incredibly difficult, but Sophia managed to spend four days alone with nothing but her Bible, her journal, and her innermost thoughts and feelings. No television, telephone, Internet, or iPod. Just she and God.
“I survived!” Sophia boasted, proud of conquering a fear that had haunted her for more than twenty years. “The first couple of days I felt like I’d come out of my skin, but as I settled in with my Bible and journal, I began recognizing how God was always with His people, constantly watching out for them, giving them victory in battle, miraculously providing for their needs, and pursuing them with His extravagant mercy and unconditional love. I asked God if He has me that squarely in His sights as well, and by the third and fourth days, I could feel His presence enveloping me like a soft, handmade patchwork quilt.”
I asked Sophia how she felt about being by herself now. She replied, “I don’t like it, but I know I’ll live through it and will hopefully grow up a lot more as a result. Until I’m okay with being alone, I’m really not okay being in a relationship with anyone else. I can’t expect anyone to know me until I know myself, and I’m going to continue looking to God for that since He’s the One who made me in the first place.”