Feelings of guilt due to religious upbringing

[tryit2?]

WOW people!! Thank you for the super responses! Thanks for the info sites, I will probably go there tonight, after reading here a while. Your answers and helpfulness are somewhat overwhelming to me. I can tell we are not alone. That by itself was worth the start of this thread. She should enjoy the information, whenever she gets to read it. (has to work next few nights) Keep up the info, even if it does not help us, it's got to help others like us. Thanks, TK

[flirt38]

this post really caught my attention and being an ex "Sunday school" teacher and devout Christian, my gosh I was a Bible Thumper for most of my first marriage, it wasn't until lifes tragidies (sp) got the better of me.

First I'd like to say that wow yeah, guilt does alot of damange to oneself. Having been born and raised Catholic and then conforming to Born Again, I was never sexually "available" to ANY MAN whom was not my husband or not commited to, I was a virgin till my wedding night !

I believed in my vows (however Christian my 1st hubby was, he broke them) I trusted the lord, the bible, the vows we took, the 10 Comm. Believed that to even look at another with "LUST" in your mind was lust/cheating in your heart. I beleived that to promise yourself to "THAT" one person was the way God planned.

Skip ahead 20 something years and here I am, married to my 2nd husband, who my by skock and dismay would actually encourage me to break my vow to him, "to love, honor and keep ONLY unto him", and yes through our many talks; he's re-affirmed that that his being there would make it ok, make it NOT CHEATING. BUT.......

To me, and in my mind and everything I held dear as truth of my heart, that him being there doesn't make it ok, that in some confused female Bible thumping Sunday school teaching demented way of thinking, doesn't make it ok none the less. That it actually made it worse, why??? Cause he was promoting and asking us to have a unfaithful marriage. That more so, he was willing to sacrfice and willfully break our vows to each other for the sinful "fun" of "Coverting" and allowing his wife to be "Coverted".

Does anyone understand what I'm saying, your not susposed to Covert your neighbors wife.......AND as the spouse, your not susposed to allow or permit anyone to COVERT your's.

All of this was MY problems to over come. It was my baggage, and as you may have read in my Help Section Post, I didn't truly enjoy the mfm3sums we partisipated in, and it was mostly due to this being in my mind all the time. NOW I don't know what happened in the last experiment we partisipated in, I don't know. But something inside me, ME, allowed me to finally relax and enjoy the "sin-ful" pleasure another man was doing to me.

There was this peace, a understanding that the man I loved more then anything was there with me, pleasuring me, knowing that he loved me, knowing that I was STILL HIS WOMAN, that I belonged to him, before, during and after, and I would always, that I wasn't being stolen away, that I wasn't being BORROWED. That I "I" wasn't breaking my word/vow to the man I loved, nor he to me, knowing that the other man wasn't making love to me, and that I wasn't making love to him, knowing that each kiss my husband and I shared during, was OUR LOVE. Knowing that with each kiss we shared, we were again and again re-newing our vow, our hearts, our love, for one another.

FLIRT38

[pairbond]

Guilt is a toughie. We are "brainwashed" as small children by the "big people" in our lives, whether they be parents, grandparents, relatives, teachers, or whatever. We are basically ""scripted" with "rights & wrongs" by the time we are 5 years old, i.e., before we have the chance to develop logical reasoning skills, and before we would even think of questioning our "scriptors." Most of our behaviors and anxieties for years afterward, perhaps throughout our entire lives, will then be the result of how certain actions fit or don't fit with the "script" we were given as small children.

There is no way out of this mess until and unless you become consciously aware that you WERE scripted, and then analyze the script you were given, choosing to keep the parts you like and change the parts you don't like, i.e., until you CHOOSE A NEW SCRIPT. This isn't easy. For more on this, see if you can find a copy of "Scripts People Live" by Claude Steiner. I don't know if it's still in print, but you may find it at a used bookstore.

Until my wife and I separated when I was 39 years old, she was the only woman I had ever been with. In fact, my wife refused to give me oral sex, so I was 37 years old before I ever experienced that, achieved by taking advantage of her being drunk one night and practically shoving it in her face. When we were separated and I started dating another woman, one of the most difficult things for me was giving myself permission to have sex with someone who wasn't my wife! Luckily, I had been to counseling after my separation, so I had someone to discuss this with.

My current wife was also married previously, and both of us had several sex partners between marriages, so we certainly weren't "one and only" for each other, and it was obvious that was a trivial thing, since we loved EACH OTHER and that's what mattered. So perhaps it was much easier for us to accept swinging without guilt, since being "one and only" wasn't a factor.

The truth is, sex between two consenting adults is a WONDERFUL thing, in which each person willingly both gives and receives one of the great pleasures in life. I fail to see any "sin" in something that is consensual and mutually pleasurable. On the other hand, I see a LOT that is "sinful" about the way some people, and some CHURCHES, try to manipulate people with guilt! To me, that is tantamount to emotional abuse.

In the end, you have to evaluate your own "script" and choose your OWN values, and in the process reject externally imposed standards.

I'll never forget what a counselor said to me once when I was in college and struggling to find a major, or even what I wanted to do with my life. I went to the Campus Counseling Center, and the guy said to me, "Think of your mind as a huge warehouse, bigger than three football fields. Then think of the walls of that warehouse, with every square inch of those walls covered by pictures hanging on the walls. Our job is to determine which pictures YOU hung on those walls, and WHICH ONES WERE HUNG THERE FOR YOU!" Those words of wisdom made all the difference in the world to me, and have stayed with me even now 40 years later.

[BradAndJanet]

Originally Posted by pairbond

...I'll never forget what a counselor said to me once when I was in college and struggling to find a major, or even what I wanted to do with my life. I went to the Campus Counseling Center, and the guy said to me, "Think of your mind as a huge warehouse, bigger than three football fields. Then think of the walls of that warehouse, with every square inch of those walls covered by pictures hanging on the walls. Our job is to determine which pictures YOU hung on those walls, and WHICH ONES WERE HUNG THERE FOR YOU!" Those words of wisdom made all the difference in the world to me, and have stayed with me even now 40 years later. ...

Man... I love that! I hope you don't mind if I steal it.

-B

[Elusive BiFem]

An absolutely excellent post, pairbond. Thank you!

- EBF

[pairbond]

Brad, feel free to steal that thought! I'm just happy that I can pass it on and hope it will be useful to you and many others. - Jim