Do you struggle with romantic thoughts about other guys–how life would be so romantic with him?
We’ve been talking for the last few days about libido, and how men and women tend to approach sex differently. A number of you wrote to tell me that Monday’s post was a major lightbulb moment for you, as you realized that you were still attracted to your husband, even if those infatuation feelings were gone.
Today’s Wednesday, the day when we always talk marriage. And for Wifey Wednesday today, I invited Kelly Smith, aka Mrs. Disciple, to continue this conversation by looking at it from another angle: if those infatuation feelings are gone in our own marriage, make sure that you don’t feed them towards another guy! You don’t want an emotional affair to develop.
There’s an important warning here for all of us. Here’s Kelly:
As little girls, we have no trouble dreaming up Prince Charming.
We start with a cute guy on television and endow him with the noble character traits they read about in books. During our teen years, we dream about the quarterback or the quiet poet from across the high school classroom. While dating, we measure our prospective partners to our dream guy until we find a man who fits the description. We expect our prince to make all of our dreams come true.
Sometimes our Prince Charming turns into an ugly toad after the nuptials. Endearing quirks become annoying habits. Long talks while cuddling turn into grunts and scratches while flipping through the channels.
Married women sometimes find themselves dreaming about Prince Charming once again.
The space between unmet expectations and reality fills with daydreams about the way it could be with another man. This imaginary boyfriend could be a casual acquaintance, someone from the past, or a vision of the perfect man. Thoughts of him threaten the fidelity and sanctity of marriage.
Men have a reputation for rogue thoughts about runway models and waitresses at the wings joint.
Women, on the other hand, are most often drawn into temptation through emotion and thought.
As Shannon Ethridge says,
Men and women struggle in different ways when it comes to sexual integrity. While a man’s battle begins with what he takes in through his eyes, a woman’s begins with her heart and her thoughts. A man must guard his eyes to maintain sexual integrity, but because God made women to be emotionally and mentally stimulated, we must closely guard our hearts and minds as well as our bodies if we want to experience God’s plan for sexual and emotional fulfillment.
We can read a compelling love story, have an interesting conversation with a man, or recall a memory of a past relationship and lose our affection for our husbands in a blink.
This all-too-familiar scenario plays out more often than we’d like to believe. A friend almost lost her marriage over an imagined emotional connection with a co-worker. A cocktail of parenting, careers, and inattention led to an unfulfilling marriage. Her heart became completely dry. It only takes a spark to set dry brush on fire. Such was the case with my friend. A few kind words from a co-worker released a wild blaze in her heart and mind. What he intended as courteous conversation, she interpreted as deepening affection.
Situations like these do not have to end in embarrassing confrontations over misinterpreted signals. Like the men who avert their eyes at the first sight of temptation, we can train our hearts and minds to focus on the covenant we made,
Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.
Here’s how:
Stop Comparing Your Husband to Other Men
One of my favorite twists on an old cliche’ is, “The grass may be greener on the other side, but you still have to mow it.” This truth applies to husbands. Your man may leave his dirty socks on the floor by the hamper while my man tends to fall asleep on the sofa during movies. Quirks lead to frustrations after years together. In dry seasons, these frustrations can become unbearable. The perfect man created by a fiction author or portrayed on screen by a chiseled actor never chews his food loudly or comes home late for dinner. His perfection stands in stark contrast to our husbands’ imperfections.
Dr. Juli Slattery warns against comparison in her book Pulling Back the Shades:
The end result of living in fantasy is disillusionment, dissatisfaction, and ungratefulness in reality.
Avoid the comparison trap by emphasizing your husband’s positive traits. Think of the ways he cares for you and your family. Consider the positive things others say about him.
Never before have we had an inside look into the marriages of friends and acquaintances like we now have through social media. I have a friend who regularly posts date night selfies and sweet love notes from her husband. Through these select snapshots, it appears theirs is a marriage made in heaven. What those pictures don’t show is their history of infidelity, the reminders of past sin that will never go away, and the years they spent repairing brokenness. I want their romance without their pain. It is crucial to remember their romance grew from their pain.
Fast from Romance
Because our emotions connect with our minds, monitoring our media consumption is crucial, especially during difficult seasons of marriage. The books, movies, and music we enjoy may tempt us with an unhealthy fantasy life. Dr. Juli Slattery explains,
We know that women aren’t just drawn into books like Fifty Shades of Grey for the entertainment factor. Erotica strategically and masterfully pulls you in by exploiting what your heart secretly longs for.
Escaping an unsatisfying marriage by reading romance novels and erotica only masks our longing for intimacy. Because it cannot meet our needs, we thirst for more. We enter into a vicious, downward spiral.
In The Pursuit of Holiness, Jerry Bridges connects our thought life to external influences.
While the will is the ultimate determiner of all choices, it is influenced in its choices by the strongest forces brought to bear upon it…Therefore we must guard what enters our minds and what influences our emotions.
My children often develop a sassy attitude when they watch programming geared toward tweens. When a disrespectful tone begins to surface, it is my cue to monitor their screen time closely. The same holds true for the part of my mind reserved for romance. I enjoy a good rom-com, but when my marriage is less than its best, these movies feed the discontent. The carefully crafted, playful banter between an on-screen couple is a sharp contrast to our sometimes heated discussions about paying bills and disciplining children. If I am more dissatisfied with my marriage when the credits start rolling, it’s time to take a break from romantic entertainment.
Beware of “What If’s”
While scrolling through her news feed, a friend ran across a picture of her ex-fiancé with his wife and new baby. Although she is happily married, the “what if” thoughts began to invade her mind and attack her emotions. She began to cry.
When [my husband] is unable or unwilling to express love or passion, the struggle is to not go back to that relationship in my mind. To not relive it or to wonder what if I had married him. Would I be more fulfilled? I knew something in my heart was still off because it wasn’t a “how good for him” cry.
We cannot dwell on the perceived perfection of past relationships. That ex is an ex for a reason. We tend to look back with rose-colored glasses, remembering all of the good times. We forget the reasons that relationship ended. While it can be tempting to picture ourselves in that pretty picture, it is important to remember they have issues, too. Instead of imagining the resurrection of a dead relationship, focus on ways to live fully in your marriage.
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland. (Isa. 43:18-19, NIV)
Stay Grounded in Reality
The imagination can become fertile ground for infidelity to bloom. If like my friend, we allow our minds to dwell on innocent and not-so-innocent conversations with men, we invite inappropriate and sometimes adulterous thoughts.
Shannon Ethridge warns against the power of suggestive thinking in her workbook for Every Woman’s Battle:
We are rehearsing when we think about the conversations we would have with a particular man if we were ever alone with him, when we entertain thoughts of an intimate rendezvous, or wish that a certain man would take special notice of us… Then when Satan lays the trap and leads that man in your direction, guess what? We are more than likely going to play the part exactly the way we have rehearsed it. When we don’t guard our minds in our relationships with men, we weaken our resistance before any encounter takes place.
Our reality is our marriage. Thinking about scenarios other than our reality will either lead us to take action or feed discontent. Both pathways lead to a self-destructive marriage. No real marriage can live up to the relationship we can create in our minds.
Focus, instead, on repairing, reconnecting, and romancing. Repair any brokenness in your heart or in your relationship. Find connecting points with your spouse to build emotional intimacy. Actively pursue romance with your spouse.
The battle for your heart occurs in your mind. Protect your heart by avoiding comparisons, guarding against negative influences, and living in your present reality.
It is time to break up with your imaginary boyfriend and rediscover your husband is the real man of your dreams!
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Kelly R. Smith is a small town girl who married a small town man 17 years ago. They have three energetic children. Her favorite indulgences are coffee, reading, writing, and running. Kelly believes we are created for community and loves to find ways to connect with other women who are walking in the shadow of the cross. She blogs at mrsdisciple.com.
Let’s talk in the comments! When are you most vulnerable to letting your mind wander? What do you do about it?
This was a hard article to read. I have always struggled with my imagination. I wasn’t really taught how to use it properly and to practice controlling what I should and shouldn’t imagine about. So, I mostly thought of it as a very bad thing to have. I am now trying to engage my imagination is right and godly ways. With my marriage, we are in a hard time right now. Not in our relationship, amazingly we are very close and clinging to each other. But life is hard right now. We moved (in with my parents) for a job that didn’t continue and another job has not come as quickly as we would like. (We moved 1.5 years ago and been without a job for 10+ months). I am finding myself longing for books and movies that allow me to escape this hard time. It is so true that we have to cultivate relationship and place in life we are in and not where we want or wish to be. When I look at it from a big picture view, I am so glad we are in this place. We have grown as a couple and as individuals in every way during this time. I wouldn’t change that. Thank you for the thought provoking article.
So glad you found it helpful, Leah! It IS hard when we’re going through tough times. But it sounds like you’ve got a great attitude. Prayers for a job situation to open up soon, and for both of you to find peace in the meantime.
Thank you for sharing an example of what we can do during difficult times. Instead of allowing it to pull us apart, trials can draw us closer. It is hard to fight the urge to escape reality with mind candy, isn’t it? Praying with you for the perfect job opportunity!
Very timely. Just dealing with this same thing. I have a good marriage to a truly incredible man – in every way – godly, but also physically attractive, funny, brilliant and wise and I love him dearly.
But he has been so obsessed and busy and we are at a major transition time in our lives too where we are trying to realign our goals and expectations and lifestyle. Couple this with the fact that he always is loving and supportive but can’t really always understand me because our personalities are so different. This with his added distractions have made me feel like completely unconnected and completely unseen by him.
Enter another godly wise man, who I, and everyone else including my husband respect, we would just have a few casual conversations publicly, sometimes my husband or his wife would even be there, but we just click. He seems to really always be interested in what I have to say and laughs at my humor and seems to enjoy my company.
Well you can imagine I have been in the spiritual fight of my life to let go of thoughts of this man and to un-grip the hold that it has on my heart. And by the way, I cannot avoid this person.
I think I have turned corner, I realized in the Myers Briggs we both have the same rare temperament and ironically that helped me realize how silly I was being, I was just connecting with him because of a personality type. It just seemed to break the spell. That and of course a lot of prayer and lot of very, very hard work fighting to police my mind.
But I find I am comfortable around him now with no tension or feelings, and I think about him less and less and the thoughts are less and less inappropriate. But I am not letting my guard down because I know how quickly one can get sucked back in. Oh, and of course I really don’t allow myself to really chat with him or have many conversations with him just pleasant greeting. And when pushed into group conversations I just focus on his wife, or my husband and direct the conversation that way.
Thanks so much for dealing with this very real struggle.
I’m so glad it was helpful! (By the way, I love Myers Briggs, too. π )
Thank you for sharing your battle and your victory! It takes fierce determination and submission to the Holy Spirit to do what you have done. Keep fighting!
That was great! I have a lot of women in counseling who have trouble with their memories of old boyfriends when they listen to the old music attached to that time in their lives. When they shut that particular music off, it helps them to shut down those old attachments.
Great thought! Sometimes we have to stop things that deliberately trigger the memory.
Thank you so much for this. I’ve only recently made a conscious decision to break out of my imaginary world. While it was fun to think about, it didn’t do me any good.
Miss Khan, your new freedom will bring you so much joy! It’s hard to see an imaginary world as binding when it feels so freeing. It ties you down and prevents you from truly living.
Great post, and a lot of the wise advice applies to the person who sleeps on the other side of the bed, too. π
Well done, Kelly! We need to beware of the imaginary husband as well. It’s so easy to get stuck in the what if’s of our own little fantasy world.
I can only handle one husband! π Thanks, Andrea!
This is good, and occasionally I struggle. Mostly though, my problem is dreaming about my first love. I don’t often think about him when I’m awake. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m craving a closeness my husband isn’t willing to share with me, so in my dreams I go back to a relationship where I did have that emotional intimacy. I hate it, but I can’t control my dreams.
One thing I would like to see is a post written to challenge men to be the Prince Charming we thought they were when we got married! No armor is necessary. But come on, if we can dress nice and wear pretty underwear for them, I think it’s reasonable for them to not sit at the computer all Saturday in their underwear. Just a thought…
I actually agree! Maybe I should tell some of the bloggers who write for men to post that?
Yes! But if that happens, please link it on here so we can make sure our guys read it!
Will do!
Gary Thomas addresses men in some of his writings. Try this post: http://www.garythomas.com/christianhusbandssufferfirst/
This is a great read for single women like me also. It just goes to show that in all stages in life we can continue to struggle with contentment with where we are and what we have. Thank you so much for sharing. <3
Kasia, you are so right! A friend of mine pointed out the scene in the Disney movie Inside Out when Riley’s mother has an imaginary moment with a man that is not her husband. Hollywood gives children permission to indulge in a fantasy life. Mothers can begin to teach their daughters emotional and mental integrity to help them set up boundaries that last a lifetime.
So hard when your husband gives NO romance, no attention, etc… No excuse though. Just saying that it’s really hard when you do all the relationship work.
I am anonymous from above. That is somewhat like my situation. My husband just does not connect like that. He gives me attention as far as friendship and companionship but not really connection.
But here is the thing, another flawed person is not necessarily going to be able to meet all of your needs.
Also, this is a fallen, imperfect, and sinful world. Because of this, sometimes even legitimate needs will not be met by this world.
Think of a godly single woman who sincerely desires marriage and that may never happen if she cannot meet a godly man. Or someone with real health problems that are never healed.
Sometimes we will just have to live with unmet needs. Yes, look for other healthy outlets such as friendships. But sometime nothing will really fill that need. It may be a thorn in our side that we will bear with. But we must work on turning our hearts to God as best we can to fill us and fulfill us.
So, therefore, my focus is not on the needs my husband is not meeting that made me vulnerable to the connection with this man, but on me having a pure heart and godly life and leaning into God so that I can live a life honoring to Him.
That does not mean that I won’t try to work on improving the connection with my husband, but I know that is not the real problem and that is a distraction from the real issue which is my lack of complete dependency on God.
Anonymous, I have to partially disagree. Sure we should lean on God, but not expecting our spouse to hold up their end of the marriage is becoming a copout to save checked-out spouses from doing their part. Jesus cannot be your husband. He wasn’t meant to be. If God designed marriage and encouraged people to get married, then surely he doesn’t want us to IGNORE our marriages??
I certainly was not trying to imply that we should give a pass to someone who is unwilling to have a meaningful relationship with their spouse and just check out of a marriage.
I agree with Shelia in that we should not enable people to act poorly. And I certainly think it is appropriate to speak up if you have dissatisfaction in marriage and work on it even go to counseling if necessary.
But in my case my husband is not doing that. He has a different personality and does not connect int he same way coupled with the changes and distractions in our life.
In my response I said that I was going to work on the issues. “That does not mean that I wonβt try to work on improving the connection with my husband,”
But we cannot guarantee outcomes and no matter how great a marriage is it is unrealistic to think that a spouse will be able to meet all your needs.
In the midst of temptation this issue is your heart not your husbands failures. At the appropriate time and when your heart is in the right place you can work on the relationship.
I agree–but it certainly is hard! We do need to get our hearts right, and it is tragic when a marriage leaves you very lonely. That doesn’t mean you don’t work towards building a better marriage, or don’t draw boundaries when spouses are really acting inappropriately. But the sad reality is that staying in a miserable state, even if entirely justified, helps nobody. And going to God with our needs really does help us to see the bigger picture. That doesn’t mean that God wants us to leave our marriage where it is. Only that waiting for the marriage to change in order to feel better ourselves is really a losing proposition. I talk about this a lot in 9 Thoughts That Can Change Your Marriage. I don’t pretend it’s easy; but it is true.
I get it, I do, in theory. It’s another thing to look everyday at your husband and scream inside your head “don’t you SEE me?!?! I’m right here!!!” After talking, yelling, threatening, asking, begging, crying, talking, therapy, blah blah blah. I am finding more success and better footholds with him by following the advice of David E. Clarke in his book “Married but Lonely.” Fabulous advice, and it seems to be working even though I haven’t followed the steps exactly!
John Gottman said something to the effect of, “you’re not really married until you stop thinking about other people, including comparisons and what ifs.” I agree. As long as that door is open, even a tiny crack, your marriage hasn’t really begun. It begins when you know it’s just the two of you, working together, growing together. That, if you really do need to end the marriage, it’s not because of a third person (real or imagined) but because the marriage is toxic and you’re not safe in it.
So, if your marriage is yucky, and you know you’ve been entertaining other options in your mind, realize that you haven’t actually given marriage a chance, yet. Close that door in your mind and then the work of marriage can begin.
Or maybe we need to stop selling young girls the prince charming fantasy? Doesn’t it just seem cruel, like we’re setting them up for disappointment?
I hate to ruin Disney for people (and people do get very mad about that!), but in the typical fairy tale the girl is entirely passive and just waiting for a prince to rescue her, whereas the boy gets the adventure and the girl. Or, to make it worse, the moral of the story of Beauty and the Beast seems to be that if you only put up with an abuser long enough you can turn him into a prince.
Hello Andrea,
I know it’s a bit a late but I have never thought of Beauty and the Beast that way. That story actually reminded me of how the love of Christ saves us and changes us from being ugly on the inside to something more beautiful, loving , and kind. Belle actually calls the Beast out on his bad behavior but in a loving and strong way. She points him to something better.