Sorry for reopening such an old thread, but I have a similar situation to Caty. Sorry for such a long post, but I really hope that someone will take the time to respond and help me out because this is a really complicated situation.
I am a 23 yr old guy, a rising senior in college. I have OCD, and although I am a happy person most of the time, I have moments where I get depressed and angry at myself and the situations that I seem to be stuck in that I don't feel like I have any control over.
I have had similar thoughts to what Caty said in the sense that I have felt for many years that God was punishing me for my bad thoughts in an attempt to get me to stop thinking them. I don't want to think them, but no matter how much I pray for God to help me overcome them, and no matter how much I try to push them out of my head or ignore them, they keep coming back. The majority of the time, it has to do with having impure thoughts about various girls. Just to put it out there, I have honored my promise to God to wait until marriage. Here is my story (about this problem I'm facing)
When I was in past relationships, and I thought something lustful about my girlfriend, something bad always seemed to happen in our relationship either a few hours or a few days after my impure thought(s). The other situation has to do with when I have been single, and there is a Christian girl that is single that I have met, and I want to try to go out with her. Whenever I have been in the beginning stages of getting to know her, all the way up to the point of rejection, I would often have lustful thoughts about them. And again, typically within a few hours or a few days of thinking those bad thoughts about them, something bad would happen between us. This would continue to happen until either
1.)I asked them out and they turned me down.
2.)I found out that they were really a rotten, mean person on the inside that did not show the fruit of the spirit.
3.)They end up dating someone else before I have the chance to start a relationship with them.
Or
4)They say they are not ready for a relationship.
I have had the problem of having lustful thoughts about EVERY girl/young lady I have ever dated, and EVERYONE I have ever had a desire to date. I know that it is wrong and I don't want to do it because I know it's a sin, but no matter how much I try I cant stop. I can resist it for a while, but it always eventually happens as I get mentally weaker and more worn out from fighting off these thoughts/feelings. I am a moderately attractive guy (like a 7 out of 10, nice but not incredible physique). I am not shy and I am confident yet very respectful to the young ladies that I meet and try to develop a relationship with. Because of all these good traits, I can't seem to understand why it is so hard to find a good girlfriend right now, and the theory that I have developed (in the next few sentences) is the only thing in my mind that can explain why this is happening to me. I may have a part of me that does not believe this "theory" is true, but I can't find any other logical real world explanation to go off of. As I have noticed this pattern over the years of thinking lustfully after all of these girls, and then having problems soon afterward, I have been convinced that God was causing or allowing those problems to happen to punish me for thinking in a way that I knew was wrong, and that it was also an attempt to make me stop. Many people have told me that God does not operate/behave like that. Even though I believe it in my spirit, my mind wont allow me. I continue to have "irrational" thoughts/fears that God will not allow me to find my future wife until I am able to make myself stop this frustrating cycle of fantasies. The thought of this frustrates me further because I can't seem to stop no matter how much I want to.
Please understand that I have a deep level of faith in God and I am a lot more spiritually mature than most of the people I know who are my age, and I am NOT a perverted person, I am just a victim of my hormones. It is NOT all sexual too, I have had a deep desire for a long time to have romantic feelings with someone, to have the positive emotional side of a relationship, the feeling of being deeply loved and cared about by someone that you feel the same way about (a type of love that cannot be obtained from regular friendships or relationships with family). I know that I wouldn't have this problem if I were married, but I can't find anyone who is a good match for me that also loves God and is serious about serving Him. I feel like I am stuck in a trap because at the very time of my life where my body is in it's prime state for intimacy, I have so many things preventing me from finding a good Christian mate, while also not yet having a way to make enough money to get married. These circumstances most likely wont change for another 1-3 years, even though I wish they would change before then. I feel worse when I see friends who are married or engaged who are younger than me or the same age as me that seem to have everything falling into place for them.
I know this sounds bad, but I have always struggled with the idea of people saying that you have to learn to be fully satisfied and fulfilled with Christ alone. While I know that may be how it SHOULD be, I can't change the way that I feel. If all I had in life was Christ, and the bare necessities to survive, but I never had a wife, I would probably feel like I was sub par in my level of happiness. Honestly, if the only things I had were Jesus, the bare necessities, and a good loving wife, I wouldn't care if I had none of the material possessions that most people enjoy, but honestly, no woman would ever want to live with someone in that situation anyway. I'm just making an illustration to show you where my priorities are. People always say that you must be fully satisfied with yourself before you meet someone else, that you can't expect someone else to complete you. I understand that and I agree. I have been let down by every person I have known, so I do not expect someone to complete me or to be perfect. But that doesn't mean that I can be content being alone either. I know, I know, Jesus is always with me, so I'm not technically alone, but I still feel alone not having a companion.
Please help me figure out how to manage/fix this situation, none of the people, even elders in the church, seem to really be able to fully understand or help me. Sorry if this turned into more of a rant than anything else. It's just what happens when I open up my heart to people. I can pray to God for help all I want, but since He doesn't speak to us audibly, all I can do is wait, and claim some scriptures. Honestly though, sometimes quoting scriptures helps a lot, and other times I feel so down that it doesn't even seem to help.