Emotional Affairs: When Closeness Becomes Destructive – Part 2
Now that you know the danger signs of being in an unhealthy emotional affair in Ellen’s first blog, what do you do now? Hear three key steps that Ellen gives on moving toward repentance and spiritual health.
Go deeper on this subject in Ellen’s blog: Emotional Affairs: When closeness becomes destructive—Part 2
Emotional Affairs
God has given us, as his image bearers, the desire and capacity for deep relationships with people. However, because of sin and personal brokenness, each of us is capable of relational compromise.
I like the way Pastor Scotty Smith says that we all need the gospel to keep us sane, centered, and satisfied. There are so many lonely husbands, wives, lonely singles who are prime targets for a fling, for an affair. They’re aching, yearning, reaching for a few minutes of pleasure to medicate months, years, maybe even a lifetime of disconnect and emptiness. It may never become physical, but emotional affairs offer exhilaration bordering on intoxication, an intoxication that can lead to addiction, and an addiction whose GPS is set on our destruction.
[On screen: the Scotty Smith quotation, credited “Scotty Smith blog, The Gospel Coalition, ‘A Prayer When Feeling Relationally Vulnerable'”]
If you’ve realized through the diagnostic questions from Part 1 of this blog series that perhaps you are involved in an emotional affair, there’s a way out. Jesus not only has a way of escape; he is with you to give you courage, resolve, and comfort as you let go of a relationship which has become very important to you.
1. Confess the Emotional Affair
First of all, you must confess the sin of this relationship to God, and to your spouse if you’re married, and I would say to at least two trusted and spiritually mature friends. Proverbs 28:13 says this: “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” Believe in both the sweet and sober promises which this verse has for you.
2. End the Relationship and Turn to God for Comfort
You need to break off this relationship and prepare to grieve. God wants to pour his comfort into you. This is going to hurt, but Jesus will meet you in the loss and pain, and he is relentless in his call that we would have no other gods before him in our life. Obedience to him and trust in Jesus is our foundation and is the most important step. If you can’t remove yourself from being around this person due to circumstances, then you need to have very specific accountability. Invite loving meddling from others in your life when your thinking is clear, and ask those friends to not back off, even when you are MIA.
3. Examine Heart Issues
Finally, what do you need to pursue more radically now with your spouse, with trusted friends, with spiritual leaders and mentors? What are the heart issues that made you vulnerable in the first place to this relationship? You know, because God loves us so much, because he loves you, he wants more than behavior change. He’s actively seeking a work of transformation in your interior world of desires, thoughts, motivations, and your will.
David said this in Psalm 16: “Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.’ I say of the holy people who are in the land, ‘They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.’ Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.”
God does want to give you relationships which are a delight to your soul. But he remains our true refuge, and apart from him, apart from his ways, we have no good thing. Trust him as you let go of this relationship. And the promise from later on in Psalm 16 is that you will experience fullness of joy in his presence.
