Being Completely Faithful

Being Faithful to My Spouse

Story from student at BYU-Idaho used with permission

               A principle that really pricked my mind was the idea of being emotionally unfaithful. This really hit home to me. I have a certain guy friend who has been a huge influence in my life and will always be important to me. I could have married him, but choose not to. I love and cherish my husband and don’t doubt that I made the right decision in marrying him, but I have found myself wanting that friendship from the guy from my past. I felt myself having the thoughts described in Goddard’s book: “Why can’t my spouse be more like _______?” I looked forward to running into this guy on campus. I spoke to him occasionally on the computer.

               As I read the chapter on purity I was horrified. Tears filled my eyes when I realized that I was in those beginning stages of being unfaithful. The thought of being unfaithful to my sweetheart is disgusting to me, and yet in a way I was playing with emotional infidelity. I really loved the quote, “The grass is greener on the other side of the fence you water.” It is so true! My friendship was not bad, but what was bad was that I was putting energy into the friendship that should have been put into my marriage. I made a strict commitment to myself and the Lord that I would not share my heart with anyone but my husband and Him.  I had been thinking about my friend, worrying about him, a lot, and I decided that was the end and cut it out of my mind. My friend has other people and the Lord to take care of him. I changed my usual route walking to class, knowing that I would sometimes run into him on that route. I stopped talking to him on the computer. All of the energy, thoughts, time on the computer, everything I turned over to my husband, plus more. I am again looking for little acts of service I can do to show my husband how much I totally adore him. I am doing the things to build our relationship spiritually and to give God His place in our marriage. I want to have the greenest, most beautiful grass on the side of the fence where my husband is, and I will not let anything in to harm it. I haven’t spoken to my husband about this wake-up call, but I think he has felt and noticed the changes

I loved reading this story from our lesson this week. Being emotionally unfaithful is sometimes something that we don't think about when not being faithful to our spouses. Most of the time it just goes back to being sexually faithful but being emotionally unfaithful is what leads to that.

Looking at my marriage, my husband is the one that I turn to and always want it to be that way. It is sometimes easier to put into perspective when you ask yourself how you would feel if your husband was more dependent on another girl besides you!

Getting more fully into the sexual part of it, there was a story told by Barlow in a 1986 Ensign. He told a story of when he was a missionary and a protestant pastor let them in from the cold. He asked about many things of the Church but one of the last questions he asked took him off guard. The man asked "What is the Mormon attitude on sexuality?"

Barlow did not have anything to say and in fact choked a little on his hot chocolate. He thought his new and naive companion did not have an answer either until he spoke up and said, "We believe in it."

Still to this day Barlow can't come up with a better answer to that question. We need to teach our children the consequences of it, but also need to teach them all the good that can come from it and why we wait for our eternal companion. We need to make it easier for our youth to get along with their spouses when they get married in the future and know that Heavenly Father gave this to us to let our relationships have more joy and grow when feelings and actions are shared between two people that truly love each other.

I am so grateful for the emotionally faithful husband and sexually faithful husband. I want to be able to always get along with him in these areas.
I have a testimony that this church does believe in sexuality, but in the right place and at the right time.