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An Explanation of my Male Relationships and Biblical Context
11 years ago
Hoh boy this is a touchy subject and no doubt there is going to be some amazing flak to receive for it. So I'll have to explain, wholly, what loving another guy is like for me and what it means for me to do so, as a human and as a Christian.
*loads up his Reginleif armor and hunkers in*
I just ask for your respect.
I must note that all of my relationships are built around the principles in the following journal. Not just male ones. As you will see, both are addressed here with the focus on male relationships.
My first real experience with Biblical stories (aside from the Writing on the Wall in the Book of Daniel) was of Jonathan and David. At this point in my life, where I first read this, I was maybe seven or eight and an atheist. I read the Bible literally randomly because my parents thought it would give me wisdom and make me a good person. My parents didn't know I was a closet atheist throughout most of my childhood until this year (and my dad was/is agnostic). Every night I picked a random page and started reading.
I kinda feel that this story of Jonathan and David fueled my initial perception of love. But it did not guide me until the last couple of years. Learning how homosocial and heterosexual relationships meet was a hard step to understand, but the truth is still apparent, only becoming clearer as I get older.
My parents, especially my dad, occasionally remind me of the questions I asked while I was very young. My dad, in particular, has this one as his favorite, "If everyone can do good, then why aren't we making the world a better place?" I was unable to comprehend why there were poor people, starving people or the reasons why people wanted slaves and money and fame. It never crossed my mind. It only mattered to me if I was doing the right thing to others and to whatever metaphysical 'standard'A of Good that I had conceived.
I held that other people have an unchanging worth; that other people always had value and were important. I thought that there was always good in others, even if it was buried under darkness. And to me, if people had worth, then they deserved respectB. If there was darkness, there was light. If there's light, there's hope.
Love is Sacrifice
I attended church with my mother and I hated it. I really really did. It was the absolute worst thing on the planet to me. To sit there and sing songs to Someone who wasn't listening, to speak to Someone who didn't care, and to talk about Something that in all honesty seemed clueless to our existence. But I was unable to bridge the thought that God was both Good AND Evil if He even existed. I didn't think He did. I had a master-slave relationship in that I asked for things in prayer, received nothing, and though that He didn't exist. The year as I remember praying for an A on an English quiz, getting one and thinking nothing of God anyway, was the year that I remember thinking "If God's real, why would He have to listen to me and do as I tell Him? Who am I to give orders to the Creator of the Universe?"
Around the same time I stumbled across 1st Corinthians 13:4-8:Paul, in his letter to the Corinthian Church, wrote:Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.1
That stuck with me. If I ever had a tattoo, it would be of that. I've seen one before.
That became my calling in life. I wanted to do "Good" and love others and that became my definition of love. I did not, and still do not, believe that someone loves another if they are seeking something to gain. If someone does not sacrifice honestly, then they are not truly loving.
Love is Spiritual
This segment right here is something that I have received a lot of hateful criticism for. Love, in its truest form, is not something experienced by bodies but instead by souls. I cannot comprehend any universe where love is dependent upon explicitly physical substance. I cannot imagine that it is possible for there to be a Loving Good God where love, in its truest form, is physical. If we sacrifice that love is spiritual, we sacrifice that love can be truly inherent to the normative human- meaning that it's not available to truly everyone.
The Greeks had four different kinds of love: Eros, Storge, Philia, and AgapeC. Agape, selfless love, is the love that God/The Bible refers to the most important. In essence, it is the love that drives all truly good actions, and such things do not originate from the body. Any love shared between people must have this as the foundation. If one cannot selflessly love another, they cannot truly say they love them.
The story of Jonathan and David is about two men who loved each other greatly. They formed a covenant, a promise between individuals and GodD. "And Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul."2 "Then Jonathan said to David, "Go in peace, because we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying, 'The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my offspring and your offspring, forever.'" And he rose and departed, and Jonathan went into the city."3,E
Eros may be the only love that we feel with our bodies. It is the romance aspect and almost every human experiences sexuality. I used not too, I know people who don't. Regardless, this love when pure (rare) can be great, but it can also be the largest damage to our relationships. I've come to the conclusion that lovers are no longer lovers when their sense of self has risen and they hold Eros with their partner over their Agape. This is indulging in each other for the sake of indulging, or some façade of actual love. The roadblock appears, most readily visible, when one becomes unable to have sex with their partners, they feel that they lost a greater part of their relationship. This is what I call putting stake in the temporary when the eternal is presented to us. This is the Christian argument that pride/selfishness can wreck what's beautiful. Sex, if anything, should take a backseat to the wealth you have in a eternal being who is a lover. Having pornography, as an example, is both a compromise and an indicator that sex is really what's being looked forward to, not the years of loveF. I've had people come to me and say that sex is the only way to value a relationship, and that is untrue.
I'm not saying sex is not good. I'm instead saying that God has a purpose for sex that supersedes our own wants and our own intentions. God made sex for marriage, so that lovers could start families and be unitive and creative. It is the means by which life can be produced and it is nothing lesser. We should revere our sexual natures because reproduction brings new life, new spirits to the world we have. I am unable to treat sex as anything other than that. We often think of marriage as simply being a union, in which case that is not correct. It is a covenant to God and your lover that you're willing to treat each other as you should, in all accounts, before Him. It is nothing mere in scale of human behavior. It is a permanent promise that He will hold to your word.
One of my relationships ended because he and I decided that we would be better off starting our own families. And in Biblical context, we could still share the love with each other and have families as well, as long as it didn't harm our marriages. Jonathan and David's souls were knit together, and they were best of friends4. I'd kill for that level of commitment (not literally). The line between non-sexual Eros, Storge, and Philia blurs when the Agape is what drives our love and fascination with the spirit of the other.
Love is Honest
If people love each other, then they should not be afraid to deal with the reality of each other. Knowledge is a sign of care and loveG. Loyalty becomes one of the largest issues with relationships. I've seen where people stray and it wrecks one of the partners, and I've seen some sort of inverse where the partner simply does not care about what their other partner does, as long as they come back to them. I find either case to be abusive and the second one to be taking advantage of the partner's affection. If we love someone, we have duties to them. Most notably, as a Christian, I need to serve and I need to protect, and I cannot compromise him/her.
My relationship with my last girlfriend of three years, I broke up with because I did not feel that I could remain loyal. At the time, I could not think of a way that I could maintain a relationship when I already felt so distant from her and lacked feelings. I didn't and couldn't take the chance that I would screw up somehow down the line. I was never tempted to be with someone else while dating, I'd rather die than betray my partner. I broke up because I felt that in the long run I was going to do damage to someone that I cared about. I don't know if that was the right decision, but I feel that it was better not to break her heart more by violating our relationship.
If we love someone, we should never ever betray them. Ever.
We should never ever have to ask our partners to sacrifice something that is Good and honest. Never. It will never make us abandon our beliefs about the God who created us to respect, cherish, and honor.
Love is Harmless
Love is honest and Good and can do no wrong. Anything that is truly good, will not cost us our salvation or our status as persons. I am led to believe, honestly, that nothing good comes from a homosexual relationship. We could argue to the end of the age about studies, about testimonies, and all of that, but we'd never ever come to a conclusion either way because there is too much contradictory evidence and counter-evidence. It is in my personal experience that 'bad things'H happen. I cannot endorse the behaviors because I cannot morally suggest that it's okay. I can only regard from my personal experiences and the testimonies around me.
Selflessly, Love should never be involved in cases where the morality is in question. I know that if I love someone, I'll never ask them to do something that's morally questionable. I would never ever, not even once, willingly ask my partner to gamble with their eternal life or themselves, or anything at all. And I would never gamble with my relationship.
Love is Eternal
Love is of the spirit and so love will last forever beyond our bodies. It is 'transcendental' (just meaning above the individual) in nature to us humans and it is one of the things that can bring us together. All of our sacrifices we make are going to exist forever. The love we share between us as person and the love we share between ourselves and God will be the things we carry on to the timeless eternal. Love will be between us and God and He will carry it with us to what comes next. We are all immortals. Everything we do to each other we will have to account for in eternity. Permanence has intrinsic and unquestionable worth.
The Mixing of Loves
I mentioned above that lines blur a little for someone who loves selflessly. My closest friends I'd undoubtedly say fit in Philia, Storge, and Agape. Maybe not Eros because I'm not 'romantic' with as much, just intimate and close. Eros stands out in that it deals with sexual nature and those lines should not be blurred there. But it happens and it appears to be parasitic. Service becomes 'service' (with a wink and a nudge) and becomes something else, like it's taking over the other loves. But it can also work in the other way. If someone loves selflessly enough, and their affection is really strong, Eros could be formed. It's only important to watch carefully what you do, and even though something may be agreed upon by two individuals, it may still not be right.
What it's like for me:
I'll be short. I typically get emotional highs around those that I love to the degrees that I've been considering throughout this and below. Something about the affection simply feels different. My flesh may not be in it, but my heart is, and that drives the affection on. The commitments that I make with others is what I think differentiates between just close friends and the friends who love each other mutually and intimately. I love my close friends, but whomever I'm 'dating' gets a special place in my heart, time, and mind.
RE: Future relationships
I don't see myself getting in them again. I do want to love and care for someone more than normal, and I want to feel that deep connection again. I hold relationships as a chance to show great honor to the one we love and the One who gave Himself for us. For me it's become a matter of utility because I know I'll screw up somehow in the future and then I'll damage something forever. I'm afraid to take that chance. Even hurting a friend or betraying their trust is enough to make me ill for a few days. And I love my friends a lot. I'd give my life for any of them without thinking twice. I'd do it over and over. My friends are above me and I love them too much to hurt them.
I'll admit I'm a bit of a coward, but the chances of someone loving me back and loving me honestly are null. There may be someone that I do like, but I know enough from text, tone, and association to know that it wouldn't work too well. I just don't like verifying what I already know to be true repeatedly.
Annotations:
A - Ethical Intuition. Not a moral Law, since moral Laws cannot be relative in nature.
B - This is my "Fundamental Law of Intrinsic Social/Moral Respect." People deserve respect, and without it, bad things happen. Assumes by objective meaning that 1: people have unquestionable worth & 2: love and respect are the only two things that people truly deserve. It is normative in the sense that it ought to be this way, and that we should strive towards it. This argument is within a specific scope (Christianity) and cannot be applied elsewhere without adjustments from these basic rules.
C -
Eros: Romantic love.
Storge: Brotherly/familial love.
Philia: Friendly love.
Agape: Selfless love.
D - Covenants are a big deal. A lot of the laws and rules inside Christian theology are formed in Covenants between Man and God. Marriage is an example of a covenant between and woman and a man before God, to be united in flesh and in service towards each, but with God first. Promises are important. Always have been. Always will be.
E - A lot of extraneous contradicting interpretations of Jonathan and David make the assumption that Jonathan and David made a covenant between each other before God while contradicting the Laws and morality that were the standard at the time. If this is an example of an unholy homosexual relationship, then it is really that. Both of them are married to women. If this is used as an example to try to prove that God is in favor of homosexual relationships, which it does not say, then it would be saying that a polygamous and dishonest marriage is what God approves of (not to mention what was happening regarding Jonathan and David's personal lives anyway). Frankly, that cannot happen and to argue otherwise is ultimately silly. It make no sense in any Biblical context. The need to address this is astounding that it even happens.
F - Pornography, when regarded as sin of the heart, is the same as already having done it in real life. Same thing with desires and lust running free. We defile them with our hearts and minds before anything real even happens. And this is a danger, especially, to those who want to prove their commitment. - F.2 - Pornography is damaging to the Psyche as well. It is known to produce many different chemical imbalances and cause behavioral issues.
G - Even for people like me who have memory issues.
H - I am generalizing because I do not want to talk about the things I've heard.
References:
1 - The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
2 - 1st Samuel 20:17 ESV
3 - 1st Samuel 20:42 ESV
4 - 1st Samuel 18:1 ESV
Consider this your one and only 'knitting' lecture from me.
*loads up his Reginleif armor and hunkers in*
I just ask for your respect.
Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these.” - Mark 12:29-31 ESV1I must note that all of my relationships are built around the principles in the following journal. Not just male ones. As you will see, both are addressed here with the focus on male relationships.
My first real experience with Biblical stories (aside from the Writing on the Wall in the Book of Daniel) was of Jonathan and David. At this point in my life, where I first read this, I was maybe seven or eight and an atheist. I read the Bible literally randomly because my parents thought it would give me wisdom and make me a good person. My parents didn't know I was a closet atheist throughout most of my childhood until this year (and my dad was/is agnostic). Every night I picked a random page and started reading.
I kinda feel that this story of Jonathan and David fueled my initial perception of love. But it did not guide me until the last couple of years. Learning how homosocial and heterosexual relationships meet was a hard step to understand, but the truth is still apparent, only becoming clearer as I get older.
My parents, especially my dad, occasionally remind me of the questions I asked while I was very young. My dad, in particular, has this one as his favorite, "If everyone can do good, then why aren't we making the world a better place?" I was unable to comprehend why there were poor people, starving people or the reasons why people wanted slaves and money and fame. It never crossed my mind. It only mattered to me if I was doing the right thing to others and to whatever metaphysical 'standard'A of Good that I had conceived.
I held that other people have an unchanging worth; that other people always had value and were important. I thought that there was always good in others, even if it was buried under darkness. And to me, if people had worth, then they deserved respectB. If there was darkness, there was light. If there's light, there's hope.
Love is Sacrifice
I attended church with my mother and I hated it. I really really did. It was the absolute worst thing on the planet to me. To sit there and sing songs to Someone who wasn't listening, to speak to Someone who didn't care, and to talk about Something that in all honesty seemed clueless to our existence. But I was unable to bridge the thought that God was both Good AND Evil if He even existed. I didn't think He did. I had a master-slave relationship in that I asked for things in prayer, received nothing, and though that He didn't exist. The year as I remember praying for an A on an English quiz, getting one and thinking nothing of God anyway, was the year that I remember thinking "If God's real, why would He have to listen to me and do as I tell Him? Who am I to give orders to the Creator of the Universe?"
Around the same time I stumbled across 1st Corinthians 13:4-8:Paul, in his letter to the Corinthian Church, wrote:Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.1
That stuck with me. If I ever had a tattoo, it would be of that. I've seen one before.
That became my calling in life. I wanted to do "Good" and love others and that became my definition of love. I did not, and still do not, believe that someone loves another if they are seeking something to gain. If someone does not sacrifice honestly, then they are not truly loving.
Love is Spiritual
This segment right here is something that I have received a lot of hateful criticism for. Love, in its truest form, is not something experienced by bodies but instead by souls. I cannot comprehend any universe where love is dependent upon explicitly physical substance. I cannot imagine that it is possible for there to be a Loving Good God where love, in its truest form, is physical. If we sacrifice that love is spiritual, we sacrifice that love can be truly inherent to the normative human- meaning that it's not available to truly everyone.
The Greeks had four different kinds of love: Eros, Storge, Philia, and AgapeC. Agape, selfless love, is the love that God/The Bible refers to the most important. In essence, it is the love that drives all truly good actions, and such things do not originate from the body. Any love shared between people must have this as the foundation. If one cannot selflessly love another, they cannot truly say they love them.
The story of Jonathan and David is about two men who loved each other greatly. They formed a covenant, a promise between individuals and GodD. "And Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him, for he loved him as he loved his own soul."2 "Then Jonathan said to David, "Go in peace, because we have sworn both of us in the name of the Lord, saying, 'The Lord shall be between me and you, and between my offspring and your offspring, forever.'" And he rose and departed, and Jonathan went into the city."3,E
Eros may be the only love that we feel with our bodies. It is the romance aspect and almost every human experiences sexuality. I used not too, I know people who don't. Regardless, this love when pure (rare) can be great, but it can also be the largest damage to our relationships. I've come to the conclusion that lovers are no longer lovers when their sense of self has risen and they hold Eros with their partner over their Agape. This is indulging in each other for the sake of indulging, or some façade of actual love. The roadblock appears, most readily visible, when one becomes unable to have sex with their partners, they feel that they lost a greater part of their relationship. This is what I call putting stake in the temporary when the eternal is presented to us. This is the Christian argument that pride/selfishness can wreck what's beautiful. Sex, if anything, should take a backseat to the wealth you have in a eternal being who is a lover. Having pornography, as an example, is both a compromise and an indicator that sex is really what's being looked forward to, not the years of loveF. I've had people come to me and say that sex is the only way to value a relationship, and that is untrue.
I'm not saying sex is not good. I'm instead saying that God has a purpose for sex that supersedes our own wants and our own intentions. God made sex for marriage, so that lovers could start families and be unitive and creative. It is the means by which life can be produced and it is nothing lesser. We should revere our sexual natures because reproduction brings new life, new spirits to the world we have. I am unable to treat sex as anything other than that. We often think of marriage as simply being a union, in which case that is not correct. It is a covenant to God and your lover that you're willing to treat each other as you should, in all accounts, before Him. It is nothing mere in scale of human behavior. It is a permanent promise that He will hold to your word.
One of my relationships ended because he and I decided that we would be better off starting our own families. And in Biblical context, we could still share the love with each other and have families as well, as long as it didn't harm our marriages. Jonathan and David's souls were knit together, and they were best of friends4. I'd kill for that level of commitment (not literally). The line between non-sexual Eros, Storge, and Philia blurs when the Agape is what drives our love and fascination with the spirit of the other.
Love is Honest
If people love each other, then they should not be afraid to deal with the reality of each other. Knowledge is a sign of care and loveG. Loyalty becomes one of the largest issues with relationships. I've seen where people stray and it wrecks one of the partners, and I've seen some sort of inverse where the partner simply does not care about what their other partner does, as long as they come back to them. I find either case to be abusive and the second one to be taking advantage of the partner's affection. If we love someone, we have duties to them. Most notably, as a Christian, I need to serve and I need to protect, and I cannot compromise him/her.
My relationship with my last girlfriend of three years, I broke up with because I did not feel that I could remain loyal. At the time, I could not think of a way that I could maintain a relationship when I already felt so distant from her and lacked feelings. I didn't and couldn't take the chance that I would screw up somehow down the line. I was never tempted to be with someone else while dating, I'd rather die than betray my partner. I broke up because I felt that in the long run I was going to do damage to someone that I cared about. I don't know if that was the right decision, but I feel that it was better not to break her heart more by violating our relationship.
If we love someone, we should never ever betray them. Ever.
We should never ever have to ask our partners to sacrifice something that is Good and honest. Never. It will never make us abandon our beliefs about the God who created us to respect, cherish, and honor.
Love is Harmless
Love is honest and Good and can do no wrong. Anything that is truly good, will not cost us our salvation or our status as persons. I am led to believe, honestly, that nothing good comes from a homosexual relationship. We could argue to the end of the age about studies, about testimonies, and all of that, but we'd never ever come to a conclusion either way because there is too much contradictory evidence and counter-evidence. It is in my personal experience that 'bad things'H happen. I cannot endorse the behaviors because I cannot morally suggest that it's okay. I can only regard from my personal experiences and the testimonies around me.
Selflessly, Love should never be involved in cases where the morality is in question. I know that if I love someone, I'll never ask them to do something that's morally questionable. I would never ever, not even once, willingly ask my partner to gamble with their eternal life or themselves, or anything at all. And I would never gamble with my relationship.
Love is Eternal
Love is of the spirit and so love will last forever beyond our bodies. It is 'transcendental' (just meaning above the individual) in nature to us humans and it is one of the things that can bring us together. All of our sacrifices we make are going to exist forever. The love we share between us as person and the love we share between ourselves and God will be the things we carry on to the timeless eternal. Love will be between us and God and He will carry it with us to what comes next. We are all immortals. Everything we do to each other we will have to account for in eternity. Permanence has intrinsic and unquestionable worth.
The Mixing of Loves
I mentioned above that lines blur a little for someone who loves selflessly. My closest friends I'd undoubtedly say fit in Philia, Storge, and Agape. Maybe not Eros because I'm not 'romantic' with as much, just intimate and close. Eros stands out in that it deals with sexual nature and those lines should not be blurred there. But it happens and it appears to be parasitic. Service becomes 'service' (with a wink and a nudge) and becomes something else, like it's taking over the other loves. But it can also work in the other way. If someone loves selflessly enough, and their affection is really strong, Eros could be formed. It's only important to watch carefully what you do, and even though something may be agreed upon by two individuals, it may still not be right.
What it's like for me:
I'll be short. I typically get emotional highs around those that I love to the degrees that I've been considering throughout this and below. Something about the affection simply feels different. My flesh may not be in it, but my heart is, and that drives the affection on. The commitments that I make with others is what I think differentiates between just close friends and the friends who love each other mutually and intimately. I love my close friends, but whomever I'm 'dating' gets a special place in my heart, time, and mind.
RE: Future relationships
I don't see myself getting in them again. I do want to love and care for someone more than normal, and I want to feel that deep connection again. I hold relationships as a chance to show great honor to the one we love and the One who gave Himself for us. For me it's become a matter of utility because I know I'll screw up somehow in the future and then I'll damage something forever. I'm afraid to take that chance. Even hurting a friend or betraying their trust is enough to make me ill for a few days. And I love my friends a lot. I'd give my life for any of them without thinking twice. I'd do it over and over. My friends are above me and I love them too much to hurt them.
I'll admit I'm a bit of a coward, but the chances of someone loving me back and loving me honestly are null. There may be someone that I do like, but I know enough from text, tone, and association to know that it wouldn't work too well. I just don't like verifying what I already know to be true repeatedly.
Annotations:
A - Ethical Intuition. Not a moral Law, since moral Laws cannot be relative in nature.
B - This is my "Fundamental Law of Intrinsic Social/Moral Respect." People deserve respect, and without it, bad things happen. Assumes by objective meaning that 1: people have unquestionable worth & 2: love and respect are the only two things that people truly deserve. It is normative in the sense that it ought to be this way, and that we should strive towards it. This argument is within a specific scope (Christianity) and cannot be applied elsewhere without adjustments from these basic rules.
C -
Eros: Romantic love.
Storge: Brotherly/familial love.
Philia: Friendly love.
Agape: Selfless love.
D - Covenants are a big deal. A lot of the laws and rules inside Christian theology are formed in Covenants between Man and God. Marriage is an example of a covenant between and woman and a man before God, to be united in flesh and in service towards each, but with God first. Promises are important. Always have been. Always will be.
E - A lot of extraneous contradicting interpretations of Jonathan and David make the assumption that Jonathan and David made a covenant between each other before God while contradicting the Laws and morality that were the standard at the time. If this is an example of an unholy homosexual relationship, then it is really that. Both of them are married to women. If this is used as an example to try to prove that God is in favor of homosexual relationships, which it does not say, then it would be saying that a polygamous and dishonest marriage is what God approves of (not to mention what was happening regarding Jonathan and David's personal lives anyway). Frankly, that cannot happen and to argue otherwise is ultimately silly. It make no sense in any Biblical context. The need to address this is astounding that it even happens.
F - Pornography, when regarded as sin of the heart, is the same as already having done it in real life. Same thing with desires and lust running free. We defile them with our hearts and minds before anything real even happens. And this is a danger, especially, to those who want to prove their commitment. - F.2 - Pornography is damaging to the Psyche as well. It is known to produce many different chemical imbalances and cause behavioral issues.
G - Even for people like me who have memory issues.
H - I am generalizing because I do not want to talk about the things I've heard.
References:
1 - The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.
2 - 1st Samuel 20:17 ESV
3 - 1st Samuel 20:42 ESV
4 - 1st Samuel 18:1 ESV
Consider this your one and only 'knitting' lecture from me.
Sure, sex can be seen as a symbol for ultimate trust and all but I am sure there are other ways to show the trust.Oh my gosh yes. Hearing this is so reassuring.
I personally have issues dealing with Eros because it contains the "romance"/"intimacy" spot as well as sexual actions. If that's the case, I only want certain parts of Eros. I want my sexual life to be exactly how God wants it to be. God > me. He > i. JOY = Jesus > Others > Yourself.
You can speak as much as you want. I'll listen.