This Thing Called Purity pt. 2

Part 2 of the blog I wrote for www.girlsliving4god.com :

So, last time we talked, I mentioned that purity begins with the mind and the heart. If we can fight for purity there, the other aspects of purity are a little easier to wade through. Now I promise you that we are going to get to talking about physical purity, but this next part is something I have only recently thought about, but I believe it is an important aspect of purity…

Emotional Purity.

What is that?!

To be honest, I’m still figuring it out myself, but we’ll go on this little adventure together.
Emotional purity has a close tie in to the purity of heart and mind that we were talking about last time, only it has to do more with our emotions than our thoughts. As girls, we are generally governed by our emotions more than our male counterparts, and we find satisfaction in finding relationships (be they familial, friendship, or romantic) that satisfy our emotions.

Think of it this way. When we are feeling sad we are going to call the friend who will either cheer us up or be sad with us, depending on how we want that emotion satisfied at the moment. We can do the same thing with boys. We use them to satisfy the emotional desires we long for in a romantic relationship. Have you ever liked a guy, or been “friends” with a guy only to feel devastated when he starts dating someone other than you? It is possible to have a broken heart and never even dated before, because we as women become emotionally attached to men more quickly than we become physically attached to them. I forget who said it, but I once heard someone say that girls will have sex with guys to get the emotional intimacy they long for from the guys, and guys give the emotional intimacy to have sex with the girl. But you don’t have to have sex in order to get the emotional intimacy you desire from a guy.

A lot of times we as girls like to sugar coat our emotional impurity with another name… “best friends”. Now I’m not saying that guys and girls cannot be best friends, I just personally think that it is near impossible. Think about it this way, do your parents have best friends of the opposite sex that they spend as much time with as they do their spouse? Does your mom tell her secrets and hang out with a guy other than your dad? Most likely the answer is no, and if they do, I’m pretty sure the other parent isn’t happy about it. Why is that? I believe its because there is only one context where men and women can be true best friends without it being weird, and that is in the context of marriage. That is when you are supposed to be best friends, until then we are just kidding ourselves.
Now I don’t think its wrong to be friends with a guy, and in fact I think it is possible, but we as women just have to be careful with how much we reveal of ourselves. You and I both know that the more we tell a guy about ourselves, the closer we feel to him. It is very tempting when we are single and desire to have a romantic relationship to call up one of our “guy friends” and talk to them for hours, or hang out one on one with the guy for hours on end. This is something we must be careful of, even when dating a guy. Leslie Ludy in her book Authentic Beauty calls it the “Feminine Mystique”. We must be care for to guard our hearts will all vigilance, as Proverbs 4:23 says, and that includes guarding our emotions that will cause our hearts to go down a path that it is not yet time to go down.

Over and over in the book of Song of Solomon we are reminded not to awaken love before its time. That includes all aspects of love, even the emotional part of love. And yes its hard, and at times we will fall, but remember, that is the beauty of the Gospel, knowing that we cannot do it on our own.

If you want to read more on this subject I would suggest 2 books: Authentic Beauty by Leslie Ludy and Emotional Purity by Heather Arnel Paulsen. These books are great and have really spurred me on in my walk towards purity. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and I look forward to writing again!

In Him,
Raychel