One of the biggest challenges guys face in recovery is dealing with their emotions. The problem is that most guys are raised without emotions. The truth is, it’s a guy thing. Most men are raised in a manner that does not teach them to even know what their emotions are, much less how to handle them.
Everyone is born with emotions. God made us in His image. In the Bible, we see God express love, compassion, anger, joy, sadness, and more. If we are created in the image of God, and God has emotions, then we were created with emotions. As men, we learn to bury our emotions. We bury them so very deeply that we do not even recognize what those emotions are. I was so out of touch with my own emotions that I had to use an emotion wheel to figure them out. Even then, I was not quite sure all the time.
When we do feel an emotion, there are generally two that surface. The first is anger, the second is fear. Often, those two are related. Those emotions may drive our problematic sexual behavior. They may be the result of it. They may be both in the cycle of your acting out.
Unfortunately, in order for you to make connections with others, especially your wife, you need to be able to process your emotions. If you cannot process your own emotions, how can you ever hope to deal with your wife’s emotions. If you don’t know how to handle your wife’s emotions, it will so very difficult for you to forge an emotional connection with her. The emotional connection that you both need is crucial to the recovery of your marriage.
This is hard. It takes a lot of effort on your part and practice. Practice is hard in itself because you have to open yourself up and be vulnerable. That is another thing men don’t particularly care for – being vulnerable. Dragging those emotions from the depths within yourself is crucial to going forward in those important relationship in your life, especially the relationship with your wife. Don’t stay stuck in your heartache because you unknown emotions. Bring them out. Let them flow. God gave them to you. He wants you to know how to use them.
