Confronting Mental Temptations in Your Relationship
/DOMINIKA RAMOS
I recently heard a talk by Sr. Anna Marie McGuan, RSM, on her podcast Scripture and the Spiritual Life entitled "Cultivating the Interior Life" in which she made a crucial distinction between your self and your thoughts.
PHOTOGRAPHY: DESIGNS BY JESSINA
Perhaps it's surprising to hear that your interior life is not synonymous with your thoughts or imagination. In fact, your thoughts don't always originate from yourself, and Sr. Anna Marie refers to a particular type of thought, the logismoi, as being sent by Satan himself.
In marriage diabolic thoughts, or logismos, might look like: "Why is her life easier? Must be nice that her husband makes enough money to let her stay home (or go on fancy vacations or afford private school)" Or "We'll never be on the same page about faith or parenting. Why didn't I see this before we were married? Our kids are headed for disaster as grownups!" Or "What would my life look like if I hadn't gotten married? I could have followed that dream and I might have had a more fulfilling life." Or "Why do I always get emotional when we fight? I'm so sensitive and dumb." And so on.
They can be disturbing like adulterous images or they can seem entirely reasonable which, Sr. Anna Marie notes, are the most dangerous thoughts of all.
Wherever we have a weakness, the devil can take it and use it to lead us away from the truth.
And these thoughts, rooted in envy, despair, anger, and so forth, are not ones most of us would readily admit to entertaining, especially when people around you--friends or social media personalities--never reveal that they've had negative thoughts about their marriages. Consequently, if the primary image you form about everyone else's marriages is that they are never tempted to doubt or imagine their lives differently, you might be filled with self-loathing when you do experience those thoughts.
But the fact is, if you've ever experienced detracting thoughts about your marriage, you are not evil. You are human. Everyone has them. If not about marriage, then certainly in some other sphere of their life.
As Sr. Anna Marie points out, these thoughts do not say something objective about who you are or the state of your interior life. They are temptations. And when the logismoi pops into your mind, you haven't actually sinned. You are only accountable to the extent that you accept it and subsequently indulge in it.
How then, do we battle these intrusive thoughts?
Sr. Anna Marie describes the interior life as the heart, not the organ, but the deep heart, the inner man, the place of encounter with God, and the only way to cultivate the life therein and to build defenses against mental temptations is through self-awareness and prayer.
Self-awareness entails identifying which thoughts are diabolic triggers. We have to spend time reflecting about our thought patterns and what mental paths they threaten to lead us down. A nightly examen prayer is a good way to start taking notice of the life of our minds.
And prayer itself is a defense against the logismoi because it's a channel of God's grace in us. In prayer, we are given the peace of God's own triune life that is so distant from the panic of the logismos.
One highly practical form of prayer that Sr. Anna Marie suggests is the Jesus prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner." This advice has transformed my own prayer life. Any time I'm tempted by a logismoi, I slow my breathing and say the Jesus prayer. It functions on multiple levels: the name of Christ is power against evil, and I'm reminded of who I am--someone in need of healing. It's both defense and solace.
Exposing the logismos for what they are and turning to God's mercy in prayer, rather than being distracted by the chaos and shame Satan wants to ensnare me in, wipes clean my interior vision. And this simplifying of attention makes me freer to see the mission of my marriage more clearly and love my spouse more purely.
