Pantheist struggling with physical attraction to Muslim boy?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm a secular pantheist and a Unitarian Universalist. My youth group went to visit a mosque the other day, and I saw this boy who was really attractive.

I think he was pretty strict, he wouldn't even shake my hand, but he would shake my brother's. I still was very attracted to him.

I keep having almost sexual thoughts about him, even though if he's Muslim and won't shake my hand, he seems to be very modest in that way.

I'd feel guilty about having physical thoughts about him, because I worry that he's trying to preserve his modesty, however, the thoughts keep coming.

How do I keep from being disrespectful?

Think/feel anything you want about him. Its not going to effect him (or his "modesty"). Its not like you go to school with him and interact with him all of the time. You'll never see him again. You live in seperate communities, and its not likely to interact, much less date or anything.



I apologize for sounding cross.

I agree with the poster below that your post is actually kinda touching.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 22 Mar 2016, 11:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That is so interesting.....your thoughts don't affect his modesty or his goals, since you are not saying or doing anything to him/around him. But it sounds like you want to respect his dignity and his own goals/standards, according to how he might want to live and be viewed? In which case, it's not just sexual attraction, but also an interest in him as a person. Forgive me if I have gotten this wrong - just mentioning what it sounded like to me.

I actually might see him again. My minister and his religious leader are friends, and they want to organize more get-togethers.

I'm not interested in dating, in fact, I'm afraid that these thoughts coupled with the fact that I might see him again might lead me to act, (even though I am quite sure that I have more self-control than that, I have a bit of a paranoid streak.)

As for my interest in him as a person, I try to be respectful of people and not merely view them as sex objects, period. I mean, I feel uncomfortable with the idea of people viewing me as a sex object, so while I don't want to dictate what anyone else thinks about, I feel that I should hold myself to my ideals. And those ideals include treating people of even the most primal sexual desire with respect and remembering that they are people.

I hope that didn't sound preachy. :T

Oh, okay, that makes sense. Hmm.....I personally would try to think of him foremost as a spiritual brother, then. A fellow traveler on the spiritual path....not saying that would kill the feelings for me, but I think that would be a good stance for me to try to focus on and return to. Good luck

Here's the kicker: that's the way a mature adult views members of the opposite sex. You are well ahead of your peer group in this regard. I wouldn't bring it up with classmates, they wouldn't understand and you'd face social backlash, but realize that in a decade (or two for some people) that your peer group will have adopted your philosophy on the issue.

Also, you shouldn't feel guilty about sexual thought-- they are merely fantasies. A person's thoughts are just that, thoughts, it's when those thoughts move to actions that problems occur. So fantasize away, just don't transition to actually treating people that way, which I don't think you'll have a problem with.

Now I'm questioning if I can see him again without feeling guilty... I have thought about him a lot, romantic rather than sexual fantasies for the most part, (apart from a few passing thoughts.)

I picture seeing him again as uncomfortable and I don't want to set myself up for something that most likely can't work. I also feel guilty for having semisexual thoughts about him.

You do have to be careful here because it sounds like something subconscious is yanking your gears and it while it sounds like you do a lot be careful it sounds like you're still a ways away from understanding that side of yourself particularly well or how to handle it when it's doing something that's frankly unhelpful.

If there's paranoia about objectifying him and you think that might be feeding into this - might be good policy to have a fantasy and just go nuts with it in your own mind, I mean wayyy overboard and deliberately so mostly for the sake of shocking yourself. On one level you'd do this for the sake of seeing how you feel afterward (ie. that you're still breathing, sane, and haven't grown horns) and on the other it's almost a way of staring back within yourself at the forces propelling that desire and saying "What!?".

For an example of dealing with obsessions that way, one of my friends played a podcast for me when we were driving back from a card game a few weeks ago. It fascinated him because it dealt with a guy who'd generally been pretty liberal and peacable all of his life, he watched the right violent movie, and something happened at that point where voilent thoughts - of killing men, women, and children, killing his wife, etc. wouldn't stop popping into his head. He tried going to various psychologists, any of them with psychoanalitic leanings were more trouble than help. That's when he found a psychologist who specializes in helping people with his particular kind of problem. The guy has an office full of both sharp and dull weapons, poisons, etc.. and at first he'd get the person suffering from the violent thoughts to hold the weapon that they're afraid they'll use, then he worked them up to the point where they'd hold the weapon (in this guy's case a knife) to the psychologist's throat. I mentioned to my friend that this reminds me a lot of fear of heights - where people think that if they're up high they'll lose all control and jump, where the reality of the situation is much different. The overall opinion is that most of the people who had the violent urges were people who were actually ultra-moral and the problem was that when these thoughts came in they immediately thought too much of them, practically panicked that they thought of it, and rather than that panic forcing the thought out it meant that the thought not only came back with that much more vengeance but it would be pretty much all they could think about.

You're in a situation obviously where you're attracted to someone who you wouldn't usually be, you're worried about the bounds of propriety, but if you feel like you're getting a bit obsessed with him you might very well be dealing with the same category of problem - ie. an obsession that's forming precisely because you're trying to push him out of mind. That's why I'm thinking you might want to take some private time to really let lose, even creep yourself out a little. The good news - no one's reading your thoughts, he can't see them, James Randi has been debunking mind-readers and the like for years, and if there is a God, higher self, ascended masters reading your thoughts, they'll know what you're doing and why your doing it anyway (perhaps far better than you will) and if anything they'd be more worried about how well you were passing your own sort of crisis/initiation in dealing with your own mind.

I dunno about the rest of the post. ^

But I will say one thing.


People

PLEASE stop misusing the word "paranoia"!

It confuses the reader.

Strictly speaking "paranoia" involves delusions about conspiracies. If you think that your neighbor neglected to trim the hedges- because he did it on purpose to conceal the surveyence cameras he is putting up to spy on you for the CIA- thats "being paranoid".

If you think your neighbors are following you around on the highway to report on you...thats paranoia .



But if you're worried, or even afraid, of being attracted to someone, or something,wrong to be attracted to then that has nothing to do with "paranoia" ( unless you have delusions that that some organization planted the desireable person there on purpose to tempt you,as part of nefarious conspiracy or something- then that would be "paranoid".But ofcourse she doesnt have those kinda delusions).

Last edited by naturalplastic on 28 Mar 2016, 5:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You could just opt out of this program that you're involved so you dont see him.

But maybe there is some adult in the church you discuss it with to figure out what to do.

Sexual attraction is a perfectly normal thing. Nothing to be upset about per se. But I assume a pious traditional Muslim wouldnt date at all, much less outside the faith. So its kinda like an adult being attracted to a person who is married. It cant go anywhere.So it is a problem. But a commonplace type of problem.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 28 Mar 2016, 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Pedantry and derailment appreciated.

You're probably the only one who would have noticed it without the public service announcement but do what you've gotta do.

Dude- it sounded like you were accusing her of being psychotic until I deduced that you had used one key word ("paranoia") in one sentence incorrectly.

One of my special interests is religion and I would like to go back and learn about Islam.

Maybe going overboard would make me feel weird if I saw him again, yet maybe it would work.

I'm less worried about propositioning him now and more concerned with accidentally giving off hints as to what I've been thinking. I don't understand it, but neurotypicals have abilities, man. Sometimes they're off by a long shot, but I'm afraid they might be too accurate here, or worse, think I was being more intense than I was.

I think, hopefully, that by the time I see him again, this will have faded. Still, I worry that I'll lose that separation between fantasy and reality and actually start to hope. This has never happened to me before, but there's a first time for everything.

If at 36 that one hasn't caught up to me I have to guess it's probably product of a regionalism.

I think she understood my post but to clarify for anyone who didn't - I was discussing an approach to intrusive thoughts that constitutes taking them head-on. An intrusive thought is typically a moral response to a random thought and an attempt to banish that thought which unfortunately backfires and strengthens the intrusion.



If you do go that route you'd probably need to do that two or three times in the course of a few hours to stop morally identifying with it.