Battle for Love

Imagine you come home from work exhausted, hungry, after almost being fired and narrowly avoiding a car accident—overall, a tough day. You walk through the door, and your wife says, “Go put the kids to bed!” You respond, “What about dinner?” She replies, “You can make dinner later.” What thoughts immediately come to mind? It’s easy to imagine them.

The most significant battle a person faces is not with other people, but with something much deeper. As the Apostle Paul says, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but […] against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Who are these forces? We often refer to them as demons, and that is precisely what Paul means—evil spirits. But what does this battle really look like?

Let’s take the situation of your resentment toward your wife for not having dinner ready and instead sending you to put the children to bed. Where does this resentment come from, and how do you handle it? What happens is that you accept a tempting thought. In Orthodox theology, sinful thoughts often begin with a provocation, which leads to the tempting thought. A tempting thought is more than just an idea—it’s something that strikes both the mind and the heart, stirring up emotions like anger or frustration.

Most of these tempting thoughts aren’t even truly our own. It’s as if there’s a tempter beside us, offering us these thoughts when we’re most vulnerable. In this case, you feel the resentment toward your wife for not attending to your needs, and soon a flood of negative thoughts will follow. If you don’t stop them, they might even drag up something from years ago, like a disagreement at your wedding! These thoughts build on each other, turning a normal situation into a disaster.

The truth is, nothing about your wife has changed. She’s the same as always. But you allowed that tempting thought to grow and take over, and now your whole inner peace is destroyed. If it’s just a one-time thing, you might be able to dismiss it eventually, but if you keep accepting these thoughts, they start to take root in your heart. The next time you’re tired or frustrated, you’ll fall right back into that pattern without even thinking.

That’s why the key is not to let these thoughts grow in the first place.

As a priest, I often encounter family problems, especially with young couples. They come for counselling, sometimes together, sometimes one by one. And in almost every case, the pattern is the same: resentment builds up. The wife says, “He doesn’t understand me. I’m home all day with the kids, and he’s at work. He has his own life, his worries, his problems. He comes home, eats dinner, and goes straight to bed because he has to wake up early. I get it, he’s tired. But we’ve been married for three years, and in all that time, we’ve only had two real conversations.” Or the husband says, “She doesn’t like to cook. She doesn’t even know how! My mom used to make the most amazing meals, pies and everything. What am I supposed to do now? Call my mom for dinner? Or eat out every day?”

What happens here is that both spouses are accepting resentful or negative thoughts, which grow into feelings of anger, judgment, and irritability. The key is to not let these thoughts take root. It’s easier said than done, of course. But it’s not impossible—it just takes practice.

There is one powerful tool that can help, whether you are married or in a monastery, and that’s the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I don’t know any more effective way to fight these thoughts. When we call on God through this prayer, it acts as a shield against these negative thoughts.

Once you begin, you’ll realise what a battle is really happening inside you. A negative thought tries to enter your mind, and you respond with, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” The thought tries again, and you calmly repeat, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” In doing so, you refuse to let the thought take hold.

When you manage to calm down, you can start examining the thought more rationally. Orthodox tradition teaches that you can “talk back” to most thoughts except those that lead to lust or adultery. With those, you must flee immediately. But for other thoughts, you can reason with them.

For instance, if you’re the husband in the example who managed not to give in to resentment, you might remember that your wife told you earlier she wasn’t feeling well, but you’d forgotten. Or maybe the child was sick, and she’s been busy with that all day and didn’t have time to make dinner. In these cases, it’s important to find excuses for her, to see things from her perspective.

If you’re the wife, you might be upset that your husband never gives you flowers. But instead of getting angry about his lack of attention, consider this: You’ve tried to change him, and it hasn’t worked. So why continue causing drama over something that won’t change? Take a moment, calm down, and say, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Then try to let it go, and even tell yourself, “Maybe I’m being unreasonable. Maybe he’s not being neglectful; maybe I’m just overreacting.”

This approach allows you to stop storing up resentment, keeping negativity from building. Remember, we often rush through life, but the devil is patient. He waits for the right moment to strike. And when he finds it, he digs in.

If we let these thoughts fester, they can eventually destroy the love between a husband and wife. I once spoke to a young couple who had been married for just three or four years. The wife told me, in front of her husband, “I used to love him, but now the love is gone.” I asked her, “Where did it go?” She replied, “I don’t know. It was there, and now it’s not.” I pressed further, “What do you mean? What replaced the love?” She said, “There’s resentment and irritation instead.”

So, we began to unravel the situation.

At the root of all these problems are the hurtful, judgmental thoughts we allow to take hold. Initially, everything seems fine—love is there, and the person beside you is wonderful. But then you accept a negative thought: irritation, offense, or something similar. Maybe it spoils your mood for a day, but you move on, and love prevails, just like it did in the beginning. Then, another incident happens—perhaps not right away, maybe a month later.

You let yourself dwell on it, discuss it with a friend, or even complain to your priest, thinking you can’t tolerate such behaviour from your husband. But, in reality, there was no major issue. Maybe he forgot to bring you flowers (just to give an example). Still, once you’ve gone down that road, it becomes easier the next time. First, it’s the flowers, then it’s him forgetting your mother’s birthday, or maybe he seems insensitive when you’re upset about something. Little by little, resentment builds. A few years go by, and suddenly you think, “There’s no love anymore.” And people come and say exactly that—”The love is gone.”

But that very thought—”there’s no love”—should never even be uttered. If it arises, immediately turn to the Jesus Prayer.

It’s crucial to understand that love doesn’t just disappear. When we accept negative thoughts, we allow the devil to destroy not only our relationship with our spouse but, more importantly, our relationship with God. Do you think the devil is really concerned with our marriage? Only secondarily. His primary aim is to damage our relationship with God.

That’s why our relationships in marriage matter so much to God. Why didn’t God simply create us to reproduce without the need for marriage? Instead, He established love, marriage, and family. As Scripture says, “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Clearly, God cares about this because through marital love, we learn to love the Creator. In the context of family life (though monasticism is another path), we come to love God by loving our spouse. And this is precisely why the devil works so hard to destroy that love.

Why does the Church consider marriage sacred and divorce unacceptable? What’s the harm in separating if things don’t work out? You live with someone, and after ten years, you part ways amicably. Why is the Church against that? It’s because through love, through resisting temptations and negative thoughts, we come to understand true Love.

There’s a well-known poem that says, “Only the morning of love is beautiful.” Many people feel that way—they cherish the excitement of falling in love, but when the everyday struggles of life set in, they lose interest. The logic becomes: enjoy the initial feelings of attraction and then move on when the routine sets in. But that’s not how it works.

God doesn’t oppose that “morning of love”; in fact, we all remember our first love fondly—it’s meaningful and important. But the truth is, you have to invest in the person you love.

What’s essential to realise is that even if you end up with a “difficult” spouse, it’s no reason to pity yourself or be unhappy. Thinking, “How come my friend has a wonderful wife, but mine is not as great?” is already a negative thought that should never be accepted. What’s surprising is that we often don’t even notice these thoughts forming in our minds and hearts. Many people live with the same patterns of thought for years without realising what’s going on inside them.

And this highlights how mistaken we often are in thinking that our thoughts are truly our own. Most of the thoughts we have don’t even register consciously. It’s like a cash register—Cha-ching!—and out comes the receipt showing the total. But what went on inside the machine to get that result? We don’t notice. This is true for most of our thoughts.

In Orthodox asceticism, when a thought first comes into our head, it is sometimes called prilog. This refers to the moment when a thought is presented to us, but it isn’t yet our own. If we cut off that thought—no matter how sinful—right as it arises, we’re not guilty of sin. In fact, we don’t even need to repent. But the problem is, most of us don’t catch our thoughts at the stage of prilog. We only notice them once they’ve taken root, when the damage is already done—when someone says, for example, “My name is so-and-so, and I’m an alcoholic.” By then, the thought has gone unchecked for too long.

The golden rule is: fight the thought the moment you notice it. It’s important to at least start battling it at the result stage. Even if the thought has already done most of its damage, once you recognise it, you can start fighting back. Begin saying the Jesus Prayer and don’t allow those thoughts to take over. The next time, you’ll notice the thought a little earlier. If you don’t take action, it’ll only get worse.

The Jesus Prayer has the power to make the demon sick. The very name of God burns the demon. Picture it: he’s been choking you with these thoughts, but suddenly your throat becomes too hot for his claws, and they begin to smoke. At first, he won’t believe it. He’ll be hurt, but he’ll keep choking you, hoping you’ll stop praying and go back to accepting his thoughts. That’s why the struggle may feel utterly hopeless in the beginning. You recite the Jesus Prayer, but the thoughts keep coming at you from every angle. You try to resist, but the thoughts seem relentless, creeping in no matter what you do.

It may seem like an impossible battle, especially when you have so many other concerns in life. But in reality, when a thought has a hold on you, you can’t think about anything else anyway. It’s a long fight—until the devil realises you’re serious. He’s betting that you’ll give up after the first few failed attempts. His goal is to convince you that the situation is hopeless. But if you persist, it’ll get easier next time.

At first, you might spend an entire evening battling one offensive thought, only to find it creeping back in the morning. But if you persist, next time it might only take half an hour to chase it away. Eventually, as you strengthen your prayer life, you may only need to say the Jesus Prayer once, and the devil will flee. The key is to be persistent.

Translated by The Catalogue of Good Deeds
Source: http://www.naslednick.ru/archive/rubric/rubric_449.html