Dear Gramps,

Thanks for your columns!  I am 52 and divorced.  My
ex-husband and I still love each other, but I am active again and
won’t have sex with him.  He tries to manipulate me into it, and then
argues, threatens me with needing to go to other women, etc.  What can
I tell him to let him know I can’t have sex again until we are married
and then married in the Temple?

Susan

Dear Susan,

President Kimball in his book, “Faith Precedes the Miracle”, asks the question what is love?  He then gives the following answer: ” Love is kind and wholesome. To love is to give, not to take. To love is to serve, not to exploit. …   Many people think of it as mere physical attraction and they casually speak of “falling in love” and “love at first sight.”… One might become immediately attracted to another individual, but love is far more than physical attraction. It is deep, inclusive, and comprehensive. Physical attraction is only one of the many elements; there must be faith and confidence and understanding and partnership. There must be common ideals and standards. There must be great devotion and companionship. Love is cleanliness and progress and sacrifice and selflessness. This kind of love never tires or wanes, but lives through sickness and sorrow, poverty and privation, accomplishment and disappointment, time and eternity. For the love to continue, there must be an increase constantly of confidence and understanding, of frequent and sincere expression of appreciation and affection. There must be a forgetting of self.”

Too often when someone says they love another they mean they lust for that person.  In the same book, President Kimball tells the story of a young couple coming to his office concerned because they had broken the law of chastity.   “The boy said, ‘Yes, we yielded to each other, but we do not think it wrong because we love one another.’ I thought I had misunderstood him. Since the world began, there have been countless immoralities, but to hear them justified by Latter-day Saint youth shocked me. He repeated, ‘No, it is not wrong, because we love one another.’  They had repeated this abominable heresy so often that they had convinced themselves, and a wall of resistance had been built, and behind this wall they stubbornly, almost defiantly, stood.”  To their rationalization, President Kimball responded, “No, my beloved young people, you did not love one another. Rather, you lusted for one another. … If one really loves another, one would rather die for that person than injure him. At the hour of indulgence, pure love is pushed out one door while lust sneaks in the other.”

If your ex-husband really loves you and desires for your happiness he would show that love by caring for you, honoring your feelings and desire to live a chaste life.  Each of us need to start living the higher law as the Savior counseled us in Matthew 5:  27″ Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit ^aadultery:  28 But I say unto you, That whosoever ^alooketh on a ^bwoman to ^clust after her hath committed ^dadultery with her already in his heart.”

Gramps