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How do we ensure our marital embrace is still open to the Holy Spirit if conception is not possible? Do you have any recommendations for healing from father wounds? How can my fiance and I prepare for a marriage free from lust?

Ask Christopher West is a weekly podcast in which Theology of the Body Institute President Christopher West and his beloved wife Wendy share their humor and wisdom, answering questions about marriage, relationships, life, and the Catholic faith, all in light of John Paul II’s beautiful teachings on the Theology of the Body.

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Patron Question:
Dear Christopher and Wendy, God bless you. I am writing to you from Colombia in South America. My wife Marta and I proudly belong to the first TOB1 online class. What a blessing for our Christian and married life. We have already registered, as a refreshment, for the coming TOB1 online course in October. We strongly encourage those all and new podcast listeners to take part in the course. This beautiful truth about what it means to be human and how to live our lives in a way that we experience true happiness is what our spirits and our hearts need to hear.
Now to my question. Marta and I have been married over 26 years and since the beginning of our marriage we did NFP. We have two children ages 24 and 23. We also had a loss 22 years ago and after that Marta´s womb needed to be removed for health reasons. Since in our marital embrace we have no more the ability to give life, how can we be sure every time we are together that we still have fully communion with the Trinity and that we are not putting aside the Holy Spirit, the Giver of Life?

Question 2:
Our oldest son who is 26 has recently admitted he struggles with depression. He lives in another state so we don’t get to see each other very often but we do talk regularly. He is not practicing the Catholic faith and he has deep father wounds. My husband, in the last few years, has been actively dealing with his porn addiction and his own father wounds and has come very far in his recovery journey. This has helped our marriage immensely. But the fallout has been with our seven children. They all have been affected to varying degrees by their father’s very rigid and sometimes harsh behavior while growing up. Can you recommend some suggestions for helping our oldest son deal with these issues?

Qestion 3:
Hello Christopher and Wendy. My fiancé and I have been growing more and more in love with the Theology of the Body both through this podcast and our own personal reading. I come from a background that looks very negatively on sex and so I have always lived on the "starvation diet" believing that I was practicing chastity. My fiancé on the other hand has struggled with porn for much of his life. Praise be to God, he has found freedom in that area within the last year after a four-year long fight against it. However, after being on the "fast food" diet for so long, he has now gone to the other extreme in order to avoid the temptations that could arise. My question then, is this: how can we both overcome our intense fears of lust and set our desires free in order to partake of the banquet? I don't ever want to put myself in a position where I could hurt him through lust. How can we overcome this obstacle?

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Christopher and Wendy hope their advice is helpful to you, but they are not licensed counseling professionals. If you are dealing with serious issues, please consult our list of trusted professionals.

Featuring music by Mike Mangione.