"Emotional Purity" Book Review

Last month I finished a book that had been sitting on my reading pile, called “Emotional Purity: An Affair of the Heart” by Heather Arnel Paulsen. It was a very fascinating book with a lot of applicable principles.

The book starts off with a fictional story about a young man and a young woman who have what is called an “emotional affair.” They never cross the boundaries of physical intimacy, but they shared too much of their heart with each other, and their relationship didn’t have proper boundaries set in place. The young man (Mike) thought they were “just friends” but the young woman (Tracy) thought that perhaps he was “the one.” This created lots of problems and hurt feelings, ‘though they never officially “dated” nor “courted.”

While most of the principles of purity discussed in this book were not new to me, reading the book still caused me to ask questions about the way I treat young men.

*Do I spend excessive time thinking about young men?

*Do I “read in” too much in my relationship with a young man? If he talks to me or smiles at me, do I simply accept it as a polite gesture, or do I start planning our wedding? J

*Am I becoming too emotionally intimate with any young man? Do I share things from my heart that perhaps give a young man the wrong idea of what I think of him?

*Do I treat young men as brothers in Christ? (1 Timothy 5:1-2) Do I act differently around them than I would if it were my brother or a cousin?

*What safeguards can I place in my life to prevent an emotionally intimate relationship with a young man?

All of these are questions that I have thought more seriously about recently as so many of my peers are involved in the “dating game” and wear their heart on their sleeve. I don’t want to be like the rest of the world; I want to be set apart and holy (1 Peter 1:16) for God and for my future husband. Thankfully, I have been blessed with parents who saw the importance of this long ago and have instilled this high standard of purity in me since I was a young girl. They have helped me in many ways to avoid becoming too attached to a young man and compromise my emotional purity.

Reading this book made me think especially about my thought life. As girls, we do have a tendency to fantasize too much about young men. If a young man has a simple conversation with us, we start to think “he must like me to stop and chat with me.” If they ask us for help with something we start to think “he needs me!” We have our wedding, honeymoon, how many kids we’ll have, and much more thought of in our mind before our 5-minute conversation is over! I know that I have been guilty of this before. But that is not controlling one’s thoughts. Philipians 4:8 says, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” I may not be thinking about “bad” things, but there are many other things I could think on that wouldn’t awaken wrong thoughts. (Song of Solomon 8:4)

The only slightly negative part of reading this book, is that our family has an even more conservative approach to courtship than is presented here. This book focuses mostly on the problem of remaining emotionally pure, but not really on outlining Biblical courtship. But I would still give it 4 out of 5 stars because it made me think about some important questions. So I would definitely recommend it to others!