I Waited For God To Bring Me A Christian Wife

[Guest Wild Man]

I was brought into the church at the age of 15. I remember being 18 and 19, having never had a girlfriend and having never slept with a girl or kissed one since I played doctor with the neighbor girl at age 7, and convincing myself that God would have me fixed up with a marriageable Christian woman by the time I was 24.

 

By the time 24 came and went, not only was I still in the same boat, but I had passed up several marvelous opportunities with gorgeous, intelligent women that I was going to college with. That process repeated itself through grad school, when the women were even more marvelous, gorgeous, intelligent, and into me. I could've had a few incredible girlfriends by now, or at least had amazing sex a bunch of different times. I've got a girlfriend now, and I lost my cherry to a very patient and accomodating fuck buddy in September of this year at the age 28, which was when I reached the end of my goddamned rope. A man can only take so much of that, you know!

 

- I remember, week after week, jacking off more times than there were nights in the week, and my battered cock looking and feeling like a hot dog that had been coughed up by a sick chihuahua.

 

- I remember crying and weeping and pleading with God to just please, please, please send 'her' - whoever 'she' was - to me. I just wanted to know I wasn't going to get the shaft, that I wasn't going to die alone or be called to be a eunuch or some shit. If He would have told me in a big booming voice that by the time I was 32 or something that Option A (as opposed to Option would come to pass, I would have been good to go. But the anguish of not knowing whether or not I was on the "eunuch" list, for Paul said that some are called to be such... shit. It made me afraid to pray, just thinking that I would suddenly be slapped with the eunuch's call.

 

- I also remember being deathly afraid that the 'one' that God had for me would end up being some disgusting fat troll with the personality of either a cinder block coated in bacon grease or a Shih-Tzu with bipolar.

 

- I remember everyone telling me, over and over and over again, that: A) it wasn't the right time yet; let go and let God; C) I wasn't good enough yet, my 'walk' wasn't there yet; D) my female companionship fixation was an 'idol' that obstructed my relationship with God; E) if I couldn't learn how to walk on my own and be perfectly content and 'Single for Christ' TM and all that shit, how could I expect to effectively walk together with someone else in a Christian marriage? And so on, and so forth.

 

- I remember getting sicker and sicker of hearing the same old shit, and getting angrier and angrier every time it got thrown up back in my face. I remember being ready to kick the next fucker's teeth in.

 

- I remember when my senior pastor exhorted older folks to not bug young people (twenty somethings) to get married. "If they are single in the Lord, then that's fine. Good for them. [Then he goes into what Paul said, about being single for Christ, etc.] It's not your place to pass judgment or pressure them. They'll get married at a time when God deems it proper." I went up to him afterwards and said "hey, listen. If one of these older folks here asked me why I wasn't married, the first thing I'd ask them is 'why, you got anybody in mind?' Seriously, I'm growing cobwebs here." And he clapped his hand on my shoulder and laughed heartily. He thought I was making a funny. I wasn't.

 

- I remember not even being able to have a goddamn wet dream, because I had absolutely no idea what pussy felt like. I used to be able to lucid dream at will, but then I'd try to stick my dick into a girl and it would feel like my unlubricated fist totally detached from any human body. It got so frustrating that I stopped doing it and lost that amazing ability. (But now, by crackey, I'm gonna get that ability back!)

 

- I remember me and another equally frustrated screwed-over friend went to the wedding of two mutual friends. I remember it playing out like the perfect storybook Christian courtship, and then, on that day... the perfect storybook Christian wedding. I remember wanting to throw myself off the fucking balcony in the middle of the wedding. I remember how he made me leave the wedding reception early (we were riding together) because "I was about to start throwing fucking tables at people. I'm not joking." I remember after it was all over me and him doing something we would have never thought to do: going to a bar and getting shitfaced drunk. I remember going back to his place and staying up all night smashing junk with hammers and lighting things on fire while screaming our heads off. We even made an improvised explosive device out of gunpowder and ignited it. That was one of the absolute worst nights of both our lives.

 

- I remember my friend's older brother coming home that night (he also happened to be the young adults pastor over us) and us spilling our hearts out to him, only to watch him shake his head in mild amusement and state that we were being silly and overreacting and not putting enough faith and trust in God.

 

- I remember beating myself up over and over again over whether I truly wanted a Godly wife or whether I was just sublimating sinful urges with Christian platitudes. Was it my sanctified Christian heart doing the longing, or was it really my cock?

 

- I remember being able to charm beautiful women on an ongoing basis, and having a decent-sized pool of gorgeous women that I could have dated, and I remember wishing there was some way I could preach the Gospel to them convincingly (and having no idea how, due to their level of education) so that I could maybe have license to try and make a wife out of one of them. I remember feeling guilty that wanting a wife (or, wanting a girlfriend, or wanting to get laid) was the motivation for witnessing to them, rather than genuine overriding concern for their salvation.

 

- I remember my friend's brother stating emphatically that the church was "under no obligation whatsoever" to facilitate lonely unmarried believers in finding wives or husbands and that it all hinged on said believers' relationships with God. I remember me looking at the situation objectively as a bonafide fucking sociologist and seeing a (as I termed it before) systematically libido-squelching sausage fest, and being told to stuff it... because what the hell, as a social scientist, did I fuckin' know?

 

- I remember being trapped in a sausage fest. I remember six lonely desperate pathetic guys (including me) having no one to even compete for, as the only marriageable woman around (the senior pastor's daughter) was an insufferable bitch.

 

- I remember trying to date the insufferable bitch. I remember, the moment I successfully asked her out, entering the realm of high delusion, terribly ignorant bliss, and frightful obsession. I was 24 and lo and behold, God had finally come through! I remember having grandiose fantasies of marriage and children, even before we went on our first official date. I remember thinking this was it, this was finally it. She just had to be 'the one' TM!!

 

- And I remember her being so shut tight with so many body issues that I never even got to kiss her or put my arm around her or anything. I remember me going home and jacking off 8 times before I fell asleep.

 

- I remember her getting all weird and me freaking out. I remember the whole thing lasting one month, but the fallout lasting two years. I should've left that church once things started getting nasty, but was I smart or ballsy enough to do that? No. I remember having to go into therapy because of all the fallout. I remember almost being tossed out of that church by her parents. I remember her and her evil best friend actively making life hell for me; the ones who didn't believe me thought I was mental, and the ones who did were too wishy-washy to step in. I remember hating them both with a flaming passion, just being consumed with hatred and rage, and being unable to repent of it; it just kept on coming back, especially as the bullshit kept on escalating. I remember my dad begging me to leave that church because of what it was doing to me. I remember graduate school and my friends there being the only thing that prevented me from going on some suicidal downward spiral, and I remember putting in tremendous energy to prevent my church life from leaching over and fucking up my educational life.

 

- I remember finally coming out of that after two years of abuse, and once again becoming wistfully hopeful (though with increasing paranoia and dread) that one day God would come through and I would finally get to be with 'the one.' TM

 

Well, no use bemoaning all those missed opportunities and years of anguish and frustration, because I have a wonderful girlfriend now. But damn... how many of you can fucking empathize!? Can I get a witness!?!?!

[Kelli]

Yes, Wild Man. The church and it's abuses can really hurt, even bring us to the point where we feel we're dying inside. I do know firsthand, as many here also do.

 

It's good to let this sort of thing out. Here is the perfect place. And I think it's great that you now have a wonderful girlfriend.

 

I have had my share of "get it out" sessions where I thought I was going to explode if I didn't. These things are healthy. It's important to remember, after you get it out and those feelings are relieved, that there are many what-if's. There are many things that could have happened to make you feel as miserable as what did happen does. You could have married one of those "Godly" women, and even if she was beautiful and great in bed, what if you had had children together (as the church pushes young married couples to do) and then ended up divorced? Not only could it get really ugly and there could be great heartache, but you could also be giving up half your income in child support and alimony. I'm not trying to be funny here, just giving you another perspective. Being single most of your life may not necessarily be a bad thing. Post-Christianity I live life by two simple rules; do what I want and harm no one in the process. That pretty much covers everything. Now you have the rest of your life. Go live it.

[ShackledNoMore]

Oh yeah. I can empathize. I can empathize big time.

 

This shit was HAMMERED into me from the moment we were converted into fundyism when I was just barely shy of adolescence. I can identify exactly with the warped, fucked up asswipes that gave you your godly "guidance" on matters of sexuality. It nearly feels like I went to the same church. The favorite verse used from home and church was Matthew 5:28, "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." This jewel of a verse is what really pounded things over the top (in conjunction with the incessant admonitions of remaining sexually pure for the lord). Not only was action a sin, so was masturbation, and even feeling the least bit of arousal.

 

You're the only other person I've seen mention that this matter extended into the world of wet dreams. Of course when I couldn't do any sexual activity or masturbate, my sexual needs obviously expressed themselves through wet dreams, and I even learned to prevent an orgasm that was already at the point of building up to start, as I fought to consciousness rebuking the demon of lust in the name of jesus.

 

Thanks to the thorough fucking poisoning from my upbringing and the church, I was impotent by the time I was 19.

 

The one good thing that came of it, was that it was the realization that I wouldn't get married one day and that night have my sexuality magically restored and ready to go that same evening that was the first crack in the oppressive xian armor that eventually led to my deconversion.

 

Even after deconversion, I struggled with the issue for many years. There was a awful lot of damage done. I was something like 36 before I finally lost my virginity. I eventually recovered just like you, and now I have a wonderful wife and two wonderful children.

 

It actually amazes me that I don't read more stories like yours or mine. I think sexuality is such a fundamental human need that most xians compartmentalize, get into weird cycles of "sin" and "forgiveness," or simply live a life of hypocrisy, and deal with it differently than you or I did. I think I get some small, smug, satisfaction when I think that there are probably many xian men my age whose sexuality is more or less "spent," with whatever guilt they may have of this sin, forgivness cycle.

 

By the way, I think that I don't normally come off this strong, especially in language, but xianity's/the bible's treatment of sexuality is truly SICK, and it hits home with me and my past history as an xian.

 

I totally agree it's not worth bemoaning what was lost in the past, and to enjoy what we have now. I'm glad you saw your way out, too. Reality is good.

[SWIM]

I have an xtian wife, you can have her if you still need one, they aren't all they are cracked up to be. Send me your mailing address and I'll stuff her in a crate and mail her to ya, paperwork an all...

 

 

[Vigile]

Thanks to the thorough fucking poisoning from my upbringing and the church, I was impotent by the time I was 19.

 

Jeez SNM, you have some serious will power. This is one of the few instances I can recall where fierce mind over matter had such detrimental effects. I'm sure others will now point out many more ways that religion can turn this normally good thing into something harmful, but I can't come up with any off the cuff. Perhaps anorexia is another example?

[lemon]

Well, no use bemoaning all those missed opportunities and years of anguish and frustration, because I have a wonderful girlfriend now. But damn... how many of you can fucking empathize!? Can I get a witness!?!?!

 

 

Absolutely. It's not that much different for women in the same situation. It wasn't until I went out and gotten to know men outside of the church that I saw what I was missing. I'm not trying to say that the unchurched are better than the churched. From my POV, it was a numbers game. I'm supposed to wait, wait, wait, until perhaps I am 60 and it's too late (for motherhood that is). Meanwhile, I had all of these married mothers telling me to be content in my singleness. After making such a statement, they'd go home and enjoy their husbands and children...go figure. Now, I've decided to live life. Contrary to what christians believe, I still hold to a moral code on these issues. I'll have fun, but I set limits for myself. As I get older (I'm 33) the desire for marriage is on a sharp decline. Dating is enough for me.

[Guest Wild Man]

Finally getting laid was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

 

I kept thinking that I would plunge into a morass of depression and remorse and have to take Xanax and see a therapist for the next six months in order to continue being productive. They always made the prospect of blowing one's virginity outside of marriage seem as tragic as a child watching their puppy drown in a vat of cooking grease. Not only was the experience itself a blast (especially at the end! ), but I felt not one ounce of guilt or anything else.

 

Better still, for the first time in my life, I wasn't obsessed with the great unresolvable mystery that was sex. The onset of tranquility was astounding. Suddenly, I wasn't wasting so much precious mental energy on that towering mystery that had tormented me day-in and day-out. Turns out pussy had as much healing power as in my wildest hopes!!

 

I have an xtian wife, you can have her if you still need one,

 

Shit man, a year ago I would've taken you up on that!! Unfortunately, for it to have been Biblically kosher, you would've had to disappear completely from the picture, if you know what I mean...

[Evolution_beyond]

Better still, for the first time in my life, I wasn't obsessed with the great unresolvable mystery that was sex. The onset of tranquility was astounding. Suddenly, I wasn't wasting so much precious mental energy on that towering mystery that had tormented me day-in and day-out.

 

Ah - the wonderous glory of casual sex

 

There's more salvation in a single moment of sexual lust than there will ever be in several years of going to church

[GraphicsGuy]

My guilt-ridden teenage years, nine years of marriage and trying to overcome my "porn addiction" through religious means really fucked me up sexually. So much fear and repressed desires. They're still packed inside today. Whoever I end up with is going to have to be really understanding and patient, because it's going to take a while for me to unwind and be completely comfortable with her.

[Deva]

Not only was I raised to believe that only a Christian husband was suitable, but also only Christian friends. I never bought that totally. I got married at 23 to a nonchristian. Even though I had only thrown out the faith only partially then, thank Azathoth I did throw it out to that extent! Even though I am now divorced, I would not trade that experience for anything. If I actually believed the BS about having a Christian mate, I would still be waiting, or be married to some Christian jerk.

 

As it is, my fundy mother had major issues with her own body (like its something dirty), which carried over to me on a mostly subconsious level, but they are still there.

 

I still remember my mother urging me to "find a Christian roommate" when I left for college dorm life. I did, and of course it didn't work out well.

[SWIM]

Shit man, a year ago I would've taken you up on that!! Unfortunately, for it to have been Biblically kosher, you would've had to disappear completely from the picture, if you know what I mean...

 

 

I could roll over and play dead if you want me to? My dog can do it, I bet I could pull it off!

[Mandatory Chaos]

Did anyone read "Why I kissed dating goodbye"?

 

I can relate to your situation completely.

[smellincoffee]

Did anyone read "Why I kissed dating goodbye"?

 

I can relate to your situation completely.

 

 

Yes, I remember reading that when I was at my fundiest -- in tenth/eleventh grade.

 

 

 

I was raised in the Pentecostal church -- particularly the United Pentecostal Church International, or as I call it: the PettyCult. The PettyCult is highly dependent on emotionalism. People are supposed to pray in tongues and make no decision without praying and touching God first. Touching God ALWAYS involves emotionalism. Those of us who were raised as young people in the PettyCult were not allowed to date. Both of the couples from my youth group that have gotten married did so when they were nineteen/twenty. One couple is already divorced. The other couple just married this September. None of them really dated anyone else.

 

As an adolescent fundy, I was smitten with my pastor's daughter. My problem was that I wasn't given to emotionalism: I couldn't "feel" God even when I did the things we were supposed to do. God never "spoke" to me the way he did to other people. I liked that girl for...six years. I was convinced that we were supposed to be together because I had prayed for God to help me get over her if he didn't mean for us to be together. In 2004 she left the PettyCult briefly and moved to another state. When she left, I was finally able to gain some objectivity and examine my faith...and I began to realize that the only reason I continued holding on to it was because I wanted so badly to be with her. I was able to admit that I had never felt God, and thus could not be saved. Admitting that I wasn't saved meant admitting that she and I would never be together. Her father wouldn't permit it (this is THAT kind of fundyism) and she didn't stay outside the pettycult for very long. Eventually she was sucked back in and found a nice country bumpkin like her father to marry.

 

The great thing about her moving away was that it allowed me to stop lying to myself -- and that's when my departure from religion began.

[GraphicsGuy]

The great thing about her moving away was that it allowed me to stop lying to myself

 

So God made her move away, right? Finally answered your prayer?

 

[godlessgrrl]

I hear ya, Wild Man.

 

What you write about sounds a lot like the whole TrueLove™ thing that so many girls are programmed to want, only the TrueLove™ thing doesn't necessarily have a religious component.

 

I can remember being programmed to believe that there was The One™ out there for me, and I had to remain chaste and yearning until I found him. And then I had to marry him, because otherwise there wasn't going to be anything in it for me, since sex was something that men wanted and took from women and something that women gave away. I was taught that I'd lose something if I gave up my virginity; sex was always couched in terms of being something amazingly great for men, but humiliating and dehumanizing for women.

 

My mom taught me all that. I don't remember there being a religious component to it when I was young, but there was later on, after she turned fundy. But as I think on it, my biomother is a puritan at heart. She always was, even when she didn't have any actual religious belief backing it up.

 

I seriously think that the whole bullshit about not being unequally yoked was a big factor in me marrying my first husband. He wasn't Xian when we started seeing each other, but he had to be if we were to marry, or if we wanted to somehow legitimize our relationship in the eyes of god, so I turned on the pressure - and he actually converted. So I got to marry a Xian man like I was supposed to, and be the Good Christian Wife™ like I was supposed to.

 

Believe me, it was a fucking nightmare. You're not missing out.

 

I deconverted and divorced him. And then in 2001 I was so happy to think that I'd finally found Mr. Right™ when I started seeing BibleBoy. And we all know how that turned out by now. Is it possible to rape someone's innermost soul? Not in the sense of an actual metaphysical "soul", but rape the deepest, most vulnerable, intangible parts of someone? Because that's what it felt like.

 

One of the reasons why I hate religion so much is because of how much it fucks up things like love, sex, relationships, romance, all that. All these essential human things, things we need to relate to each other on a deep, human level - religion just disembowels as if they're something awful, and as if we're awful for wanting them.

 

It's like religion raped love, took it captive, beat the shit out of it, wiped off the blood, put it in a pretty white dress, and set love up as a creation of religion instead of a natural part of being human. Like you can't really love anyone without religion, and if you love outside of the confines, outside of the rules, your love can't possibly be anything but unholy and profane and evil.

 

I fucking hate that. Maybe that's the thing I hate the most about religion: how much it twists and violates all the simple things that just mean we're human.

 

I can't love or fuck or have sex to this day without that baggage looming over me.

 

Bleah, and this wasn't supposed to turn into a big rant all about me, sorry about that... I mostly just wanted to say that yeah, I hear you. It's fucked up. I don't blame you for being pissed. I'm pissed too.

[smellincoffee]

The great thing about her moving away was that it allowed me to stop lying to myself

 

So God made her move away, right? Finally answered your prayer?

 

 

 

Oh, wow, brother! Gawd works in mysterious ways!

[Guest bruce_p]

I was brought into the church at the age of 15. I remember being 18 and 19, having never had a girlfriend and having never slept with a girl or kissed one since I played doctor with the neighbor girl at age 7, and convincing myself that God would have me fixed up with a marriageable Christian woman by the time I was 24.

 

By the time 24 came and went, not only was I still in the same boat, but I had passed up several marvelous opportunities with gorgeous, intelligent women that I was going to college with. That process repeated itself through grad school, when the women were even more marvelous, gorgeous, intelligent, and into me. I could've had a few incredible girlfriends by now, or at least had amazing sex a bunch of different times. I've got a girlfriend now, and I lost my cherry to a very patient and accomodating fuck buddy in September of this year at the age 28, which was when I reached the end of my goddamned rope. A man can only take so much of that, you know!

 

- I remember, week after week, jacking off more times than there were nights in the week, and my battered cock looking and feeling like a hot dog that had been coughed up by a sick chihuahua.

 

- I remember crying and weeping and pleading with God to just please, please, please send 'her' - whoever 'she' was - to me. I just wanted to know I wasn't going to get the shaft, that I wasn't going to die alone or be called to be a eunuch or some shit. If He would have told me in a big booming voice that by the time I was 32 or something that Option A (as opposed to Option would come to pass, I would have been good to go. But the anguish of not knowing whether or not I was on the "eunuch" list, for Paul said that some are called to be such... shit. It made me afraid to pray, just thinking that I would suddenly be slapped with the eunuch's call.

 

- I also remember being deathly afraid that the 'one' that God had for me would end up being some disgusting fat troll with the personality of either a cinder block coated in bacon grease or a Shih-Tzu with bipolar.

 

- I remember everyone telling me, over and over and over again, that: A) it wasn't the right time yet; let go and let God; C) I wasn't good enough yet, my 'walk' wasn't there yet; D) my female companionship fixation was an 'idol' that obstructed my relationship with God; E) if I couldn't learn how to walk on my own and be perfectly content and 'Single for Christ' TM and all that shit, how could I expect to effectively walk together with someone else in a Christian marriage? And so on, and so forth.

 

- I remember getting sicker and sicker of hearing the same old shit, and getting angrier and angrier every time it got thrown up back in my face. I remember being ready to kick the next fucker's teeth in.

 

- I remember when my senior pastor exhorted older folks to not bug young people (twenty somethings) to get married. "If they are single in the Lord, then that's fine. Good for them. [Then he goes into what Paul said, about being single for Christ, etc.] It's not your place to pass judgment or pressure them. They'll get married at a time when God deems it proper." I went up to him afterwards and said "hey, listen. If one of these older folks here asked me why I wasn't married, the first thing I'd ask them is 'why, you got anybody in mind?' Seriously, I'm growing cobwebs here." And he clapped his hand on my shoulder and laughed heartily. He thought I was making a funny. I wasn't.

 

- I remember not even being able to have a goddamn wet dream, because I had absolutely no idea what pussy felt like. I used to be able to lucid dream at will, but then I'd try to stick my dick into a girl and it would feel like my unlubricated fist totally detached from any human body. It got so frustrating that I stopped doing it and lost that amazing ability. (But now, by crackey, I'm gonna get that ability back!)

 

- I remember me and another equally frustrated screwed-over friend went to the wedding of two mutual friends. I remember it playing out like the perfect storybook Christian courtship, and then, on that day... the perfect storybook Christian wedding. I remember wanting to throw myself off the fucking balcony in the middle of the wedding. I remember how he made me leave the wedding reception early (we were riding together) because "I was about to start throwing fucking tables at people. I'm not joking." I remember after it was all over me and him doing something we would have never thought to do: going to a bar and getting shitfaced drunk. I remember going back to his place and staying up all night smashing junk with hammers and lighting things on fire while screaming our heads off. We even made an improvised explosive device out of gunpowder and ignited it. That was one of the absolute worst nights of both our lives.

 

- I remember my friend's older brother coming home that night (he also happened to be the young adults pastor over us) and us spilling our hearts out to him, only to watch him shake his head in mild amusement and state that we were being silly and overreacting and not putting enough faith and trust in God.

 

- I remember beating myself up over and over again over whether I truly wanted a Godly wife or whether I was just sublimating sinful urges with Christian platitudes. Was it my sanctified Christian heart doing the longing, or was it really my cock?

 

- I remember being able to charm beautiful women on an ongoing basis, and having a decent-sized pool of gorgeous women that I could have dated, and I remember wishing there was some way I could preach the Gospel to them convincingly (and having no idea how, due to their level of education) so that I could maybe have license to try and make a wife out of one of them. I remember feeling guilty that wanting a wife (or, wanting a girlfriend, or wanting to get laid) was the motivation for witnessing to them, rather than genuine overriding concern for their salvation.

 

- I remember my friend's brother stating emphatically that the church was "under no obligation whatsoever" to facilitate lonely unmarried believers in finding wives or husbands and that it all hinged on said believers' relationships with God. I remember me looking at the situation objectively as a bonafide fucking sociologist and seeing a (as I termed it before) systematically libido-squelching sausage fest, and being told to stuff it... because what the hell, as a social scientist, did I fuckin' know?

 

- I remember being trapped in a sausage fest. I remember six lonely desperate pathetic guys (including me) having no one to even compete for, as the only marriageable woman around (the senior pastor's daughter) was an insufferable bitch.

 

- I remember trying to date the insufferable bitch. I remember, the moment I successfully asked her out, entering the realm of high delusion, terribly ignorant bliss, and frightful obsession. I was 24 and lo and behold, God had finally come through! I remember having grandiose fantasies of marriage and children, even before we went on our first official date. I remember thinking this was it, this was finally it. She just had to be 'the one' TM!!

 

- And I remember her being so shut tight with so many body issues that I never even got to kiss her or put my arm around her or anything. I remember me going home and jacking off 8 times before I fell asleep.

 

- I remember her getting all weird and me freaking out. I remember the whole thing lasting one month, but the fallout lasting two years. I should've left that church once things started getting nasty, but was I smart or ballsy enough to do that? No. I remember having to go into therapy because of all the fallout. I remember almost being tossed out of that church by her parents. I remember her and her evil best friend actively making life hell for me; the ones who didn't believe me thought I was mental, and the ones who did were too wishy-washy to step in. I remember hating them both with a flaming passion, just being consumed with hatred and rage, and being unable to repent of it; it just kept on coming back, especially as the bullshit kept on escalating. I remember my dad begging me to leave that church because of what it was doing to me. I remember graduate school and my friends there being the only thing that prevented me from going on some suicidal downward spiral, and I remember putting in tremendous energy to prevent my church life from leaching over and fucking up my educational life.

 

- I remember finally coming out of that after two years of abuse, and once again becoming wistfully hopeful (though with increasing paranoia and dread) that one day God would come through and I would finally get to be with 'the one.' TM

 

Well, no use bemoaning all those missed opportunities and years of anguish and frustration, because I have a wonderful girlfriend now. But damn... how many of you can fucking empathize!? Can I get a witness!?!?!

 

Been there. When I found the lady who was to be my wife, I was saddled with so many sexual issues that I nearly went insane. Puking before intercourse isn't exactly the ideal method of foreplay.

[necrosmith]

I have an xtian wife, you can have her if you still need one, they aren't all they are cracked up to be. Send me your mailing address and I'll stuff her in a crate and mail her to ya, paperwork an all...

 

 

 

I hear ya.

I passed up a lot of opportunities when I was younger because I was saving myself for that special "someone" god had waiting for me.

 

Biggest regrets of my life, and I'm very bitter about it.

[SWIM]

Did anyone read "Why I kissed dating goodbye"?

 

I can relate to your situation completely.

 

LOL you have a creepier signature then mine! Very funny!

[Whindian]

Hey I can really relate to this topic. I am still a Christian, although I obviously have my doubts being on such a website. For me personally, this is what I've perceive as the most detrimental part of christianity to my life. I live by the no-sex-until-marriage rule, and I'm not talking about no PIV-sex (which is how many christians my age seem to interpret it). It extends to no sexual acts, and even passionate kissing because that is fueled by sexual desire and hormones.

 

I could really write an essay about this topic and not say all I need to. So far people have discussed the personal lack of fulfillment and the feeling of tension that has come from this belief. I can definately empathise with that. However one of the biggest issues it has brought to my life is the judgmentalness associated any kind of romantic relationship with the opposite sex. It was born out of this dream instilled into me that I would date this beautiful Christian virgin who would complete me. Out this dream grew an expectation from a very early age that any girl I married would not previously of had sex, period. I can remember, around the age of 14-15, looking at beautiful women who had previously been sexually involved (or likely to have been) and thinking of them as somehow 'defiled' and consequently having no romantic interest in them. I remember my youth pastor making some comment about a hot babe running down the street, to which I asked him whether he felt tempted knowing that they had probably had sex. He just laughed at me in disbelief and said something along the lines of 'Of Course!'. As obvious as this answer seems to me now and probably everyone else reading this post, at the time this was quite surprising. The knowledge of these previous encounters literally turned me right off, so to speak.

 

Years have passed by since then (I'm 21 now). Although I have the maturity to see the 'black-and-white' nature of such a thought, it still affects me on many levels today. Although I have dated, I have never been in a relationship. Additionally, in some ways, my judgmental outlook has actually been exacerbated rather than tempered by maturity. For example I now struggle to cope with the idea of having a partner whose been in a previous relationship, even if it was not sexual. Last week I had a date with a Christian girl I've known for 3 years, where we went out to eat (shes 22, i'm 21). She's got a pretty stringent moral code in this area as well. However in the course of conversation, she mentioned that she had dated another christian guy for 2 years. I was not ready for my internal emotional reaction, which was a mix between panic and depression. Although I know she is also against sex-before-marriage, she made comments that 'he was never serious about the relationship'. So I was thinking 'why would some guy stay in a celibate relationship for 2 years, when he had no intention of entering into marriage?'. I must of said something that reflected this internal diologue, because she then responded along the lines of 'well the physical contact which isn't actually sex isn't explicitly mentioned in the bible, so I guess its just a matter of personal conviction'. Additionally I knew the guy she dated, and he didn't seem to live by such a stringent moral code(he was known as a bit of a party animal, him and his groups of friends would do things such as turn up to lectures drunk). I was depressed about this for a week (i'm usually a pretty happy guy), and I probably hurt her by not ringing back during this time of self-pity.

 

I've also had many opportunities, like others in this thread, to date beautiful, intelligent women. When I'm dragged along to a club by a friend, I'm often hit on by some attractive women. I dated a finalist for Miss World in my country. I've always had plenty of attention at university.

 

An interesting part of this: the church is VERY apathetic to my position. I have confided some of these details to some people I considered mentors. They accused me not being a forgiving person. They noted how Christ forgave the prostitute when all others wanted to stone her, and how Christ continues to completely forgive other sexual sinners. In fact I read online about a guy in a very similar position to myself, who was struggling to deal with his own virginity and his Christian girlfriends rather large sexual past. The author called him a very immature christian, and stated the girl he was dating contained much more christian maturity than himself and that he should probably learn from her!

 

It's not that I can't understand that standpoint, its just that I would not even be dealing with these issues if I hadn't been raised a Christian. Christianity is the one that taught me virginity was so important, but now it chastises me for looking for the same value in another person! If I had of converted into the faith at a later stage (once I'd spread some wild oats), of lived a non-Christian life, I would not be dealing with such issues at all.

 

I know I sound like throughout this post, I'm attributing all blame for my sexual abstinence to the church and its influence. I do understand that only I have autonomy over my life, and I may choose to change my behaviours at any time. However with this large fear campaign, it is just so difficult to leave all this behind and make that first sexual step. Because theres no going back from that point. I can no longer self-righteously moralise about how I should get a virgin because I am one; I will be like everybody else. Additionally if all the fear campaign is true, I have to deal with the sexual baggage. It would be like a gave up at the 11th hour. Divorce is something I really want to avoid, I really do want a marriage that will last and be happy and fruitful. I guess that value has driven me to continue to take such drastic steps as complete chastity.

 

Like I said, I can't address all my thoughts in one post. But I can definately sympathise with the OP on this point.