A question for married CAFers, looking back on your teen/college years

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USAthrowawaaay

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I’m a sophomore in college now, living on campus, and boy do I get exposed to some interesting things sometimes!

I’m recently single, and since I’ve been dumped, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on questions of relationships, chastity, marriage, etc.

As a younger teen, I had a pretty puritanical perspective regarding dating. Since I’ve gotten older, and been in a relationship, I’ve been struggling to really figure out exactly what it means to be chaste in a precise way, not just physically, but emotionally.

I have taken the approach of the question, “Well, what can I do without sinning?” but I feel that this question is an incomplete perspective. My question, then, for all you married Catholics, is this: What were your relationships like when you were young? Both with exes, and with your current spouse? How did those past relationships affect your current marriage? And the question I’m most interested in: now that you’re married, do you have any REGRETS from your time dating? (Additionally, what are your thoughts and feelings about your spouse’s past dating experiences?)

I think that the greatest benefit of chastity is that it preserves intimacy and trust for a lifelong relationship, rather than spreading it out over many people who come and go and take pieces of ourselves with them. So I’m trying to order my relationships with the opposite sex through that lens; how am I going to feel about what I do today, when I’m married in 5-10 years?

Please be totally honest, I can’t wait to read your responses!
 
I starting dating in high school and had two “serious” relationships as a young adult before meeting DH in my mid-20’s. Although he never had any serious relationships before me, he dated a lot. We both agree that the experiences we gained from these past relationships is part of what makes us who we are today. Personally, I don’t regret any of it.
 
I was involved with several boys in high school, one turned into my husband. I only ever kissed those boys, except for some trouble I got into with my now-husband.

Now? I wish I had only ever kissed my husband, and I wish I had saved more of myself for my husband, not just the guy who would one day be my husband. Does that make sense? I did sexual things with him before we were married, and I really wish I had saved all that for our marriage. He agrees. Our wedding night was awkward (both virgins) but I long for it to have been even more awkward. Lol.

Oh well, I have a wonderful husband now.

God bless you! Save as much as you can for your future spouse!!
 
I think the best answer for what integrated chastity looks like are the resources available at www.chastity.com. The Everts’ books, talks, tapes, etc, are all very good. Pure Womanhood and Pure Manhood are good booklets.
 
FrenzyJen said:
I was involved with several boys in high school, one turned into my husband. I only ever kissed those boys, except for some trouble I got into with my now-husband.

Now? I wish I had only ever kissed my husband, and I wish I had saved more of myself for my husband, not just the guy who would one day be my husband. Does that make sense? I did sexual things with him before we were married, and I really wish I had saved all that for our marriage. He agrees. Our wedding night was awkward (both virgins) but I long for it to have been even more awkward. Lol.

Oh well, I have a wonderful husband now.

God bless you! Save as much as you can for your future spouse!!
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What a lovely post !

At the time I think I would have done anything my (future) husband asked before marriage. But on the day and ever since I have been very glad that he had the strength of will to insist that we wait before doing anything past a (very chaste) kiss.
 
theres nothing I regret more than the numerous girls I “made out with” in high school. Almost 20 years later and it still plagues me. My wife, God bless her, has only even been with one man and was fooled into believing that she “missed” out. I tell you what, I wish I’d missed out. My wife sometimes gets jealous about relationships i’d had before we ever knew each other existed. Oddest thing, I know.

You’ll hear a lot about how it’s important to learn about your sexual preferences and experiment and all that. It’s all lies. I was lucky enough that I only had one serious girlfriend during my entire time at university (lasting < 1 of the first 4 years.) At the time, being single most of the time was depressing, but, looking back, remembering how other acted and the problems they created (maybe 1 in 10 stayed together to this day) I’m very grateful not to fallen into the trap of sexual exploration.

In my 5th year (yes, I lost a year due to spending more time with my then gf and not enough time studying, which is second biggest regret) I met my wife. I was drawn to her innocence, to her blind faith in love. But, up to that point, what kept me from really giving into the sexual experimentation (i.e. sleeping around) was God. I regularly attended Mass. I had tried to rationalize my desire and bend the Truth to me (if I’m going to marry her, what’s wrong with X). Then I realized that it’s not that simple. The desire to wed isn’t a commitment - actually getting married is the key.

I wish I could say that I was chaste before our wedding, but am proud to say that, after considerable thought and finally allowing God to guide me, we lived chastely (while being engaged) for 2 years. Talk about a challenge! And talk about a wedding!!!

This might be a little off subject, but I play in a band (a tribute to Nirvana :cool:) and the other members, well, let’s say they are not afraid to share their stories of conquest. However, unlike me, who lives with my wife and our children, they both have several baby mama’s to go along with those stories. Their lives are much more complicated, their money doesn’t go as far, and one even talks about how lonely it is, despite having 2 girlfriends…

Be strong, it’s totally worth it. Remember, we are not called to be happy, rather, we are called to be holy (and holiness leads to happiness.)
 
I was an out of control teen I got into fights alot and my mother let me date at 16 well I got pregnant a year later had my daughter her father never was in the picture then I met my husband and got married 2 yrs later I had onlly had 2 boyfriends only one serious boyfriend my husband always lived a sheltered life and had never had sex before so I was his first looking back I wish I had lived a chaste life I think things in our marriage would be better if I had been pure for him as well, I would tell you to really consider chastity before marriage and definately guard your heart from anything that you might consider questionable that you see going on around you.
 
This won’t be as uplifting as some.

I have many regrets from my dating experiences. Those happened many years ago, right in the middle of the “sexual revolution”. It was about as tempting a time as could be imagined, though it may be even more so now.

I was always “wife hunting”, and didn’t think of dating as having any other true purpose. In that, I think I was right.

On the other hand, when I knew some relationship was not going to result in marriage, I did not always end it in the right way or soon enough.

It can be a delicate thing, dating. One cannot reliably predict how the other person is going to see the relationship. I got surprised over and over again. Back then, it was not unusual to date “just for fun”. But “fun” sometimes turned out badly.

I recall one girl whom I dated just because she was a terrific dancer. No other reason. We agreed that we were not really romantically involved, and not likely ever to be. We “made out” a bit, but it was always “just for fun”. At a point, she decided to marry some fellow, which was okay with me. I then started going out with a friend of hers and the dancer exploded. Just went nuts. She ultimately married that other guy. But I was put to wonder just how possible dating “just for fun” really is. So, yes, I regret that experience.

I had a girlfriend from a distant place; from the deep south, a New Orleans aristocrat. Now and then I went to N.O. and the gulf and I dated her while I was there. We corresponded for years. But we both acknowledged that the distance really made a serious relationship impossible. She went her way and I went mine, but we continued correspondence; a great deal of it. And whenever I was at the gulf, we dated, and were rather romantic with each other. Later on, a friend of hers told me she was “ready to settle down” and wanted to travel to see me. I was, at that moment, engaged, and had to write the lady and tell her that. I regret having supposed that sometimes people rely on “friendships” and make too much of them.

There are other situations I do not care to speak of in detail. But I learned that there is really no such thing as “casual dating” or “dating for fun”. Every relationship one enters into bears some peril of the other party misunderstanding or even becoming attached after it was agreed there would be no attachment. It’s always a serious matter. I was right in thinking of dating as “wife hunting”, but I was terribly wrong in imagining that I could, in the meantime, do a lot of “fun dating”.

I have now been married for decades, and in a way I don’t regret having been something of a rounder. I certainly don’t worry that somehow I’m “missing out” by being faithful to my wife. But to the extent I was careless with other women, I regret it a lot. I’m embarrassed to even think about it.

As to my wife, I genuinely don’t know about her past experiences to the extent she might have had any, and I don’t care. I am responsible for my own deeds, not hers.

A possibly interesting addition to the “wife hunting” story, we didn’t like each other at first. We fought even before we knew each other…the very first time we met. She thought me intolerably vain, and I suppose I was. Later in the evening we declared a truce, upon the agreement that I would not be false to her nor she to me. We could, we agreed, be cordial even in disagreement or critique. We agreed, strange to tell, that we would be each other’s “confidant”; quite an odd thing to agree to on such short notice. But somehow we both instinctively knew we could trust each other.

We both dated others some after that, as well as each other, but we just somehow grew together. Dating others just seemed pointless and impossible. It was not terribly long before we both admitted we loved each other. Life was simply not possible without each other.

She is my “confidante” to this day.

I’m not sure there is any real “moral to the story”, except perhaps that relationships based on false premises are something one will learn to regret in time, while a relationship based on total confidence can be enduring.
 
“What were your relationships like when you were young? Both with exes, and with your current spouse? How did those past relationships affect your current marriage? And the question I’m most interested in: now that you’re married, do you have any REGRETS from your time dating? (Additionally, what are your thoughts and feelings about your spouse’s past dating experiences?)”

I was bummed out not to have a real college boyfriend and went off the rails starting the second half of my junior year. (At some point later, I realized that almost nobody I knew then had a boyfriend–it wasn’t just me. If I’d figured that out earlier, it might have been easier. My parents got married in college and I was hoping to be able to get married right after college.)

Without going into too much detail, before I met my husband, I was never in love with the men I dated, and I never dated a guy I was in love with–those were two different categories of people. Those previous relationships were not with Mr. Right, but Mr. Right Now, who is a totally different person, and I knew it at the time. My husband was the first person I both was in love with and had a relationship with. My last relationship before I met my husband was a huge emotional and spiritual disaster and it really hurt my self-respect. It took two years of not dating before I really recovered from it, which was when I met my future husband. We got married less than a year later.

I’m not sure I would have had the gumption to go after my future husband if I hadn’t had my previous dating history. That’s a considerable positive. On the other hand 1) my previous relationships put me in a lot of danger, spiritual, emotional and physical (although the results could have been a lot more dire than they were–thank you, guardian angel) and 2) it took a lot of time to unlearn bad habits from those relationships. I needed to learn to slow down, to let the physical relationship develop at the speed of the emotional relationship. So, my past helped in meeting my husband and it did help with figuring out where to hit the brakes, but it was no help at all in figuring out how to have a healthy, loving relationship. That was completely new territory.

One more thing–I think it is important to have had at least some experience of independent living and supporting oneself before marriage. When everybody you know rolls out of bed at 9, it’s hard to tell the difference between people who will be able to lead normal lives after college and people who will continue to live like college students for the rest of their lives. Also, it can be hard to tell if somebody is financially prudent in the college environment. A lot of things will become clearer once you are all out in the real world, although you’ll have less time for dating.

Best wishes!
 
I never dated anyone seriously in college. I have no regrets. I wasn’t ready for that sort of thing and I was aware of it. I was still very hurt by the divorce of my own parents and I was just beinging to understand my faith. I knew there had to be more to male/female relationships than sexual pleasure and hollywood romance and I made a conscious decision to avoid it until I knew what it was.
 
USAthrowawaaay said:
I’m a sophomore in college now, living on campus, and boy do I get exposed to some interesting things sometimes!

I’m recently single, and since I’ve been dumped, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on questions of relationships, chastity, marriage, etc.

As a younger teen, I had a pretty puritanical perspective regarding dating. Since I’ve gotten older, and been in a relationship, I’ve been struggling to really figure out exactly what it means to be chaste in a precise way, not just physically, but emotionally.

I have taken the approach of the question, “Well, what can I do without sinning?” but I feel that this question is an incomplete perspective. My question, then, for all you married Catholics, is this: What were your relationships like when you were young? Both with exes, and with your current spouse? How did those past relationships affect your current marriage? And the question I’m most interested in: now that you’re married, do you have any REGRETS from your time dating? (Additionally, what are your thoughts and feelings about your spouse’s past dating experiences?)

I think that the greatest benefit of chastity is that it preserves intimacy and trust for a lifelong relationship, rather than spreading it out over many people who come and go and take pieces of ourselves with them. So I’m trying to order my relationships with the opposite sex through that lens; how am I going to feel about what I do today, when I’m married in 5-10 years?

Please be totally honest, I can’t wait to read your responses!
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Save yourself for marriage and you will never regret it. God’s plan for sex for marriage only, not before, not with others after is the narrow road for happiness in marriage. Faithfulness in marriage starts before marriage. You should focus on this and not what others experienced in what they did or didn’t do. God’s plan for sex and marriage is no based on a poll on others. Read JPII Theology of the Body.
 
robwar said:
Save yourself for marriage and you will never regret it. God’s plan for sex for marriage only, not before, not with others after is the narrow road for happiness in marriage. Faithfulness in marriage starts before marriage. You should focus on this and not what others experienced in what they did or didn’t do. God’s plan for sex and marriage is no based on a poll on others. Read JPII Theology of the Body.
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I do not disagree. However, sometimes relationships can have worse things in them than unmarried sex. Much worse.

To a Catholic, I would think the sin of careless or even malicious use of relationships can be worse than simply having sex.

Thinking back on it, the greatest regrets I have from dating are the hurts inflicted that have nothing to do with having sex. A lot of us have been awfully careless about allowing the other to make assumptions about relationships, and don’t see the profound sense of rejection we can inflict by letting wrong assumptions build up in relationships.
 
USAthrowawaaay said:
What were your relationships like when you were young? Both with exes, and with your current spouse? How did those past relationships affect your current marriage? And the question I’m most interested in: now that you’re married, do you have any REGRETS from your time dating? (Additionally, what are your thoughts and feelings about your spouse’s past dating experiences?)
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Wow. O.k.

I did not seriously date anyone until after college. Not that I didn’t want to, and not that I didn’t have opportunities, but I had problems with anxiety/depression/ADD and wasn’t as socially active as I should have been.

So I regret having lost those years due to my own inhibitions. Did I want to be “celibate?” A moot question. I didn’t have a choice because my problems made the decisions for me.

After college I had three long term girlfriends, one of whom is now my wife. I was not practicing chastity in any sense of the word during my 20s. I was deeply in love with one of the women but she was a nutcase and so I had to break it off. Also, she was married. Living separately from her hubby, but legally married nonetheless. I spent a lot of time and money in bars. I will go out on a limb and say I don’t regret my choices but I wouldn’t mingle with married women any more.

In terms of effects on my marriage–I can’t say what they may be, because I have nothing to compare it with.

My wife was the polar opposite of me in college. She was very social and dated frequently (we went to the same college but didn’t meet until after graduation). She made a conscious decision to settle down when we started dating. If anything, I’m a little envious of how much more fun she had.

Someone posted about finding Mr/Ms Right versus Right Now. My wife is a strong believer that there is no one right person. She believes there is the right person at the right time. Luckily I was that person for her.
 
“Someone posted about finding Mr/Ms Right versus Right Now. My wife is a strong believer that there is no one right person. She believes there is the right person at the right time. Luckily I was that person for her.”

I also don’t think that there is 1.00 right person for everybody. I suspect that for some people there’s 0.00 options available, whereas for others, there might be literally dozens of possible spouses that they would live happily ever after with.

What I had in mind with contrasting Mr. Right and Mr. Right Now is to discourage placeholder relationships. I think it’s disrespectful of the other person to consciously date somebody, knowing that you’re just waiting for something better to come your way, but that their warm body is better than being alone while you wait. That’s really selfish and disrespectful, but it’s also really common. Not only is it important not to do that to another human being, it’s also an important life skill to be able to figure out if you are just that “warm body” for the person you are dating.
 
Ridgerunner said:
I do not disagree. However, sometimes relationships can have worse things in them than unmarried sex. Much worse.

To a Catholic, I would think the sin of careless or even malicious use of relationships can be worse than simply having sex.

Thinking back on it, the greatest regrets I have from dating are the hurts inflicted that have nothing to do with having sex. A lot of us have been awfully careless about allowing the other to make assumptions about relationships, and don’t see the profound sense of rejection we can inflict by letting wrong assumptions build up in relationships.
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I am sorry about the pain you have experienced in dating relationships. However, premarital sex is 1. mortal sin, 2. is a sin against one’s own body and 3.often sets-up the relationship for failure afterwards. there is more divorce between those who have sex and/or live together than those that wait for marriage. I am trying to answer OP’s question and implication about dating and pre-marital sex. Yes, malicious relationships are very bad so is physical abuse in dating. No one should be putting up with that at all and if that is happening, they need to get out of it now! In addressing your situation and experience, if something didn’t work out and was a bad relationship, it is better to find out before the I do’s then later and even if it broke up and there is hurt, it would be a whole bigger badder hurt if you were married and had to divorce.
 
USAthrowawaaay said:
I think that the greatest benefit of chastity is that it preserves intimacy and trust for a lifelong relationship, rather than spreading it out over many people who come and go and take pieces of ourselves with them. So I’m trying to order my relationships with the opposite sex through that lens; how am I going to feel about what I do today, when I’m married in 5-10 years?

Please be totally honest, I can’t wait to read your responses!
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You’ll be glad you waited. 🙂

All the drama and excitement that you see around you fades away very quickly, and what you will see in 5-10 years is that all those friends who are doing everything to excess will have a lot of “city miles” on them; they’ll be old before their time and wondering what happened to all their youthful potential.

You, on the other hand, will have a responsible job, you’ll have the benefits of 10 years of experience on the job (and the money that goes with that) and you’ll still look 21. They’ll ask you what your secret is, and when you say “Clean living” they’ll laugh and say, “No - really. What’s your secret?”
 
robwar said:
I am sorry about the pain you have experienced in dating relationships. However, premarital sex is 1. mortal sin, 2. is a sin against one’s own body and 3.often sets-up the relationship for failure afterwards. there is more divorce between those who have sex and/or live together than those that wait for marriage. I am trying to answer OP’s question and implication about dating and pre-marital sex. Yes, malicious relationships are very bad so is physical abuse in dating. No one should be putting up with that at all and if that is happening, they need to get out of it now! In addressing your situation and experience, if something didn’t work out and was a bad relationship, it is better to find out before the I do’s then later and even if it broke up and there is hurt, it would be a whole bigger badder hurt if you were married and had to divorce.
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Obviously I did not express myself well.

While I do not disagree that sex outside of marriage is a sin and ought to be avoided, my point was that it is not only sex that can lead to harming another. I will admit that I sometimes think carelessness in relationships, even without sex, is potentially the more harmful thing and is, perhaps, the greater sin objectively even if we do not perceive it subjectively.
 
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