Help, starting to change my mind regarding waiting til marriage :/

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Hi everyone. So, I’m a Catholic living in a very secular country in northern Europe. In my life I have always believed in waiting with sex until marriage. But now that I’m 19, realizing more about how this world works etc, I am starting to change my opinion on it more and more. I’ve almost gotten to the point where I’m questioning whether I should even bother waiting until marriage. I just don’t see a reason to wait if I’m going to be in a stable relationship. I feel like finding a good guy willing to wait is impossible. Like I mentioned I live in a secular country, in a big city. There are a lot of kind, educated, handsome, good men here BUT they are 99 % atheists and think that religious people are nuts/ridiculous. In my church there are only families, and some single middle aged people. I have some Catholic friends from church but none of them are waiting til marriage, they support gay marriage etc. I just feel like I have no hope left of finding a guy here who will wait til marriage. I’m already ‘different’ in the sense that I’m biracial (half black half white) and I’m really not beautiful, so to find someone here who is ready to date a biracial woman (interracial relationships are not so common here) who happens to in my case not be so beautiful, and also wait til marriage, feels… Impossible :/. I see people from all religions getting together with Nordic boyfriends, marrying etc. I see marriages working fine where they have not waited, whereas there are people who wait who end up getting divorced anyway. I don’t know anymore, I know this is a Church teaching, but I don’t feel like it’s possible in todays world. What if I wait and wait and lose opportunities with relationships I could have had, only to end up alone anyway? I get the arguments for waiting, but I have heard and read few conversations about this, the guys often say: 1. “What if they end up getting married, don’t work together in that departement, then they are stuck with that for the rest of their life.” 2. “Sex is an important part of a relationship.” 3. “Why wait with something thats natural?” 4. “If she can withhold sex with me for years, who knows if she will do that in the marriage too?” Etc. In the beginning I was defensive but now, because of everything I have listed, I’m starting to change my mind even though I don’t want to, I want to be a good catholic but I don’t know how to deal with this…
 
Hello. 🙂 I can empathise - it can feel very difficult wanting to form relationships and be “normal” when everyone around you is in a very different dating culture. I had similar. In my case, although my Catholic friends were not waiting until marriage many of my Protestant friends were - and even amongst those who were not specifically waiting until marriage, there were a very high proportion (especially female) who were not promiscuous and in many cases waited until they were in their early 20s before sleeping with a boyfriend. Are you absolutely sure that all your female friends are having as much sex as you think, irrespective of whether they are “waiting until marriage” or not? It’s not “just” a Catholic issue; it really ought to be possible in any culture, secular or not, for a woman to get to know a man without jumping straight into bed with him. I would question whether any man who refuses to even try to comprehend that is going to be all that much fun to date in the first place.

As I said, I had a very similar experience to yours. Everyone is different, but in my case I went on a few dates over my late teens/early twenties, had a couple of brief but unsuccessful relationships in which the lack of sex either was or wasn’t an issue for the chap in question, and finally went on a Catholic dating site and met my wonderful future husband. Before I met him I thought I should probably give up on waiting until marriage, as the lack of sex was clearly just too much for nice, normal men to take. Now that I’ve met the man God intended, I thank Him every day that He helped me to wait, as it truly is a gift (and one that my fella fully appreciates 😉 ). As it happens, I’m about to move to the same part of the world as you - you’re not in Norway, by any chance? My chap is Nordic, and turned to an international internet search because of the lack of Catholic girls in his part of the world.

Wow, that was an essay! Very best wishes to you - it’s a difficult issue, I know.
 
therose01 said:
. I just don’t see a reason to wait if I’m going to be in a stable relationship. I feel like finding a good guy willing to wait is impossible.
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How do you know the relationship will be stable if you’re not married?
If the guy is not willing to wait what else will he not do for you?

Just because everyone else is doing it, does that make it ok? If everyone else jumped off the cliff would you follow?
 
Right now, you are lonely.

If you sleep with a guy and he leaves you, you will be experienced (possibly with bad experience), hungry for sex, and still lonely.

(Or possibly you will be a victim of a serial killer and have no further romance problems… or he’ll steal your stuff… or he’ll make you suicidally unhappy and then leave you… but I digress.)

Of course, if you sell yourself short, plenty of guys will be willing to sleep with you while you’re still young and pretty. (Not so much when you’re older.) I know a guy who pointed out that if a woman steps into a bar and yells out that she wants sex, she will probably find somebody who will take her up on it. But neither person would be expecting any happiness out of it - just sex.

Unless you are very lucky, you will not find a guy who wakes up after sleeping with you and thinks, “Oh yeah, let’s hurry up and get married!” Why? Because you would be telling guys that marriage is not what you want, and you would be actively choosing guys who are also not interested in marriage.

Basically, this would be like finding a computer programmer for your business by hiring professional surfers. There are a few surfers who are also programmers, but it wouldn’t be the best way to find programmers. They would find it hard to take you seriously if you said, “Yeah, great pictures of you catching waves. Now tell me all about programming in Ruby.”

If you want to meet a Catholic guy, hang out more with other Catholics. Ask Catholics you know to introduce you to their male Catholic cousins and friends. Hold parties or go on picnics. Look for the guys you want where they actually can be found.

Re: “But what if the sex doesn’t work out?” - Oh, come on. Those guys are handing you a line that was old in 1920. It’s the guy’s job to please the woman if you ask most husbands, and a couple that knows and loves each other well can work together to overcome any obstacle. If there are physical difficulties, that’s what doctor appointments are for, not trial periods. If there are emotional or psychological difficulties and you don’t want to find out about them during traumatic circumstances, you find out about them during courting/dating and before marriage, not during or after sex. Since most happy, relaxed women don’t have difficulties, you can see where being happily, relaxedly married is a good thing for a woman starting out with sex; and a lot of guy difficulties also come from not being happy and relaxed and sure of oneself. (Drinking too much is also a big one for messing up guys, so the “get blackout drunk and then try to do something” is amazingly bad planning.)

So they’re basically announcing that they themselves think they’re incapable, on top of being arrogant jerks who want a sex slave they can dump instead of a wife who loves them. (You kinda have to wonder if they’ve ever had sex, or if they’re just that bad at it.)

There are worse things in life than being lonesome. There’s no need to set yourself up to suffer. You wouldn’t deliberately matchmake for any of your friends like this; you would want to find her a really good man who is serious and wants a family. Matchmake for yourself the way you’d matchmake for your best friend.
 
Please don’t let Satan deceive you into thinking you should have sex before you’re married. I wanted to wait til I was married also and thought I was the only person my age who had not had sex. I was 24 when I let the lie convince me that I just couldn’t wait. It has been my most regretted decision. Within a year I met my husband to be who had waited for me, and I could not say to him that I had waited for him. He has never brought it up since I first told him sometime in the first few months we were dating, but I still can’t forget that I denied him something I couldn’t ever get back. Please don’t make the same mistake.
 
There are lots of good reasons for waiting to have sex that are still valid even when you’re doubting your faith. You could get pregnant. You could get an STD. You could get your heart broken (honestly, you probably will get your heart broken – as the cynic in me likes to say “all relationships end in either a breakup or death”)

You’re 19. That’s very young still. I didn’t wait until I got married, but I did wait until I was 25. You’ve barely seen the world yet; don’t rush into anything.

I had experience by the time I met my husband. I thought still waiting at our age was sort of nuts. But I loved him, so I waited. If you want to wait, someone who values you will wait with you.
 
therose01 said:
Hi everyone. So, I’m a Catholic living in a very secular country in northern Europe. In my life I have always believed in waiting with sex until marriage. But now that I’m 19, realizing more about how this world works etc, I am starting to change my opinion on it more and more. I’ve almost gotten to the point where I’m questioning whether I should even bother waiting until marriage. I just don’t see a reason to wait if I’m going to be in a stable relationship. I feel like finding a good guy willing to wait is impossible. Like I mentioned I live in a secular country, in a big city. There are a lot of kind, educated, handsome, good men here BUT they are 99 % atheists and think that religious people are nuts/ridiculous. In my church there are only families, and some single middle aged people. I have some Catholic friends from church but none of them are waiting til marriage, they support gay marriage etc. I just feel like I have no hope left of finding a guy here who will wait til marriage. I’m already ‘different’ in the sense that I’m biracial (half black half white) and I’m really not beautiful, so to find someone here who is ready to date a biracial woman (interracial relationships are not so common here) who happens to in my case not be so beautiful, and also wait til marriage, feels… Impossible :/. I see people from all religions getting together with Nordic boyfriends, marrying etc. I see marriages working fine where they have not waited, whereas there are people who wait who end up getting divorced anyway. I don’t know anymore, I know this is a Church teaching, but I don’t feel like it’s possible in todays world. What if I wait and wait and lose opportunities with relationships I could have had, only to end up alone anyway? I get the arguments for waiting, but I have heard and read few conversations about this, the guys often say: 1. “What if they end up getting married, don’t work together in that departement, then they are stuck with that for the rest of their life.” 2. “Sex is an important part of a relationship.” 3. “Why wait with something thats natural?” 4. “If she can withhold sex with me for years, who knows if she will do that in the marriage too?” Etc. In the beginning I was defensive but now, because of everything I have listed, I’m starting to change my mind even though I don’t want to, I want to be a good catholic but I don’t know how to deal with this…
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Sin is sin and you are only a virgin and once you have sex, you are no longer that. People that have sex before marriage often end up undermining it when married. God’s laws are God’s law and they transcend whatever is going on in the culture. Marriage is worth waiting for and having sex before will not help you have a happy stable faithful marriage. Faithfulness is marriage starts with before. Also having sex before will begin to bind you to him and if he isn’t the right one, will make it harder to leave or cloud your judgement about him. Stop listening to the culture around you and secular ideas. Sex isn’t the most important part of marriage, commitment is and dabbling in sex before only causes problems later.
 
therose01 said:
I get the arguments for waiting, but I have heard and read few conversations about this, the guys often say: 1. “What if they end up getting married, don’t work together in that departement, then they are stuck with that for the rest of their life.”
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Sex isn’t a tryout to tell if you’re compatible with each other. This is dehumanizing. If you fail to live up to his expectations in the bedroom, would he love you any less? If so, you can be certain that he never loved you to begin with.
  1. “Sex is an important part of a relationship.”
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It is. In marriage. Sex is meant to reflect the complete and total self-giving a man and woman made to each other. If you haven’t actually made that commitment, then it becomes a lie. It ends up just a way for one or both people to use each other for pleasure. This is not a way to have a healthy relationship.
  1. “Why wait with something thats natural?”
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Food and sleep are natural too. That doesn’t mean I can sleep until 2 in the afternoon or eat seven pounds of cheetos whenever I want. Everything has boundaries, even natural things like food and sleep. With sex, that boundary is marriage. Again, the purpose of sex is to unite a man and woman completely together and potentially make a child from that total self-giving. Outside of marriage, sex becomes distorted. It becomes an act of self-gratification, not complete self-giving.

.
  1. “If she can withhold sex with me for years, who knows if she will do that in the marriage too?”
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This has got to be the most self-centered argument I’ve heard. Women must always be willing to satisfy men’s needs apparently. “How dare she refuse me!” Yeah. That’s the kind of man I want to spend the rest of my life with alright. That right there should show you these guys are not interested in a truly loving relationship. They are only looking for what they can get out of a girl. You don’t need that in your life. You’ll only get hurt.

Besides, the exact same argument could be made from the other side. If he is unable to discipline and control his sexual urges when he’s not married, who knows if he will do that in marriage too? Chastity separates the strong from the weak. You’ll know that a man really loves you and isn’t just trying to use you if he is willing to wait.
Etc. In the beginning I was defensive but now, because of everything I have listed, I’m starting to change my mind even though I don’t want to, I want to be a good catholic but I don’t know how to deal with this…
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I know it’s hard. Really I do. I’m only a couple years older than you, so I know what you’re going through. It’s exhausting having to fight this mentality constantly. I’ve also had moments myself where I’ve wondered if it’s really worth it. But please don’t give in. You’ll only be setting yourself up for more heartache and pain.

God doesn’t give us these rules to try and make us suffer. Ultimately he gives them to us because he created us and he knows what makes us happy. He doesn’t let us down. Stay faithful to Him, and He will come through for you, I guarantee it. Don’t settle for the cheap imitation of love that these guys are offering. God has something so much better and more fulfilling planned for you.

You don’t have to do this alone though. This website chastityproject.com/ has a lot of amazing resources to help you stay committed to chastity.

Anyways, don’t give up. The battle will be worth it in the end. I promise.
 
I waited till I married at the age of 35. It turned out to be horrible sex. Never got any better. In fact, we lived as brother/sister after the first seven years of our marriage. Still, I loved him and he loved me, and we lived until he died, married 27 years. I miss him. We still had love, we still had the relationship. The last nine years were the best. Somehow, God helped us save the best for last.
 
In addition to the other responses you need to have a reason that is powerfully important to you. Sure, there is the risk of STDs and pregnancy, but it sounds like you might have more important reasons.

Sad to say it, but there are factors probably specific to many women that will matter. First of all, there is a chance that you may become very emotionally attached to the man you have sex with (look up oxytocin). Also do you think you would regret not waiting? The fact you ask suggest you might regret not waiting.

As far as the issues with dating, I suppose that waiting will make dating harder, but think of it as filtering out guys that don’t share your values.
 
The bottom line is, do you trust God to reward you for keeping yourself pure, or do you trust in the world, which can steal your soul to the extent that you risk being separated from God for all.eternity?
 
Hello 🙂
I’ll start by saying that I’m not that much younger than you and am also biracial. Why do you think you’re not beautiful? They say that biracial children get the best features from each parent :cool:
I digress, but my point is that no, you are not the only one. I know it may seem that way, and it does to me too sometimes. I was going to do the breakdown of your question, but it seems that Robyn p has beat me to it 😉
I also recommend checking out the chastity project and romance without regret on youtube. How to find your soulmate without losing your soul by Jason and Crystalina Evert is also a great book 🙂
 
Hi and welcome! I’m glad you’re here!
You’ve taken in a lot of messages from the world. It’s hard not to. What are you doing to increase your faith? You can read the stories from the Old Testament, full of stories of people who followed God. There are the saints. Can you spend some time investing in building your faith to counteract the tearing down that you are experiencing?

We are here to love and serve God in this life and be happy with him in the next. As a daughter of God you are called to be a light to the world. To honor God in how you live, how you date, how you conduct yourself in your daily life. There are never regrets when you follow God’s way. Build your life on the rock that is Christ. There are plenty of relationships and marriages built on sandy ground and when the wind and rains came the house was washed away.

Let’s look at what the pill brought us. We have forgotten that sex makes babies and young women are willing to take on risk of pregnancy without being married. We see in the States an explosion of teen pregnancies. So much stress, fear and regrets. Heart aches? Who can count them? Then we see the increase in demand for abortions to ‘fix’ this problem. Millions of babies pulled apart and thrown in the garbage. We have seen an explosion of sexually transmitted diseases, not only in the number of people infected but in the types of diseases that are in existence now. The people living below the poverty level are often young women with babies, abandoned by boyfriends who said they loved them. Promiscuity has not been good for young women or their babies. Young men have forgotten how to date in a way that honors God and honors the young women they go out with. This is not good for young men, for their souls, or their future in learning how to be faithful and for a lifetime. This is what practicing chastity does, it’s training for a life long marriage. Know that when you’re married, there are still people you will find attractive, at work, next door, in the stands at a sporting event. Chastity trains us to guard ourselves, to be faithful. We need people to live this message today, the world is in desperate need to hear it.

Honor God with your life, walk with him every day, and he will make straight your path. It’s worth it.
 
therose01 said:
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God give you the strength to hold out through the Holy Spirit. What is impossible for man is not impossible for God.

Matthew 513 You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men.

14 You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. 15 Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house. **16 **So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
 
The biggest mistake you can do is give into the pressure of sex. You are only a virgin once, and can never get it back. Being Bi-racial has nothing to do with beauty, as beauty come from the inside. And when you find the right man, he will be bring out the beauty you have naturally.

Have been married for 36 years and in the 70’s everyone was doing it. Well not me, and I am glad I waited. I can’t tell you how many girls I know did have sex and regretted it, because the guys just used them and once they got what they wanted they were never heard from again. Then I met my hubby, and he also was a virgin, but he had very low self esteem and didn’t think he was worthy of anyone. Well together we blossomed, and the best thing about being virgins together is sex was and is a fun learning experience throughout our marriage. Look back our early sex was just sex, now we make Love. And of all the girls I know who didn’'t wait have been married numerous times or are living with Boyfriends who will never marry them. And of the two other couples I know who waited, are still happily married just not as long as us.

Now my niece who was not raised with any beliefs and as much as I tried to guide her, ended up having sex with her BF and got Pregnant(was on BC) at 17. And I think she thought he would marry her. Well wrong, as soon as she told him, he dropped her like a hot potato. She was devastated, and her mother told her that if she kept the baby she could not live at home. She wanted her to abort it in not so many words, and my niece wouldn’t do that thank God. But unfortunately at 8 weeks she had a miscarriage. That was two years later, and she is still having a hard time with it, but we keep her on track. The only good thing that came out of this is she learned that the only BC that works is celibacy and that boys are just looking for sex, real men are looking for relationships. She has devoted the last year to Graduating and going to Nursing school, she says guys can wait.

So really think, are you ready to raise a kid alone, and maybe come down with Aids or some other disease. Because 9 out of 10 times they will not stick around once they have conquered you.
 
  1. How could they “not work in that department” if they had nothing else to compare it to? Obviously the couple who waited would be able to figure things out. In my mind, those who are sexually experienced would be more likely to have this problem.
  2. Yes, it certainly is an important part of the relationship as its purpose is procreation. That’s why we wait for marriage.
  3. It’s only natural within marriage, otherwise is purely for ones own pleasure and is offensive to God.
  4. What a bunch of rubbish; it sounds like something a man trying to get into a woman’s pants would say. If the couple were truly in love before marriage such things wouldn’t even cross either of their minds.
Believe me, you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t wait. If this wasn’t the case you wouldn’t have bothered making this thread.
 
  1. How could they “not work in that department” if they had nothing else to compare it to? Obviously the couple who waited would be able to figure things out. In my mind, those who are sexually experienced would be more likely to have this problem.
  2. Yes, it certainly is an important part of the relationship as its purpose is procreation. That’s why we wait for marriage.
  3. It’s only natural within marriage, otherwise is purely for ones own pleasure and is offensive to God.
  4. What a bunch of rubbish; these are all things a man trying to get into a woman’s pants would say. If the couple were truly in love before marriage such things wouldn’t even cross either of their minds.
Believe me, you will regret it for the rest of your life if you don’t wait. If this wasn’t the case you wouldn’t have bothered making this thread.
 
I planned on waiting until marriage, and ended up not waiting, because the temptation grew too great and I figured I would end up marrying the guy anyway (we were in a serious relationship for about a year beforehand). I was in college.

I didn’t marry him. But…being in a sexual relationship made it very, very difficult for me to break it off with him when I knew it wasn’t right for us to continue seeing each other. It took me six months from the time I figured out we should break up to actually doing it. Even after we broke up, and I started dating the man who became my husband, it was very difficult to put this other man out of my mind, which made that relationship difficult at times.

Guess what my solution was for that? My husband and I became intimate at a much earlier point in our relationship than I had previously. And you may think - oh well, they got married, so it worked out. But I’ve observed that pattern in other people who didn’t marry the second person, or the third, or the fourth - it takes less time with each relationship to hop into bed. And even though my husband and I are married now, we’ve had some serious problems that I think are related to us getting too intimate too fast, before we were ready.

Our society would have us think that sex is just another recreational activity, something for fun with no consequences. That is really, really untrue.
 
therose01 said:
Hi everyone. So, I’m a Catholic living in a very secular country in northern Europe. In my life I have always believed in waiting with sex until marriage. But now that I’m 19, realizing more about how this world works etc, I am starting to change my opinion on it more and more. I’ve almost gotten to the point where I’m questioning whether I should even bother waiting until marriage. I just don’t see a reason to wait if I’m going to be in a stable relationship. I feel like finding a good guy willing to wait is impossible. Like I mentioned I live in a secular country, in a big city. There are a lot of kind, educated, handsome, good men here BUT they are 99 % atheists and think that religious people are nuts/ridiculous. In my church there are only families, and some single middle aged people. I have some Catholic friends from church but none of them are waiting til marriage, they support gay marriage etc. I just feel like I have no hope left of finding a guy here who will wait til marriage. I’m already ‘different’ in the sense that I’m biracial (half black half white) and I’m really not beautiful, so to find someone here who is ready to date a biracial woman (interracial relationships are not so common here) who happens to in my case not be so beautiful, and also wait til marriage, feels… Impossible :/. I see people from all religions getting together with Nordic boyfriends, marrying etc. I see marriages working fine where they have not waited, whereas there are people who wait who end up getting divorced anyway. I don’t know anymore, I know this is a Church teaching, but I don’t feel like it’s possible in todays world. What if I wait and wait and lose opportunities with relationships I could have had, only to end up alone anyway? I get the arguments for waiting, but I have heard and read few conversations about this, the guys often say: 1. “What if they end up getting married, don’t work together in that departement, then they are stuck with that for the rest of their life.” 2. “Sex is an important part of a relationship.” 3. “Why wait with something thats natural?” 4. “If she can withhold sex with me for years, who knows if she will do that in the marriage too?” Etc. In the beginning I was defensive but now, because of everything I have listed, I’m starting to change my mind even though I don’t want to, I want to be a good catholic but I don’t know how to deal with this…
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I am Norwegian and my daughter is black/white or biracial. She used to hate her hair. I permed my hair to make it curly like hers. She started to love her hair. I have learned one thing… My daughter loves me so much and I go out of my way for her.
I was molested at age five by an adult relative. I felt very bad about myself. I did not want to be me. My body was just nasty to me. I hated myself so much.
My daughter is why I take care of myself and work on my life.
Like I tell my sixteen year old daughter. Sex is not the whole world. Be friends, have interests and hobbies you both enjoy, and get to know each other. As time goes by two people can get to know each other. Learn about one another first.
Unlike you I did not have a choice my first time. I would hate to see you make a mistake all because everyone else is doing it and you think you’re ok looking.
 
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