How to explain chastity to boyfriend?

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Socrates92 said:
How much of a “guy’s guy” is your boyfriend?
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I don’t think I would call him a guys guy, if you mean like the type of guy who tosses around a football and drinks beer with his buddies all the time LOL I hope I’m getting that meaning right. He doesn’t drink and he isn’t super into sports however he does value male friendships. We are at the same university right now for graduate school, and his former male friend group is kind of scattered all over the place in different cities, so I think putting him in touch with some good male friends is a good idea.
Socrates92 said:
What type of Catholic community do you have, if any, where you live?
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We are not part of a Catholic community unfortunately, we don’t really have Catholic friends our age. We live in a big, very very very liberal city for school and we hate it, very different from our hometown. However, there’s one church near campus that I love going to, they might have a young adults group. Theres also a Newman Centre on campus, and I know a few of the students there, but since everyone already seems to know each other and I’m kind of introverted its a bit difficult, although maybe if I could bring my bf along then I wouldn’t be all on my own and it would benefit him as well.
Socrates92 said:
it’d be helpful to emphasize the strength aspect of practising chastity.
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I will definitely be sure to emphasize this!
 
Lara said:
I think the OP’s guy has just not been road-tested for chastity.
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I agree- I contributed a lot on my own to this problem because I didn’t understand or take chastity seriously for like 5 years. There were periods of time when we didn’t do anything and he was fine but it never went on long enough so I think we both just need to start practicing.
Lara said:
I’d feel sad if my boyfriend needed other guys’ support to do the right thing.
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Yes I agree, I don’t want his sole reasoning for doing this to be because other guys do it. But since he is so new to chastity in general, I think it would be beneficial for him to see its normal and healthy (despite what the world tells us), just for starting out. I think either way, whether he sees other guys practicing or not, he respects me and if I take the lead he will follow.
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
May I ask how old you are? I think there is a difference if you are 23, or 37, for instance.
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Sorry I forgot to answer this. We’re 22. By the way, when I say I’m discerning marriage, I don’t mean ready to go tomorrow. I have a lot of work to do on myself and my flaws before I am someone’s wife. But more so that he and I have talked about marriage, we’ve invisioned a future together and I’m evaluating if we will work together 5, 10, 20 etc years down the road and if this is what God wants for me
 
Oh you’re 22!!! Then I see a lot more potential in this guy. However, I am not sure if such relatively young guys are ready to settle down. Hmm. Well, I think that’s a good idea about having dinner with your godparents!
 
Part 1 - I have a joyful update! I am honestly floored at how this all turned out and I want to thank you for your prayers!!!

After really taking in what my priest said and what everyone here said, I finally wrote up a document explaining my stance on chastity so that it would be easier to discuss. My boyfriend has been going through really difficult times with school and mental health this month so there wasn’t a good opportunity to bring up chastity to him for quite awhile, but it was okay because we didn’t have much of a chance to see each other over the past 2 weeks so we weren’t at risk of falling into sin. Then recently there was an opportunity to bring it up, but it was honestly a terrible time because he was already having a horrible week and despite preparation I didn’t do a good job at explaining. As predicted, he did take it emotionally at first on top of all the other things going on in his life and it was just a bad fight. Definitely not the way I had hoped it would go… honestly it was an emotional train wreck on both of our parts… we have never ever ever fought like that in 5 years. However - after we apologized to each other for everything that was said on both sides, he wanted to have a talk with me. I was really worried about what this sit down would be like as the first time we talked about it, it didn’t go as planned. I might have mentioned this before, but he has had some walls up toward embracing religion but hasn’t ever been able to admit that. I didn’t expect this next talk to go well.

He started off the conversation (it ended out being 3 hours long) by reiterating everything I tried to say in the bad talk, and I was impressed at how respectfully and level headed he grasped what I had tried to say. He then said he wanted to talk about ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’. The good was that he realized that I was correct in saying that he was closing God out and shutting down to religion a lot of the time and that it was something he wanted to fix and that he recognizes the importance of religion in relationships/life and that it was important for me to have my partner share faith with me. He said that he was going to start coming to Mass with me, start praying with me, start reading the bible with me, start participating in the church community with me (like volunteering, meeting people, etc), start going on dates more often and that he wanted reaffirm his commitment to raise future kids Catholic and create a home one day that had faith and peacefulness in the centre.
 
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Part 2

He told me he knows that I view marriage as two people trying to get each other to heaven and that he will do whatever he can to get me there. He recognized that I had spiritual needs in a relationship that he hasn’t been meeting. Oh, and while we were talking about living a Catholic life, I explained NFP in full and told him I should be transparent that this is what I want to do once I am married and he said he understands and agrees that we should be open to life. He used to be so staunchly ‘2 kids maximum’ and he said he has re-evaluated that and thinks its too strict and knows that God might give us more and thats just something that we’ll have to embrace. I’ve always wanted a larger family so I was really relieved that this issue was discussed!! I know this all sounds very serious for us to be talking about at our age being in our early 20s but we’ve been seriously dating for 5 years so it is kind of natural to us.

I was honestly floored because I just … I’ve been praying and praying and praying for this for so long now, for the Lord to soften his heart and for him to show me that he is the person I know he can be. This Lent I have really increased my prayer life and trying to tell Jesus I love him more. I also have been reading 10 mins of the Gospels per day and increased my devotion to Mary and starting praying to St. Joseph for my boyfriend as well I think the prayers from the CAF community also helped and I just feel like I’ve finally just given up my sins and started living how God wants me to live and God has answered my prayers!! One poster was right that I can’t lead my boyfriend to God through sin and they were so right. So much good advice here! I even feel that God gave me a sign this week too, which is another story entirely that I don’t know if I can fit in this post. But WOW. I know my boyfriend and I still have a ways to go, but how great is our God!?!

The ‘bad’ part of the talk, was just us going through the hurtful things that we said the other night and apologizing again and just talking it over. Also he said that he needs me to know that I do need to let him move in this faith journey at his own pace, be patient and not rush him or overwhelm him with information or be pushy. Which I understand because I tend to get overly excited about things and sometimes I can see how I come off as pushy to him.
 
Part 3

The ‘ugly’ was that although he respects my decision, he does still feel sad about it because it is really hard to stop a physical relationship after years of being in one and his love language is physical touch which makes him feel disconnected from me if we do not have that part in our relationship. We now have to navigate setting physical boundaries and rebuilding and strengthening our emotional connection to make up for waiting on the physical one. Please pray for our strength. I can tell he of course still has an attachment to sexual sin and he is feeling overwhelmed at how to wait until marriage. So please pray to keep working on his heart and for us not to give into temptation. I think him starting to attend Mass and pray with me is going to give us a lot of strength. I’m not naive to the difficulties that will come and I am going to hold my boyfriend to his word on all of these new changes.

Thank you everyone for your help, I am so glad that I found this forum as the posters in here living out their faith and guiding others really really is a blessing. I will be praying for all of you too!
 
Naeb said:
He said that he was going to start coming to Mass with me, start praying with me, start reading the bible with me, start participating in the church community with me (like volunteering, meeting people, etc), start going on dates more often and that he wanted reaffirm his commitment to raise future kids Catholic and create a home one day that had faith and peacefulness in the centre.
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This (and the rest of your post) is absolutely amazing. God is doing incredible things in your boyfriend’s life, and also yours. Praying for you both! God bless.
 
Naeb said:
… As predicted, he did take it emotionally at first on top of all the other things going on in his life and it was just a bad fight. …

He said that he was going to start coming to Mass with me, start praying with me, start reading the bible with me, start participating in the church community with me (like volunteering, meeting people, etc), start going on dates more often and that he wanted reaffirm his commitment to raise future kids Catholic and create a home one day that had faith and peacefulness in the centre.
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The ‘ugly’ was that although he respects my decision, he does still feel sad about it because it is really hard to stop a physical relationship …
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Five states of greiving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
 
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Lara said:
Put him in boot camp for the formerly unchaste, I say. Some guys are leaders and some are followers. This guy sounds like a follower, which is a good thing. But the OP needs to take charge of the situation and be the leader, and perhaps has some trouble with that.
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This is bad advice. She isn’t his mother. Hopefully she doesn’t want that role, either.
 
We’ve been talking about marriage and family life and every detail of our future for YEARS. I just felt I had to put that part in because I know some people think it’s strange to talk about marriage so ‘young’.

Id like to get married soon! We are both in graduate school and I think our families want us to finish school first. I’ll be finished in about a year, he’ll be done his classes in a year and then will have to travel for another year doing pharmacy rounds. I think our family and friends would be shocked if we got married at 22 because it’s so ‘young’. I’d personally like to get married young because I want our grandparents to be there before it’s too late. And if you’re sure you will be with someone, why drag on the dating period and wait?
 
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