No real advice on the living situation.
But as far as confession goes and explaining it to your boyfriend, well, I myself struggle with this as a new Catholic. It’s the only doctrine that I struggle with.
However, one good thing that I can see from Confession is that you get advice from the priest. Whereas, when praying to God, you cannot get advice straight back. And the priest is working with the Holy Spirit to give you this advice. I’ve heard stories of priests saying that they don’t even know where they got the words from or how they came up with the advice, which goes to show that God is working through them.
For me, I see confession as important because if forces us to focus on our sins. Can you confess straight to God? Sure. I grew up Protestant, so I did that my whole life. But being forced to go to confession forces us to look on our life and see our sins. Because I admit, I don’t focus daily on my sins. But when it comes time for confession I spend the time to look back and see where I’ve sinned. Which allows me to go forward and try to not do that sin any longer. As humans we tend to be lazy. I think if we didn’t go to confession we’d be more inclined to not see where we sinned and just pray a general “Forgive me for my sins”.
I know many Catholics talk about this sense of relief and healing from going to Confession. I have yet to feel that, as I’ve only been Catholic 4 years this Easter Vigil. But because of the reasons I’ve given is why I see it as important. And I think these are points that will make sense to a non-Catholic.
