Regret over "firsts"

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DarkLight

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Yeah I’m posting a lot, I know, I’m sorry. Y’all just have such good answers sometimes!

My question is…how do you get over the sense that many “firsts” you wanted to save weren’t? Most of secular society tells you don’t worry about it, it’s not that important, there’s no sense saving yourself for marriage anyways. But how many Christian girls wanted to save their first kiss for marriage, and know that even if you didn’t go all the way there were many firsts that you wanted to save. That you don’t want to have memories of a man that you have no good connection to having all those things. Maybe you made a mistake; maybe like me you had little choice in the matter. Whatever the reason those things are gone when the are gone, and they can’t be gotten back.

Do you ever stop regretting them?
 
DarkLight said:
Yeah I’m posting a lot, I know, I’m sorry. Y’all just have such good answers sometimes!

My question is…how do you get over the sense that many “firsts” you wanted to save weren’t? Most of secular society tells you don’t worry about it, it’s not that important, there’s no sense saving yourself for marriage anyways. But how many Christian girls wanted to save their first kiss for marriage, and know that even if you didn’t go all the way there were many firsts that you wanted to save.

**I personally think that wanting to save a first kiss for marriage is dumb and dangerous. I’m strongly in the pro premarital kissing camp. A few thoughts:
  1. I think the meaning of a basic kiss on the lips is not “I love you forever” but “I REALLY like you,” and hence it’s appropriate for serious dating. Not to be handed out willy nilly, but also not something to be guarded like the Hope Diamond.
  2. A passionate person should be careful about marrying a person who isn’t passionate, and kissing is (for the savvy) not a bad way to figure that out and to prevent serious mismatches. (I have to mention that savvy in this area probably comes with a certain amount of baggage of past sin, but it can be very valuable information.)
youtube.com/watch?v=wTtbDkkFKAM**
  1. There ought to be a distinction between how one behaves physically with a platonic friend and with a serious boyfriend/fiance. I think not kissing at all blurs the two different relationships too much.
  2. The learning curve for the chaste newlywed can be very steep and challenging (i.e. the worst case scenario is not managing to consummate at all without medical help).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaginismus

Under the circumstances, adding “learning to kiss my spouse in a way that doesn’t make them gag” is probably too much to add to a newlywed agenda.
  1. Believe it or not, spouses can get lazy about kissing. When you have lots of other interesting options available, it’s easy to forget to kiss.
That you don’t want to have memories of a man that you have no good connection to having all those things. Maybe you made a mistake; maybe like me you had little choice in the matter. Whatever the reason those things are gone when the are gone, and they can’t be gotten back.

Do you ever stop regretting them?
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With enough time and enough water under the bridge, the passionate intensity of regret or trauma can fade. I’m not saying it will, but that it can. At some point, with enough distance, it’s as though even very bad, tragic, or traumatic experiences didn’t happen to us, but to some other person we know. If it doesn’t start to fade, if it’s as fresh as it was for the first year or two, I think that’s a case for serious intervention.

I find that the effect of time works with even the case with positive things. I think about stuff I did 15 years ago and I wonder–how did I do that? It’s like the me that did those good or admirable things was a distance relative rather than me.
 
I regret the first time I lived with a man “without benefit of the clergy,” as my Brooklyn relatives described it. He was my fiance, and we did not have sex, and we got married three months later. Our marriage lasted almost 27 years until he died.

Still, I regret that we did not live apart till after we were married. it was not very good Christian witness. I regret it, and I must tell others I regret it. 😦
 
If you become a Catholic in your middle-age (as I have), you may have most of a lifetime of things to look back on with some regret, and also with some shame. We can’t change the past, we can only look forward to the future and live our lives in the best way we can.

Don’t have regrets, it’s a journey - and for some it starts in an unorthodox way. We are not all born into devout Catholic families.
 
I personally think that wanting to save a first kiss for marriage is dumb and dangerous. I’m strongly in the pro premarital kissing camp.
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I personally find nothing wrong with sharing a kiss pre-marriage myself; however I think calling it dumb is a little blasé considering that it could lead to the near occasion of sin. Not for everyone, no doubt, but you yourself made a passing reference to that in your “learning curve” concern. In a world where being chaste before marriage is ridiculed, I can’t help but admire that trait. Okay, I actually admire it a lot! I’m not saying that I would do the same, but if one wants to save their first kiss for marriage, I think that’s pretty cool.

But, I certainly don’t view it as dangerous. Ebola? Sure, that’s dangerous. Isis is pretty dangerous too. I’m trying to think of a situation in which choosing to abstain from kissing can morally endanger a person’s soul. If someone happens to marry a person who has never kissed another person, I’m sure they’ll survive. I doubt they’ll divorce them over their kissing skills. Heck, where’s the rule that says an ex boyfriend/ex girlfriend has to be the “teacher”? I’m sure a husband/wife can be just as good a teacher, right? 😃

As to the OP’s question:

If there is something in your past that you find yourself regretting, try offering it up as a prayer. Put some redemptive value behind it, if you find your mind dwelling on it. We all have done stupid things, and the important thing is to keep on the path that leads to Heaven. I think it was St. Pio who said, " The differences between saints and the everyday man is the saints get back up after they fall and keep moving." (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the jist of it).
 
Evania said:
I personally find nothing wrong with sharing a kiss pre-marriage myself; however I think calling it dumb is a little blasé considering that it could lead to the near occasion of sin.

**Depends on the kiss, I guess.

If it’s a near occasion of sin, don’t do it, but if it isn’t, have fun!
**

But, I certainly don’t view it as dangerous. Ebola? Sure, that’s dangerous. Isis is pretty dangerous too. I’m trying to think of a situation in which choosing to abstain from kissing can morally endanger a person’s soul. If someone happens to marry a person who has never kissed another person, I’m sure they’ll survive. I doubt they’ll divorce them over their kissing skills. Heck, where’s the rule that says an ex boyfriend/ex girlfriend has to be the “teacher”? I’m sure a husband/wife can be just as good a teacher, right? 😃

**It is dangerous to marry someone who is a complete mismatch in terms of physical desire. If one future spouse is passionate and the other is a cold fish, marriage is going to be sad for both of them (and perhaps not very long). Better if the passionate pair off with the passionate, and the cold fish with the cold fish. There are going to be major life changes, but it is helpful to at least start more or less well-matched. **

As to the OP’s question:

If there is something in your past that you find yourself regretting, try offering it up as a prayer. Put some redemptive value behind it, if you find your mind dwelling on it. We all have done stupid things, and the important thing is to keep on the path that leads to Heaven. I think it was St. Pio who said, " The differences between saints and the everyday man is the saints get back up after they fall and keep moving." (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the jist of it).
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Now that I can agree with.

If one can learn something from an experience, no matter how terrible, it wasn’t a complete loss. And the learning might just be acquiring the ability to have compassion on people who are unchaste or who have trouble extricating themselves from bad relationships. It can be terribly difficult to empathize with situations which we have not ourselves experienced.
 
It’s only human to have regrets. If you can’t leave them behind you, then it’s best to confess them, and then find a good therapist to help you work this out.

I have many regrets, and sometimes they make me sad, but then I say, 'Now that’s the past, and ONTO THE FUTURE! :)" I’m sure that’s where the LORD would want me to head. So I can grow in knowing and loving and serving him.

:whistle: Regrets, I have a few, but then again, too few to mention…

I regret leaving Albany in 1977.
I regret not giving my grandfather a christmas gift in 1976, the year he died.
I regret listening to the advice of a counsellor I had in the ninties, that might have killed my marriage. (Adultery was not involved)
I regret giving un-Christian advice to a friend telling her to leave her husband for her lover.

Yeah, I have stuff I have regretted. But what can I do? Confess it and move on. And don’t do it again, with the Good Grace of God.

I always figure, if you live past a certain age; for me that was 24, you are going to have things in life you would have done differently had you had a second chance.:o
 
I don’t know. I was always taught that certain physical acts formed a permanent connection between you and someone else, a connection that could never be fully broken. Of course, when you go to therapy they tell you the complete opposite, that physical acts are just physical and there’s nothing behind them.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t even know what I would confess or not confess, because it was such a strange situation. Like, I went along with a lot of things because I felt like at the time I had to even though in retrospect it was obvious I didn’t. And I feel like it should have been clear that I didn’t want to but then the guy seemed to think it wasn’t because he was so happy I had finally let him kiss me and do other things - and I sort of did let him because I was just too tired out trying to not to and for some reason I didn’t think I could just leave? And then I just felt like I’d be such a hypocrite saying no to things we’d already done and he seemed to think they were ok so I didn’t think I could really say no without just admitting I was a slut already.

It doesn’t make sense, and at this point I just feel like every attempt to make sense of what happened and talk to people gets so tied up in politics and what people should say that it’s useless. (And that goes double for therapy - it’s all very tied up in that sort of thing.)
 
DarkLight said:
I don’t know. I was always taught that certain physical acts formed a permanent connection between you and someone else, a connection that could never be fully broken.

Nope.

Of course, when you go to therapy they tell you the complete opposite, that physical acts are just physical and there’s nothing behind them.

Nope to that, too.

I don’t know what to think. I don’t even know what I would confess or not confess, because it was such a strange situation. Like, I went along with a lot of things because I felt like at the time I had to even though in retrospect it was obvious I didn’t. And I feel like it should have been clear that I didn’t want to but then the guy seemed to think it wasn’t because he was so happy I had finally let him kiss me and do other things - and I sort of did let him because I was just too tired out trying to not to and for some reason I didn’t think I could just leave? And then I just felt like I’d be such a hypocrite saying no to things we’d already done and he seemed to think they were ok so I didn’t think I could really say no without just admitting I was a slut already.

It doesn’t make sense, and at this point I just feel like every attempt to make sense of what happened and talk to people gets so tied up in politics and what people should say that it’s useless. (And that goes double for therapy - it’s all very tied up in that sort of thing.)
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I think the fear of hypocrisy does a lot of harm. You know this now, but the most important thing in the sort of situation you describe is to put 1,000,000 miles between you and a guy like that as soon as possible and figure out your moral culpability when your schedule permits.

What you describe is not surprising as a dynamic between an inexperienced younger woman with religious scruples and an older man without any scruples at all.

The truth is, one of the surest ways to bump a guy like that out of your head when he’s living there rent-free (and it sounds like he is) is to find a safe new guy. Unfortunately, if you’re not interested in men at all, that option may not be very helpful to you, but I do have to mention it, as it’s the most effective measure I know.
 
At this point I’m not sure how much of it is getting the guy out of my head and how much is getting my old church out of my head. In some ways the latter did as much damage as the former, perhaps even more. And the instructors I had for Catholicism were great, but they were prepared primarily to handle those who needed help adjusting to all the facets of Catholic morality, rather than those who came from strict versions of fundamentalism.

I’m still struggling to understand a lot of things. Our chastity education came with a lot of examples like a candy bar someone had licked that had the general point that no guy would want a “used” woman. Along with that awful I Kissed Dating Goodbye book, which had a lot of the same theme in it. High on purity, low on pretty much everything else.
 
DarkLight said:
At this point I’m not sure how much of it is getting the guy out of my head and how much is getting my old church out of my head. In some ways the latter did as much damage as the former, perhaps even more.

**Sounds like a team effort, though–just the old church alone wouldn’t make you feel so bad.
**

And the instructors I had for Catholicism were great, but they were prepared primarily to handle those who needed help adjusting to all the facets of Catholic morality, rather than those who came from strict versions of fundamentalism.

I’m still struggling to understand a lot of things. Our chastity education came with a lot of examples like a candy bar someone had licked that had the general point that no guy would want a “used” woman. Along with that awful I Kissed Dating Goodbye book, which had a lot of the same theme in it. High on purity, low on pretty much everything else.
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Which is not exactly a gospel message. Hey, woman at the well, did you know that you are damaged goods and nobody will ever want you?

Yours strikes me as being a case for good pastoral counseling (a college chaplaincy might be particularly helpful) or maybe just laying out the basics in confession (no gory details) and asking for advice (making a point of mentioning your mental illness issues, which undoubtedly contribute to how well you are able to deal with your past). You may wind up being put on the spiritual regimen for the scrupulous, and you might even ask for it. You can scope out the priest at your local Newman Center and see if he seems bright and pastorally sensitive, which is the combination you need. There are such critters as actual Catholic therapists and psychologists (I am related to one) and a good priest would know about ones in the area if he felt that your case was beyond his competency (which might happen).

I would also suggest looking at academic Catholic books on sexuality and seeing if they wouldn’t help to deprogram you a bit, as presumably the Catholic emphasis is on chastity rather than purity. My husband might be able to give you some reading suggestions.

Best wishes!
 
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