Sleeping with friend: mortally sinful?

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Sometimes I go up to my friend’s (she is a girl, I’m a guy) dorm room to hang out with her. I always end up sleeping over because we stay up very late and my dorm is far away. At first, we would set up a sleeping bag/blanket for me to sleep on the floor, while she slept on her bed. However, over the last few weeks, I have been sleeping on the bed with her. We do nothing impure, have no intentions of doing anything impure, and are hardly even in physical contact with one another. Is this a mortal sin?

Thank you for your responses
 
Well, you need to consider the potential for scandal. Like it or not, people around you are likely to get the idea that you ARE sleeping together. It’s certainly unwise to knowingly encourage that sort of scandal, and can indeed be sinful.

Whether it’s a mortal sin or not depends on other circumstances.

Do you really need to stay so late that getting back to your place is an issue? Is it really so terribly far for you to go that you absolutely have to stay with her? Is there not anyone else (a male friend, perhaps) that you could stay with if it does get late?
 
You are putting yourself in temptation’s way. All you need is one moment of weakness. You are human, she is human. Consider the possibility that one or other of you is deceiving yourself deep down.

We are obliged to avoid occasions of sin. This is a possible occasion of sin.
You may have to make the sacrifice of not staying up so late. If you are both self-indulgent in not regulating your hours together, are you so sure that neither of you will succumb to self-indulgence in any other way?

Can you honestly say that neither of you have any sexual thoughts at all regarding each other? Do you recall that Jesus said that if you lust in your heart you have already sinned. Do you care enough about each other to protect each other from the possibility of sin? You are dealing with natural human feelings. You certainly should not be sleeping in the same bed. You intend not to sin, but you both put yourself in the way of it, without regard to the realities of human nature.

Please God you will both reconsider carefully and honestly.
 
pcg2 said:
Sometimes I go up to my friend’s (she is a girl, I’m a guy) dorm room to hang out with her. I always end up sleeping over because we stay up very late and my dorm is far away. At first, we would set up a sleeping bag/blanket for me to sleep on the floor, while she slept on her bed. However, over the last few weeks, I have been sleeping on the bed with her. We do nothing impure, have no intentions of doing anything impure, and are hardly even in physical contact with one another. Is this a mortal sin?

Thank you for your responses
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It is not a mortal sin, yet, but you are asking for trouble. Meet in the library or student center. It only takes one time to give yourself a lifetime of grief.
 
LilyM said:
Well, you need to consider the potential for scandal. Like it or not, people around you are likely to get the idea that you ARE sleeping together. It’s certainly unwise to knowingly encourage that sort of scandal, and can indeed be sinful.

Whether it’s a mortal sin or not depends on other circumstances.
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What are “other” circumstances? Is this even grave matter?

QUOTE=LilyM;6559685]Do you really need to stay so late that getting back to your place is an issue? Is it really so terribly far for you to go that you absolutely have to stay with her? Is there not anyone else (a male friend, perhaps) that you could stay with if it does get late?

Well, one detail I forgot to mention is that most of the time my other friend (who is a guy) is also with us. So it’s not as if we are alone.
 
Trishie said:
You are putting yourself in temptation’s way. All you need is one moment of weakness. You are human, she is human. Consider the possibility that one or other of you is deceiving yourself deep down.

We are obliged to avoid occasions of sin. This is a possible occasion of sin.
You may have to make the sacrifice of not staying up so late. If you are both self-indulgent in not regulating your hours together, are you so sure that neither of you will succumb to self-indulgence in any other way?

Can you honestly say that neither of you have any sexual thoughts at all regarding each other? Do you recall that Jesus said that if you lust in your heart you have already sinned. Do you care enough about each other to protect each other from the possibility of sin? You are dealing with natural human feelings. You certainly should not be sleeping in the same bed. You intend not to sin, but you both put yourself in the way of it, without regard to the realities of human nature.

Please God you will both reconsider carefully and honestly.
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Thank you for your response. Do you think it would it still be wrong if I slept in the same room, but laid on the floor while she is in her bed?
 
pcg2 said:
What are “other” circumstances? Is this even grave matter?
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Other circumstances include the sort of factors I covered in my questions. If you really did have no alternative but to see her at that time of night, and really were stuck with sleeping with her and had no options, then it wouldn’t be grave.

From the Catechism:

2284 Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor’s tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. **Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense. **

So - what offense are you potentially leading others into here?

Let’s say your behaviour leads others to think that you and your friend are guilty of the sin of fornication. Wrongfully so, as you have said.

That is the sin of calumny, wrongly ruining another’s good name and reputation. It basically is a breach of the 10 commandments, in that you are falsely witnessing against your friend. By action rather than word, but nonetheless false witness. Such a breach of the commandment is quite serious indeed, and probably grave.
Do you really need to stay so late that getting back to your place is an issue? Is it really so terribly far for you to go that you absolutely have to stay with her? Is there not anyone else (a male friend, perhaps) that you could stay with if it does get late?
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Well, one detail I forgot to mention is that most of the time my other friend (who is a guy) is also with us. So it’s not as if we are alone.
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Your friend sleeps with the both of you?
 
LilyM said:
Other circumstances include the sort of factors I covered in my questions. If you really did have no alternative but to see her at that time of night, and really were stuck with sleeping with her and had no options, then it wouldn’t be grave.

From the Catechism:

2284 Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor’s tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. **Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense. **

So - what offense are you potentially leading others into here?

Let’s say your behaviour leads others to think that you and your friend are guilty of the sin of fornication. Wrongfully so, as you have said.

That is the sin of calumny, wrongly ruining another’s good name and reputation. It basically is a breach of the 10 commandments, in that you are falsely witnessing against your friend. By action rather than word, but nonetheless false witness. Such a breach of the commandment is quite serious indeed, and probably grave.

Your friend sleeps with the both of you?
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Well, when I slept on the floor me and my friend would sleep together on the floor while she slept in her bed. The few times that I slept in her bed, he would sleep on the floor.
 
pcg2 said:
Well, when I slept on the floor me and my friend would sleep together on the floor while she slept in her bed. The few times that I slept in her bed, he would sleep on the floor.
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OK. Assuming that your male friend has shared the room on every single occasion that you’ve been there, then the question is whether his presence is likely to prevent any damage to her reputation.

Ie are people most likely to think ‘they must just be buddies, his friend’s always there’? Or might they just think instead that she’s sleeping with both of you? Or might they get the impression, because of the two of you, that ‘she has guys in her room, therefore she’s easy’?

I can’t answer that for you, I don’t know you or her or the people around her. 🤷
 
LilyM said:
OK. Assuming that your male friend has shared the room on every single occasion that you’ve been there, then the question is whether his presence is likely to prevent any damage to her reputation.

Ie are people most likely to think ‘they must just be buddies, his friend’s always there’? Or might they just think instead that she’s sleeping with both of you? Or might they get the impression, because of the two of you, that ‘she has guys in her room, therefore she’s easy’?

I can’t answer that for you, I don’t know you or her or the people around her. 🤷
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Oh no, that impression is definitely not being left on people. See, she lives in a suite-type dorm, where all the girls have their own room but share a restroom. She is close to all of her neighbors (the only people that would see my friend and I), and they know that we are all just friends and that she is the most innocent girl they’ve ever met 🙂 They definitely don’t think that she is easy.

So, given these circumstances, do you think it would still be sinful if I slept in her room, but never again slept in the same bed with her, always making sure to sleep on the floor?
 
Why would you even be asking us if something didn’t tell you that it’s wrong?
 
A gentleman would go back to his abode to leave nothing up for questioning. Just going to her room seems odd to me, but not necessarily unusual for today’s message of “anything goes”. Whether you realize it or not, there will always be some people that are scandalized by it. Sleeping in the same room with her like this is really improper and not in conformity with prudent behavior. Youth blinds our judgement and why we want our son to live with us while he attends college. Sending kids off to college is very risky. I know from experience what can happen to someone not in a protected environment before they have enough time to develop emotionally and mentally and particularly spiritually. Good intentions is really not enough.

I’m praying for both of you.
 
ljubim said:
Why would you even be asking us if something didn’t tell you that it’s wrong?
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Because I suffer from scrupulosity and my ability to gauge the sinfulness of my actions is, to say the least, lacking.

Just because someone has the “feeling” that something is wrong, doesn’t make it so. Look at all of the threads in the moral theology section – half of the things that people believe are sinful turn out to not be sinful at all.
 
pcg2 said:
Sometimes I go up to my friend’s (she is a girl, I’m a guy) dorm room to hang out with her. I always end up sleeping over because we stay up very late and my dorm is far away. At first, we would set up a sleeping bag/blanket for me to sleep on the floor, while she slept on her bed. However, over the last few weeks, I have been sleeping on the bed with her. We do nothing impure, have no intentions of doing anything impure, and are hardly even in physical contact with one another. Is this a mortal sin?

Thank you for your responses
Click to expand...
Interesting. I would say that this is an occasion of sin. I need to ask. Do you feel anything for your friend? You know, anything more than friends? Either way, I think you should stop doing this. For the love you have for her, as a friend, you should respect her, which means putting boundaries.
 
Coming from a female college student, I would never allow males to sleep in my bedroom unless it was my brother or husband. Although God sees all, and knows all, it is not appropriate and imperils a woman/ man’s good name.
 
Whether or not an act is moral depends on the three fonts of morality:
  1. intention
  2. moral object (an evil moral object makes an act intrinsically evil and always immoral)
  3. circumstances (especially consequences)
Sleeping next to someone (no sexual acts) is not intrinsically evil. You must not have any immoral intention (such as the intention to progress to pre-marital sex). If your intentions are good, then the circumstances would determine if the act is moral or immoral.

There is some danger of scandal since other persons have no way of knowing if you are sleeping next to her chastely or not. Also, there is the danger that you might fall to temptation and commit a mortal sin. If the bad consequences outweigh the good consequences, then it is a sin. If the bad consequences outweigh the good consequences to a grave extent (grave harm), then it is objectively a mortal sin.
 
OP, what you are doing is wrong in many ways:
  1. You assume no one thinks any ill of this. You write, “…she is close to all of her neighbors (the only people that would see my friend and I), and they know that we are all just friends and that she is the most innocent girl they’ve ever met. They definitely don’t think that she is easy.”
–No, you have no idea what “they” think, because “they” are not just the roommates, “they” also include, for example, the suitemates’ visitors…(who may hear about overnight visitors)…and people who the suitemates talk to…etc. Like many dorms – do you need to show an ID card to get in at the front desk? If so, you can count on teh resident assistant at the desk to know who stays overnight…and most people will assume that overnight visitors are not just “hanging out,” and they will talk to people, too. Moreover, I will assure you that college is the place lots and lots of “innocent” people lose that innocence, and I can also assure you that some of the suitemates may be making assumptions…
  1. Even if the other “friend” has been present 100% of the time so far, there will come a time when he isn’t, for whatever reason. When that occurs, you, and the loung lady, will be placed in a bad situation, simply because you’re young, you like one another, you may be tired, you and her may be having some sort of emotional connection, whatever – and one thing can lead to another.
  2. Even if you can control yourself, many others can’t. You are still sending the signal to the young lady, and everyone who sees you, that it’s ok for unmarried people to spend the night in the rooms of those of other genders. What happens when she invites some other guy over when you’re not around, and he misunderstands her intentions and comes on to her? Also, your staying leads her to believe that she can do this with others – which may place her at bodily risk some day.
  3. There’s something unique about spending the night sleeping next to someone of the other gender, who you really like and have a connection with, even if all you’re doing is sleeping. That uniqueness is part of what makes marriage wonderful – when you’re married you get to sleep with your spouse (i.e. actually sleep!). What you’re doing becomes a weird caricature of that. Even if you can handle that, the young lady is being misled/fooled into throwing away her entitlement to that uniqueness, down the road.
Have you ever seen the TV commercial where a person helps someone out, and some other person sees the event from afar…then THAT person helps someone out later…and another person sees THAT from afar, etc.? You’re doing this, in reverse. We are ALL role models for our faith, for the rest of the world. Don’t think that someone – a suitemate, a desk assistant who sees you come in the PM & leave in the AM, a visiting parent, etc., – isn’t seeing what you do, between coming & going at odd hours, or whatever…and don’t think, in some tiny way, that your doing these things doesn’t contributes to the general immorality, or sense of immorality that viewer may hold, of what goes on in the world today, and on college campuses.

Spend the night in your room. She stays in hers. 'Nuff said.
 
pcg2 said:
Because I suffer from scrupulosity and my ability to gauge the sinfulness of my actions is, to say the least, lacking.

Just because someone has the “feeling” that something is wrong, doesn’t make it so. Look at all of the threads in the moral theology section – half of the things that people believe are sinful turn out to not be sinful at all.
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I think you’ve been given the right answer from us. So now you know to get off your lazy tail and go home anyway.😉 Picking at you. You should simply go back to your quarters. That’s the right thing to do. Don’t justify it unless its a serious storm issue, like tornadoes. If you really like this girl more than a friend you’d be telling her I care for you by leaving like a gentleman. If its meant to be then let God lead you through it. At the same time, don’t beat yourself up so much if there is a realistic reason for staying. But NEVER sleep in the same bed. That’s just not right. Fr. Serpa told someone that even though there was snow outside the guy should sleep in the car if he was a real gentleman.
 
I am going to avoid stating my personal opinion, because it is at best bias. However, here is the experiance I had with the Church.

I was in an invalid marriage. I went to confession and was denied absolution (that is a real wake up call btw). My wife and I started the process to validate our mariage - which took some time (5 years for us, slow process for us to change our hearts). As our faith grew, eventually we accepted the Church teaching on chastity - and became chaste. Guess what - we were still barred from confession. I can only assume it was there was a continued appearance of sin and potential for scandal.

Finally a few weeks before our con-validation we were told that to prepare for our marriage we needed to go to confession (not sure why it was ok then, and not anytime before that when we were chaste). At that point I was told by the priest to sleep on the floor - so to keep sacred the marriage bed, but not confuse our children (as sleeping on the couch might have). Oh and guess what - was still barred from communion even after the confession (which normally would not have been that large of issue other than my wife went on a retreat that weekend). Our first communion occurred only after our con-validation.​

The Church’s position is very conservative - to protect you from sin, the near occasion of sin, and potentially causing others to sin. I would consider discussing it with your priest if it is causing you stress. The stress could very well be telling you it is risky behavior.
 
I believe the Jewish faith has a concept of “building a wall around the Torah.” I am obviously uncertain about this. I think the concept is not only not to do wrong/sin; it is to stay far away from sin, i.e., keep a wall between you and it, and, IMHO, it makes perfect sense.
 
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