For someone who constantly aks for more gentle and respectful responses, this is not very gentle and respectful.I’m not disagreeing that I want to get over it, silly people!
Well, I’m not married, but as someone who is “saving it” I understand how you feel, as former Catholic Answers chastity speaker wrote in one of his booklets, “gyped” (please note those were his words). I am in the camp of “if I have to be (a virgin), so does my wife”. I do agree with your first bolded statement about not being interested in comments from those who were not virgins; they have no business commenting on this (with the possible exception of saying that they get hurt if this is continually thrown back at them for years) and should recuse themselves as having a conflict of interest, since they are the ones who did the “gyping” in the first place. I have to agree with the posts that the time to have done something about it was prior to marriage. However, your experiences could help warn others about the pain you go through so that they have the option of not going into an “unequal yoking” and that they can resist any pressure / coercion that “if you were a ‘good’ Catholic/Christian you would overlook it”, because it is obvious that not everyone can handle it, so it is just prudent to seek someone who is “equally yoked”.I have scoured this website for advice on forgiveness and insecurity regarding my husband’s past. A lot of it has been helpful, people speaking of forgiveness.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have not been helpful. The people who made mistakes regarding premarital sex and then chastise anyone who would have an issue with someone else’s similar mistakes are not helpful. I guess I am calling in for some help from people in my situation - virgins before meeting their spouses and still struggling with the insecurity their spouses sins have created. The insecurity, images, details, jealousy torment me. And then I feel resentment to my husband regarding this issue because he doesn’t have to suffer from images of me or insecurity from my past mistakes.
Right now, I am just wishing I had made the same mistakes, had experiences of my own so I wouldn’t be this insecure mess. I had plenty of chances, I was in a relationship for 4 years that ended right before I met my spouse. My ex and I made the mutual decision to wait for marriage. I had opportunities previously that I turned down because I thought sex was something to only be shared with a spouse. I lost out on my “fun” and now I feel like I’m being punished with insecurities that my spouse does not feel. He has been overall very nice about all of this, saying he regrets what he did. But that doesn’t change the fact that it happened. I continued the relationship because I loved him and assumed a “good” Christian would love him through his past bad decisions. Now I feel even worse, because I am still not over it.
I even bought a $200 course for betrayed spouses from affairs to help me get over this. I figured if someone hurt by an affair got over this, I can too. I guess I am just realizing this should have been a dealbreaker of mine and I should have ended it before.
I think you need to stop thinking of yourself as “betrayed”. Your husband did not have an affair. And he does not need forgiveness from you, he needs it from God. The attitude that you’ve somehow been wronged and you’re doing him a great favor by forgiving his sins is all wrong- they aren’t yours to forgive.
I think the OP should come over the idea that her husband´s premarital sex was a sin against her, it was only a sin against god and maybe the women involved in the past. It´s not that he betrayed her of a gift.
The problem is that sexual sins are in a class by itself. St. Paul differentiates it when he writes that every other sin a man commits is outside his body, but the fornicator sins against his own body (exact translations may vary). He also compares fornication to uniting one’s self to a prostitute. So the person who engages in fornication, through his PHYSICAL union with the other who is not his wife, gives away part of himself that should have gone to his wife (and vice versa, obviously, if the woman is the fornicating party).Maybe try this? What is a sin that you committed and repented of? (Don’t tell us, obviously)
Would you feel it fair if your husband found out about that sin, and then was unable to get over it and judged you negatively about it.
I’ve never experienced an “intimate” handshake, so forgive me if it bothers me that my husband has shook hands with many other women like that. The more I think about it, the more we are probably just incompatible on this issue and I didn’t realize it before getting married. I hope that it wasn’t that intimate for him, that’s what I worry about. I know it seems silly to you, but it’s very much not silly to me and I wish I would have realized how different we are/were.This seems so silly. Sex without the spiritual part is just biology. Skin touching skin. An intimate handshake.
Nothing more. It is really nothing to be so upset over. It is in the past.
If this is true spend some time contemplating 1 Corinthians 13:4-13. If your husband is truly repentant and has sought confession, then believe the words of 2 Corinthians 5:17.I continued the relationship because I loved him