Struggling with purity

[DReed1175]

My fiancé and I still have almost a year until our wedding and we’ve been struggling greatly with purity. At this point, I’m not quite sure what to do. We’ve tried keeping everything at just a tiny peck, hugs, no cuddling, etc. We haven’t been able to stick with that very long and every time we slip it goes further and further. Recently I’ve felt more confident, we finished a novena for purity which we repeated 9 times, went awhile without doing anything stupid, and then we slipped very badly. It was by far the worst it’s been. Luckily we were able to go to confession the same day and were blessed with an incredibly compassionate priest who really made me feel the strength of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

I am so afraid of making even more mistakes in the area of purity. I have this feeling every time but we keep messing up. I don’t have anyone to discuss it with except a priest and my fiancé, it’s not something I would like to discuss with friends or family. Everywhere I turn society is pushing sex, the temptation is incredible and neither of us know what to do anymore because what we’re already doing is obviously not working. I wish I could at least identify a problem such as having bad intentions or faulty beliefs about sex, but I have full knowledge that it’s wrong, hate sinning in this way with a passion, have every intention to do right, and still we fall. I guess I’m just looking for some encouragement and maybe some suggestions that we haven’t thought of yet. Thank you.

 

[Patavium]

My fiancé and I still have almost a year until our wedding and we’ve been struggling greatly with purity. At this point, I’m not quite sure what to do. We’ve tried keeping everything at just a tiny peck, hugs, no cuddling, etc. We haven’t been able to stick with that very long and every time we slip it goes further and further. Recently I’ve felt more confident, we finished a novena for purity which we repeated 9 times, went awhile without doing anything stupid, and then we slipped very badly. It was by far the worst it’s been. Luckily we were able to go to confession the same day and were blessed with an incredibly compassionate priest who really made me feel the strength of God’s mercy and forgiveness.

I am so afraid of making even more mistakes in the area of purity. I have this feeling every time but we keep messing up. I don’t have anyone to discuss it with except a priest and my fiancé, it’s not something I would like to discuss with friends or family. Everywhere I turn society is pushing sex, the temptation is incredible and neither of us know what to do anymore because what we’re already doing is obviously not working. I wish I could at least identify a problem such as having bad intentions or faulty beliefs about sex, but I have full knowledge that it’s wrong, hate sinning in this way with a passion, have every intention to do right, and still we fall. I guess I’m just looking for some encouragement and maybe some suggestions that we haven’t thought of yet. Thank you.

Why wait almost a year? Why not marry sooner?

Between Official engagement and Wedding, it was about 6 months, and that was because I was in another continent!.

 

[DReed1175]

Why wait almost a year? Why not marry sooner?

Between Official engagement and Wedding, it was about 6 months, and that was because I was in another continent!.

We are both very young (22 and 20 when we’ll be married). For this reason our parents asked us to wait to get married until January 2017. They originally wanted us to wait until summer 2017 at least but we had some conversations with them and without giving details we tried to explain that it’d be best if we married sooner for the sake of purity. We also have another close family member getting married later this year and they’ve asked us to wait a few months after their wedding (I know this is controversial and I do not agree with doing this, but for the sake of peace in the family we will comply).

 

[Patavium]

God bless you and thank you for sharing. I must not be “getting it” but I fail to see the logic of your parent for waiting? Once you are engaged and not dating anyone else and planning a wedding, what exactly is the point of waiting? Are they hoping you are older in order to postpone children?

This is your decision. You don’t have to be a jerk or rude about it, but it really is YOUR decision. You can meet with the priest and explain to him that you are going through marriage preparation and have decided that you do not want to wait a year. Ask him if you can get married in four or six months instead. Most people really only need that much time because they want to save money for a rental hall, a dance, a dinner and all the festivities, the church wedding doesn’t have to wait that long.

When my husband and I were planning our wedding we informed our family when it was gong to be, we were adults and it was our decision. We were prepared to adjust the date here or there to accommodate plans of our loved ones (if for example the maid of honor had a big vacation planned or something) but we were NOT going to put off our wedding for an entire year!

You seemed to fold under the influence of your parents suggestion to put off your wedding. Perhaps this is because you are still young, but if you are getting married it is time to be an adult. There is nothing wrong with informing your family in a very kind way that you are getting married four months from now instead! You can have a vey simple church wedding and a simple reception that you can afford, perhaps with cake and punch. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get married sooner, when I was engaged I wanted to get married as soon as possible! I wanted to get on with my life, to move on to a new and exciting chapter, why wait? Talk to your priest first and see what he says. God bless.

I agree. The couple sets the date, not the parents of the couple.

You don’t need wait for anything fancy really!. My wife and I planned our wedding and also we paid for it. Her parents helped because they wanted to, and my parents helped pay the honeymoon because they wanted to as well. We didn’t ask them, both sets of parents offered to do so. We already had our plans for our wedding and honeymoon.

 

[E_7]

We are both very young (22 and 20 when we’ll be married). For this reason our parents asked us to wait to get married until January 2017.

We were also very young, at least I was (he is 6 years older than me), but one of us had a job. I don’t recommend marrying until at least one of you have a job or a way to pay for the cost of living.

1 Corinthians 7
Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman.” But because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.

To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

A little surprised by the first couple “just get married” answers to this question; more what I’d expect from an Evangelical Protestant forum than CAF.

Hopefully some of the Catholics here will elaborate, but since you seem to be very devout I assume you agree with the Catholic position regarding licit means of birth regulation, either NFP or Providentialism. If you plan to use NFP, marriage will not exactly be a time to give into sexual urges anytime you want, either.

Even if you plan to accept babies as they come, there will be times in your marriage when you cannot have sex such as when you are post-partum, or you are separated temporarily for some reason (business trip, visiting a sick relative, etc.)

As to why you are postponing marriage, since you do mention your priest I would recommend speaking to him and whether he thinks you are ready for marriage. Since we only have one side of the story I am hesitant to just assume your parents are the ones being irrational about this. While age by itself is not a reason to postpone, it is true that statistically, marriages in your age group are more likely to fail than those between spouses who are at least in the 24-25 year age range.

 

[DReed1175]

God bless you and thank you for sharing. I must not be “getting it” but I fail to see the logic of your parent for waiting? Once you are engaged and not dating anyone else and planning a wedding, what exactly is the point of waiting? Are they hoping you are older in order to postpone children?

This is your decision. You don’t have to be a jerk or rude about it, but it really is YOUR decision. You can meet with the priest and explain to him that you are going through marriage preparation and have decided that you do not want to wait a year. Ask him if you can get married in four or six months instead. Most people really only need that much time because they want to save money for a rental hall, a dance, a dinner and all the festivities, the church wedding doesn’t have to wait that long.

When my husband and I were planning our wedding we informed our family when it was gong to be, we were adults and it was our decision. We were prepared to adjust the date here or there to accommodate plans of our loved ones (if for example the maid of honor had a big vacation planned or something) but we were NOT going to put off our wedding for an entire year!

You seemed to fold under the influence of your parents suggestion to put off your wedding. Perhaps this is because you are still young, but if you are getting married it is time to be an adult. There is nothing wrong with informing your family in a very kind way that you are getting married four months from now instead! You can have a vey simple church wedding and a simple reception that you can afford, perhaps with cake and punch. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get married sooner, when I was engaged I wanted to get married as soon as possible! I wanted to get on with my life, to move on to a new and exciting chapter, why wait? Talk to your priest first and see what he says. God bless.

Thank you for your suggestion, we will talk to our priest about it. I’m almost positive that moving up the wedding won’t be possible though. Neither of our families would attend and we would probably be disowned. It sounds like a big exaggeration but unfortunately it is not. I love both of our families, but they can be extremely controlling. The only explanation I’ve gotten from them is that we’re young and they want us to have more life experience before getting married. My fiancé did ask my father’s permission before proposing, so it’s not that they don’t think we should get married. Honestly, I don’t see the logic in it either. We’re stuck in between a rock and a hard place right now, either we destroy the relationship with our family or we risk falling into mortal sin again. I’ve come to terms with having to wait, now I’m just trying to figure out how to stay pure in the meantime…

 

[DReed1175]

We were also very young, at least I was (he is 6 years older than me), but one of us had a job. I don’t recommend marrying until at least one of you have a job or a way to pay for the cost of living.

This is another reason we are waiting. Since he’s not graduating until this summer, he wants to make sure he’ll have a job. The field he’s going into is a bit unsteady right now and he’s hesitant to set a date too soon and end up not having a job when we get married.

 

[Irishmom2]

A little surprised by the first couple “just get married” answers to this question; more what I’d expect from an Evangelical Protestant forum than CAF.

Hopefully some of the Catholics here will elaborate, but since you seem to be very devout I assume you agree with the Catholic position regarding licit means of birth regulation, either NFP or Providentialism. If you plan to use NFP, marriage will not exactly be a time to give into sexual urges anytime you want, either.

Even if you plan to accept babies as they come, there will be times in your marriage when you cannot have sex such as when you are post-partum, or you are separated temporarily for some reason (business trip, visiting a sick relative, etc.)

As to why you are postponing marriage, since you do mention your priest I would recommend speaking to him and whether he thinks you are ready for marriage. Since we only have one side of the story I am hesitant to just assume your parents are the ones being irrational about this. While age by itself is not a reason to postpone, it is true that statistically, marriages in your age group are more likely to fail than those between spouses who are at least in the 24-25 year age range.

I have to say I agree with you. Just get married does not sound like a plan. We know nothing about whether either of them are employed or on school and would be able to support themselves.

Perhaps their parents feel they have not known each other long enough if they have not been "together " very long. Parents know their children better than strangers do.

I agree with the comments regarding the necessity of abstaining from contact at times in your married life. People are not animals that can’t control themselves. If the desire is there to abstain, you should be able to make it happen. I would recommend that you learn to deal with this now, before you marry.

If you have any other concerns to work out such as insecurities or pornography issues for example, this is another reason to wait and not rush into marriage. You need to get things smoothed out before hand.

 

[DReed1175]

I have to say I agree with you. Just get married does not sound like a plan. We know nothing about whether either of them are employed or on school and would be able to support themselves.

Perhaps their parents feel they have not known each other long enough if they have not been "together " very long. Parents know their children better than strangers do.

I agree with the comments regarding the necessity of abstaining from contact at times in your married life. People are not animals that can’t control themselves. If the desire is there to abstain, you should be able to make it happen. I would recommend that you learn to deal with this now, before you marry.

If you have any other concerns to work out such as insecurities or pornography issues for example, this is another reason to wait and not rush into marriage. You need to get things smoothed out before hand.

They do feel we’ve known each other long enough, but they are just worried about life experience. It’s interesting that it has come up that we will have to abstain in marriage too, that is something we’ve discussed as an incentive to try even harder to be pure in our relationship before marriage. We know that if we learn how to handle it now, it will make things much easier throughout our marriage.

My fiancé did have a struggle with porn, it is still a temptation but not something he has fallen into for a long while. Seeing how he’s been able to beat that addiction is encouraging that we can beat this too.

 

[Xantippe]

We are both very young (22 and 20 when we’ll be married). For this reason our parents asked us to wait to get married until January 2017. They originally wanted us to wait until summer 2017 at least but we had some conversations with them and without giving details we tried to explain that it’d be best if we married sooner for the sake of purity. We also have another close family member getting married later this year and they’ve asked us to wait a few months after their wedding (I know this is controversial and I do not agree with doing this, but for the sake of peace in the family we will comply).

How soon will one of you be a college graduate/gainfully employed?

The restrictions sound very artificial and not clearly tied to your welfare. Why January 2017 and not December 2016?

 

[Graceful_Lamb]

The whole thing about your families disowning the both of you if you don’t marry when they want you to has me thinking. Are they going to do the same thing when you and your future husband want to have a family? Are they going to threaten to disown you because you have kid(s) to soon or not soon enough, too close together, too far apart, etc.?

My father threatened to disown me when I was engaged to my husband, because he felt that I was giving my mom and my sister a hard time. In reality, it was the reverse. My parents and my sister gave me a hard time about my wedding up until about two weeks before the wedding. Our marriage is going strong, 15+ years later.

 

[ToeInTheWater]

The whole thing about your families disowning the both of you if you don’t marry when they want you to has me thinking. Are they going to do the same thing when you and your future husband want to have a family? Are they going to threaten to disown you because you have kid(s) to soon or not soon enough, too close together, too far apart, etc.?

Somewhat paradoxical, but one could argue that the fact that the OP and fiancé seem to be so dependent on their parents’ approval, actually is a sign that they are NOT mature enough to “leave and cleave”.

I know that there are many subcultures where adult children are seen as still having an obligation to obey their parents, but AFAIK that’s not Catholic teaching.

 

[DReed1175]

How soon will one of you be a college graduate/gainfully employed?

The restrictions sound very artificial and not clearly tied to your welfare. Why January 2017 and not December 2016?

He will graduate in June. Hopefully will have a “career” job at that point but there’s no guarantee. The January date is simply because our parents want us to have more life experience, for it to fit into winter break for those that are still in school, and to stay far enough away from my other family member’s wedding. This cousin is already very upset that I’m getting married as close to her wedding as I am (hers is in September) so the family drama is really just everywhere.

 

[Irishmom2]

Somewhat paradoxical, but one could argue that the fact that the OP and fiancé seem to be so dependent on their parents’ approval, actually is a sign that they are NOT mature enough to “leave and cleave”.

Yup.

 

[Burt_Macklin]

If it were me I would move the wedding date up. There is no benefit it waiting an extra six months and growing a spine when dealing with your parents will not get any easier if you let them boss you around. If they whine too much about it tell them the wedding can always go on without them. When my grandmother and grandfather met my grandmother had this big wedding planned with another man. She broke off the engagement and two months later married my grandfather. Her parents were furious but they got over it pretty quick. Trust me, you’re parents will too. Setting your own wedding day doesn’t even register as something your parents should be upset with.

 

[Usige]

We are both very young (22 and 20 when we’ll be married). For this reason our parents asked us to wait to get married until January 2017. They originally wanted us to wait until summer 2017 at least but we had some conversations with them and without giving details we tried to explain that it’d be best if we married sooner for the sake of purity. We also have another close family member getting married later this year and they’ve asked us to wait a few months after their wedding (I know this is controversial and I do not agree with doing this, but for the sake of peace in the family we will comply).

I’m sorry that your parents have put you both in this situation. My wife and I were actually slightly younger then you (19 and 21) when we married and have been married over 21 years. We got a similar speech about being too young and needing more life experience before marrying. They were ex static when they learned we were expecting our first child in that first year. In the end we got got older and gained the life experience with a strong spouse to support us through the growth. Some will point out a higher divorce rate for young couples, yet personally I know more couples that married in their mid 20s to late 30s that have divorced. Only 1 of the 5 couples I know who married before finishing college have divorced. Long and short is I think the life experience/“getting to know yourself” line of thought is a crock. Affective maturity, flexibility, and the ability to keep a commitment has much more to do with marital succes then does age and life experience.

As for ways to remain chaste; as long as you allow yourself to have extended time alone it will be difficult. You have to identify what leads to crossing the line and falling for temptation. If sitting close during movies allows your guard to slip then you need to be vigilant during those times and perhaps avoid close contact. One other thing to consider is that during certain parts of a woman’s cycle they are more likely to “throw caution to the wind” and might not be as vigilant when venturing into dangers waters. During those times you might have to agree to limit close contact during extended time alone.

 

[Xantippe]

He will graduate in June. Hopefully will have a “career” job at that point but there’s no guarantee. The January date is simply because our parents want us to have more life experience, for it to fit into winter break for those that are still in school, and to stay far enough away from my other family member’s wedding. This cousin is already very upset that I’m getting married as close to her wedding as I am (hers is in September) so the family drama is really just everywhere.

Here are some more thoughts.

1. My knee-jerk reaction is (like a bunch of previous posters) to want to tell your family to buzz off and to tell you to get married whenever you want (particularly the bridezilla cousin). That comes out of my personal experience getting married (2-3 years later than you) in the face of stiff opposition from one set of parents, one of whom gave us the silent treatment for nearly a decade after that. We were older than you, but in a similar position, as my husband was three years away from graduation, and with no certainty of a job. The opposing parents wanted us to have a two year engagement, which was supposedly how they did things in the old country. (Although I’m pretty sure they totally made that up.)
2. On the other hand, the other posters do have a point, too, that you could easily have a child sooner than you expect.

In our situation, the opposing parents also had a point, although they did an absolutely terrible job of expressing it. I’ll try to put their case for them. They themselves had had their first child in a poor country in graduate school (and their graduate programs took FOREVER), so undoubtedly faced a lot of hardships and setbacks that they wanted to spare their child.

Also, I now realize that there was a lot of material for many future arguments that my husband and I ought to have been able to figure out were areas of disagreement and resolve them much earlier than we did, but at the time, we didn’t even suspect their existence. We should have been able to discover them faster, but we didn’t, and in all honesty, I don’t know that we would have if we had followed the opposing parents’ timeline–I’m afraid that we would just have been hyped up with the drama of the situation, rather than spending the time productively.

1. Aside from the obvious (struggles with purity), I think your main enemy right now is DRAMA. I know it’s hard, but try not to get sucked into it. Try to work on having a good engagement and preparing for marriage, rather than surfing the drama (an ever present temptation).
2. I think the encouragement to acquire “life experience” is a little dumb to an engaged person, at least without being much more specific about what experience you need to acquire. Unfortunately, sticking an engaged person into a holding pattern has a tendency to greatly reduce the ability to move forward in other areas.

That said, try to make lemonade out of your lemons and use your time wisely:

–do NFP charting (especially learning to make predictions)
–maybe do some extra premarital counseling stuff (aside from the required stuff)
–read marriage and relationship books (for instance John Gottman)
–do lots of questionnaires together (in addition to the required stuff)
–work on your conflict resolution and finding win-win solutions, rather than just one of you caving
–practice the domestic arts together (cooking and cleaning)
–do a personal finance class together (for instance Financial Peace University) and start doing separate monthly budgets with (name removed by moderator)ut from each other (with the goal of eventually putting your budgets together)
–don’t allow wedding planning to replace marriage planning

A year is not too much time to pull all that together.

1. Although you’ll get some very good advice on purity from books like How Far Can We Go?, my biggest advice is to remember that while premarital purity is wonderful and amazing, it isn’t enough for a happy marriage. It is a very small fraction of what you need–so don’t let it occupy too much mental real estate. Concentrate on taking care of the other stuff. (Which, very helpfully, will make it easier to be chaste.)

 

[Norseman82]

How soon will one of you be a college graduate/gainfully employed?

The restrictions sound very artificial and not clearly tied to your welfare. Why January 2017 and not December 2016?

Yeah, at least in December 2016 you can get a tax break for this year!

 

[Saber_Mom]

I’m going to slightly disagree with many of the posters.

I think it’s wise of you to consider your family and the other family member getting married. My husband and I have been married for over 20 years, and my cousin got married the same year as I had planned. She was not happy at all with me when she found out I was engaged, so to calm her down, and to appease my parents, we pushed our wedding to January. (Hers was in the fall. I wanted ours originally in May, but this cousin so badly wanted to be married first). My husband’s parents also thought we were too young to get married (and we were older than you!)

That being said, it ended up being easier for us. EVERY venue was cheaper, being that we lived in a midwestern snowy state - we saved a ton of money on everything except flowers due to the date we chose - January 8th. The Christmas decorations were still up, so I needed to do minimal decorating in both the church and the hall, and the Lord blessed us with a beautiful dusting of snow the day before our wedding. The outside of the church was beautiful!

My cousin was very appreciative that she got to get married first (the first of all of us - I’ll be honest - I didn’t care. I actually took some tips from her wedding - what worked and what didn’t work) and we are still very good friends. I guess what I’m trying to say is that waiting a year isn’t going to hurt anyone if it keeps peace in the family. It gives you more time to plan a beautiful wedding and work on planning what you and your fiancé want in your marriage.

As for staying chaste - it was a little easier for us as we were in a long distance relationship, but when we were together, it was hard, but do-able. Xantippe gave some great suggestions on how to pass the time. We made sure we were doing active things while we were together - played a lot of tennis, went out with friends a lot, stayed out of situations that would cause us to sin.

All in all, looking back it all ended up being for the best. I would keep your wedding in January '17.