Why does it seem like my morals and values are changing?

Let me begin by explaining what my morals and values used to be:

As a Catholic, growing up in a conservative town, I’ve always known that it’s wrong to have sexual intercourse before marriage. It’s what I was taught, and it’s the view I’ve held ever since I learned what sex was. My friends all felt the same way, and we all vowed together that we would save ourselves for marriage. My morals were so strong that I wanted nothing to do with people who didn’t save themselves for marriage. I looked down on them, had little respect for them, and over all didn’t associate myself with their kind.
As I got older, my friends all started going back on their word and losing their virginity, and I promptly plucked them out of my life like petals off of a daisy, one by one. I told my very first friend, whom I had befriended at the age of 8, that she was dead to me. And I haven’t spoken to her since.

Now, I have a boyfriend. Suddenly, everything is changing. All these strange desires I never knew I had are awakening inside me. I believe I am wanting to sleep with him, but I know that it would go against everything I believe in. I don’t understand what’s happening to me. When I’m with him and things start to get hot, I feel like a wild animal, and it frightens me. I’ve never felt this way before.
It doesn’t help that I have a friend — a sweetheart but a bad influence, I’ll admit — who keeps encouraging me to do it. She brags to me about how good it is and how much better I’ll feel afterward. I want to believe her, but my years and years of being told that it’s wrong are holding me back.

I now realize that maybe I only chose to hate sex out of jealousy. It was very easy for me to abstain because I never had a boyfriend through high school, therefore I had no opportunity to have sex. I understand now that perhaps I was simply hating what I couldn’t have. But then, that would mean that I wanted it, and, as I was taught, that’s wrong. But wrong as it may be, I have a feeling it’s true. I felt like I was missing out on something, something wonderful. The ultimate sign of someones affection for another person… that’s like gold to me. I’ve ALWAYS needed to feel loved, and I think that’s all I really wanted. I was jealous of my friends. Why did they get to be loved, but not me?

These conflicting desires are keeping me awake. I don’t know what I should do. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know if I should go through with it or not. This is something that can’t be undone. And what if we break up? Then it will have meant nothing. And the love that I will ultimately give to my husband will be half-hearted, because he will not have been the first. I won’t be able to wear white on my wedding day. And, worst of all, I will have become what I have forced myself to spit upon my entire life.

Please know that he is not pressuring me in any way. He has promised that he will wait as long as I want to. He is a very sweet man and would never force me to do anything that I don’t want to do. It is myself and the peer pressure of knowing that everyone else is doing or has done it that I am battling with.

Please give me your best advice. Why are my morals and values changing to accomodate these feral desires? Should I act upon them? What do you think I should do?


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How do I get him to be himself again after all I’ve put him through?

Ok so just to give you a little background on my fiance and me. I an a 24-year-old single child and he is a 25-year-old twin from a large family. We began dating nearly three years ago and engaged in February of this year before he went overseas (hes in the Marine Corps). We were so in love, like no other love I have ever experienced before. He would do anything for me and I would him. Up until this summer.

I have lived in the same boring town my entire life with my parents since the university I chose was only 20 minutes away. I have always had higher expectations of getting out but never had the courage to do so. Well this past summer I went on an internship and was given the opportunity to get out of this close-minded town.

While on internship I met some really awesome friends and was able to experience being myself and having the freedom of being out of my parents house in a little conservative town. All of this excitement went to my head and I don’t make anytime to speak to him while he was in Iraq as I started to freak out about feeling like I was just "finding myself" so how could I be ready to be married in three months. I started freaking out. "Im an only child, how will I share my space with him….while we have been together for three years we haven’t had my opportunity to spend together seeing as we were only together over the holidays and when he would leave for and come back from iraq every year. (That’s right…he deployed 7 months out of every year). Have this long distance relationship was difficult but we make it work. But I freaked out. And I told him when he got back from Iraq in three months we we rent going to get married as we had planned because I didn’t want to spend married life apart for another year while I finished school and he possibly deployed again. I thought it would be a good idea to wait until we were able to spend more than two weeks at a time together to get married.

He took this as my feelings for him had changed which they didn’t at that time. But as I was unable to talk to him as much as he would have liked, and this in turn made him fear the worst and he began questioning me telling me he wanted the old me back. At the time that I was letting the freedom go to my head and prioritized that over him. The resentment went on like this all summer, he was an emotional wreck and so was I. We were communicating poorly and didn’t understand each others needs. (my experiencing freedom and finding myself. and him needed to speak to me just to keep sane and have a connection to the outside of war zones.)

When he came home from Iraq I resented HIM SO MUCH! I did and I admit it. I felt like he was jealous I was finally making other friends besides him. I felt like he was being selfish for wanting to take that away from me. I know now of course that that was not the case. Now I just hate myself for not realizing that my boy needed me and I was the one being selfish the entire time.

Now that he is back and i realized what a b***h I had been. He has been unsure if he can trust me, if I will treat him that way again and I completely understand why it is he feels this way. It makes me cry everytime I think about how awful I was. I know how lucky i am that he can find it in his heart to still love me. But I want him to trust me, I want him to know how much he means to me, I want him to know that I still want to get married. But when I try and talk about thses things he clams up and doesnt want to talk about it. I dont know what to do or say. What should I do? Btw, he is supposed to be moving to florida early next year and the plan was for me to move with him. he tells me he still loves me more any anything and he wants me to move with him as planned as long as I don’t "freak out" again. How do I get him comfortable with opening up and putting this wall down.
If you would like to comment on how "mean" or "childish" I acted you can save yourself the time. I obviously understand the way I acted is completely unacceptable and feel horrible about it. I do not need your comments to realizes this fact! Thanks :) And yes I want to be with him for the way he made me feel for the way we were before I torn his heart out. Not because I feel like I owe it to him or that he is my meal ticket out of the hellish town I live in. I will be receiving my degree in two weeks and will be able to move anywhere and get a job as a nurse. But I WANT to be with him. I love him, even though you wouldn’t believe it by the way i acted this summer. And no, I didn’t cheat on him, nor would I ever!


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