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?
Related Information:
