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Thursday 28 March |
Holy Thursday of the Supper of the Lord
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The toughest part about not having sex before marriage…

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Deacon Greg Kandra - published on 08/18/16

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From the online magazine Verily, a bracing and candid bit of counter-culture witness from Claire McArthur:

You don’t realize how much people talk about sex unless you’re not having it. Seriously, I should know; from the age of around 15, when my peers started having sex, to the age of 25, when I got married, I got used to being the only person in the room who was deliberately abstaining from sex. …Consistently, the hardest thing about not having sex before marriage was not the decision itself but rather other people’s reactions to it. One boyfriend complained that he felt like he was in a childish relationship because he couldn’t have sex. He was the same guy who claimed he didn’t like to say “I love you” too many times because doing so might “wear it out.” I guess I should have thanked him then and there for making it abundantly obvious that physical “maturity” didn’t equal emotional maturity. Perhaps the hardest part of people’s judgment was that even well into my twenties, I felt like on some level many people didn’t see me as a fully fledged adult if they knew I was abstaining. I often wouldn’t tell people because I liked the way it felt for them to assume I was “normal.” What astonished me was how unwilling others were to accept that I had made an informed choice simply because it was different from what they were used to. In an age when choice is supposedly supreme, my choice didn’t fit with the cultural narrative, and so it wasn’t viewed as valid. People will make you feel like your life is incomplete without sex, like you’re missing out. They’ll patronize you and pity you, to the point that you might even start to wonder if there’s something wrong with you for feeling like you can live a totally fulfilled and happy life without sex.

Read it all. 

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