The Vine: November 7, 2000
Dear Sarah,
I cannot untangle the following mess. I respect your advice and would appreciate any help I can get.
I am almost 18, my boyfriend (fiancé? husband? Try and figure out his technical title if you can! I surely don’t know it) is 19. We both come from very religious families and we are religious ourselves.
Over a long period of time, my boyfriend and I decided we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. Forsaking our belief that we should honour and obey our parents in everything that we do, we focused only on each other (mistake number one, perhaps). After much talk we made a vow to each other and, in our minds, before God to be always together.
As we understood it, a wedding is a cultural thing, and a marriage is a vow between one man and one woman (though a marriage without a wedding is obviously not legally recognized). We consummated our relationship, I believe, after much thought (weeks and weeks of discussion went into this) and with clear conscience.
Our plan was to go on loving each other, to get a lot of school out of the way (we both want college education), and to meanwhile keep this a secret, before we were formally wed.
My parents found, in my car under the car seat, a receipt for a pregnancy test (they weren’t snooping, just riding in the car and ”cleaning up a bit” – and no, I’m not pregnant, just paranoid). Things blew up, and I was a fornicator in their eyes. My dad stomped around the house in righteous anger for a few days and my mom cried a lot, meanwhile I asked forgiveness for hurting them, helped out around the house as much as I could, and tried to smooth things over.
Things are calming down. My parents consulted my pastor, who has expressed his sorrow over our lack of repentance. I may be given a choice between getting married VERY soon (a few months) or going far away to a different college (it would hurt a lot to be gone from him for such a long time). I would love to be married now even, but my dad would not help us financially (“You’re married and responsible for yourself now”) and we do not have ANY finances worth speaking of, especially not for college. My dad would pay for me to go to any college far away and unmarried. I am so emotionally attached to this man that I am honestly considering putting off school, and even luxuries like, oh, I don’t know…FOOD, to be with him. He wants what is best for me (an education), but feels the same way about being near.
I’ve hurt a lot of people through this and I’m doubting my own reasoning skills (should I have made such a vow? I meant it and I will keep it. But was it morally right? Was it rationalization to convince myself that I was not going against my religion when I had sex? I know it wasn’t, and everyone is telling me that it was). My college education, my relationship with my parents, and my heart are at stake. Do you have advice for me? Thank you for the time you put into untangling problems that aren’t your own.
Aubrey
Dear Aubrey,
You need some distance, from both your family and your beloved, to get your head straight and figure things out. I can’t really speak to whether or not you went against your religion; I don’t think you did the wrong thing by consummating your love for your boyfriend/fiancé/whatever as long as you took precautions, but then, my beliefs don’t preclude sexual activity outside of marriage.
I do think that, at age eighteen, you need to think for yourself…but “thinking for yourself” doesn’t necessarily mean “getting married.” It means thinking for your own self, for you, about your future and what you want out of your life, your whole life. You’ve obviously started thinking for yourself by vowing to love your boyfriend/fiancé/whatever, and by taking your sexual relationship to that level even though you knew it would displease your parents and your church and whatnot.
But. If you get married to your boyfriend/fiancé/whatever, you’ll just transfer control of your life from your parents to him. I believe that you love him, but I think you’ve let it cloud your judgment. You need to get some perspective on things. You need to broaden your world a bit. You need to think about what you’ll do when you’re not spooning with your true love. It’s awfully early in the going for you to tie your destiny to someone else.
Go to college. Trust your boyfriend/fiancé/whatever to wait. People love to say that life is short, but it isn’t really, and you shouldn’t let someone else dictate which direction it takes, not at your age.
Tags: boys (and girls) the fam
