Purity Culture Fallout: "I wanted to die because I had ruined 'God's plan for my life'"
This weekend I read through your stories about the harmful effects of purity culture. I found myself nodding, laughing and weeping. For many years I felt very alone in my struggle with sexuality and the purity culture. That has all changed and I can't thank you enough for so bravely honoring me with your stories. I learned so much and I hope you, too, felt a sense of relief and community. I want to highlight a few of these stories because I think they are almost archetypal of purity culture---representing a common experience of purity culture fallout.
These are our real stories. I can only hope the church starts listening......
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I had bought fully into the myth that sex would be Wonder And Delight as long as you keep everything in the package until the wedding day, and that was about seventeen million miles from the truth.
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While I was supposed to stand proud because I had mastered my desires and maintained my white knuckle grip on my virginity, I was ashamed, confused, and insecure about the sudden shift in our relationship. One moment it was forbidden and defiling and impure, but a few hours in a white dress and I was supposed to suddenly feel free and open and wildly passionate?
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No one talked to my husband or I about it beforehand ever. He thought it was like the movies, where foreplay is optional or only lasts a couple of seconds. No one told him or me that going for it before the female is ready can cause actual pain and physical trauma. The poor guy was baffled and wanted to take me to the emergency room. I cried for an hour and thought God was punishing me, a virgin, for not being "pure enough".
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I can highly identify with many of the stories here; I have my own sad marital sexual problems. The issue with using Catholic teaching as the "answer" is that the teaching doesn't recognize or even care to look at the real problems of intimacy that are affected by sexual abuse, guilt, rape, sexual confusion, previous sexual relationships, sexual misinformation, and God knows what else. People deserve to have these often scary and debilitating issues dealt with PRIOR to having children. In a way, it's the process of being open to your own life and the new life you have with your spouse before you can be open to another life.
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I grew up in the church, read every book about waiting/purity that I could find. I still ended up having sex before I got married, with a married man at that. Here's the deal-I think we need to discuss the issue of purity but within the context of full discipleship, not as a separate entity.
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I was so sick of feeling that my worth as a young woman had to do only with the condition of my body and nothing to do with my mind or spirit. If my future husband thought the greatest, most precious gift I could give to him was an intact hymen, then I wanted nothing to do with him. I think abstinence is good. I wish I had been a virgin when I met my husband. I'm not sorry for rejecting that dehumanizing attitude, though.
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I had a purity ring and I was raped the day after I recieved it. I almost married the guy because I was told nobody would want me and after growing up in the church it was easy to believe this. Once I got married it took forever to not feel guilty about married sex. Then he had an affair. I was told I needed to have more sex (I did the whole time during the affair to try to win him back). I healed and learned and grew and got grace. Then I got remarried and really learned that things can be good. I wonder how my life would have been different had I believed I could talk about what happened to me.
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I was raised a Mormon, and purity, virginity, chastity, and virtue were all equal qualities. I was molested, and according to my leaders after I told, I should have told the first moment he touched me. I was 7 when he first touched me, and 13 when I told. He abused me for two years, then we moved. He was not a member, and my parents didn't press charges. He was a good ole boy, and I was expected to simply move on. At 21, I was raped. I never reported it because I assumed it didn't matter, it didn't matter as a kid, why should it matter as an adult? When I did tell (a year and a half later), tge first response was, why did it take so long to tell? Second, what were you wearing? Third, well, you shouldn't have opened the door.
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Pastors say: "Oh, the sex you'll have! It'll be amazing! Look around at all the married couples here - they're all having incredible sex!". They do it to make the waiting seem worth it. So sexually, yeah, you're supposed to go from nought to sixty in a day. I had a friend who was a virgin and was marrying a virgin (I think). She was certain that on their wedding night, they'd just leap on each other with pure animal lust (these people who'd only ever kissed). Turned out that he felt guilty for 'robbing her of her innocence', and she needed stitches.
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I'm 21, and God brought me the love of my life. My best friend. And we blew it. What I'm struggling with now, is yes, our mutual loss of virginity, but the feeling of impending doom that I've always had preached at me, that our relationship will fizzle out because of one mistake. We are dealing with this mistake, the toll it will inevitably take on our future, the possibility of pregnancy, and we are happy to be walking through it together.
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I wanted to die so many times because I had ruined "God's plan for my life" by my responsiveness to a man's attention. It drove me into deep depression. And yet I kept going back because I just wanted to be loved. And he kept taking me back because he just wanted to be loved, too.