Member Since: July 3, 2013
Answers: 130
Last Update: October 3, 2016
Visitors: 6521
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Hey everyone, 18/f here
Background:
So, the cliche "best friend is in love with me" story happened to me. He's been my bestie for about two years, almost three. He's heard me out when I ranted about other guys, when I cried over getting cheated on, when I was stressed because I had to keep my grades up, and everything else. These past two months we talked more than usual, and I ended up catching feelings for him. I thought he just saw me as a friend but he confessed to having feelings for me for about a year. All our mutual friends knew except me, go figure. So we're dating and it's been great.
There's just one little problem. He's such a gentleman in so many ways and I love that. He wants to get married, buy a house, settle down. He believes that sex should only occur after marriage and while I think it's amazing that there's still men who think this way, I'm not sure I agree with him. He's catholic, not extremely religious but his beliefs are very old-fashioned. I am atheist, and I don't believe in marriage. While we're just teenagers, it seems like that could bring problems in the future. He knows what I am, and he's never said anything negative. The point is, I can't stop thinking about him in "unpure ways". It makes me feel silly to put it that way, but I keep having weird dreams and daydreams about him a in sensual/sexual way. It's starting to become a little obssesive. I mean, he doesn't even touch me other than holding my hand sometimes but that still makes me get all hot and bothered. We're both virgins, but I've had sexual contact with my ex. Could this be way I can't stop thinking about my boyfriend this way? (link)
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There's nothing perverse about your desires, they are completely normal for someone your age, regardless of your experience. I've known plenty of sex-obsessed virgins with NO experience whatsoever.
I would personally hit pause, however. If he can ask you to wait for sex, you can ask him to wait for marriage, which is a MUCH bigger deal, in my opinion, with legal and financial ramifications. Consider doing some pre-marital counseling before you get too serious to see whether you have the skills to work through the many obstacles marriage can bring.
Do you and he have a way to support yourselves? What were your good grades for? Weren't you thinking of going to college? Would you marry him first and then go? If he's Catholic on this issue, he very well may be tied to the idea of no birth control, and from experience, I can tell you having a child while going to school is extremely difficult, and more difficult if you don't have solid finances, which would be unusual for 18 year olds.
What's more, although I respect adviceman greatly, his great experience isn't the norm. Coming from different religious worldviews and marrying at earlier ages are both correlated with a greater incidence of divorce. Picture what your vows to be together mean to each of you. For you, they end at death, for him, he probably expects you to be part of his afterlife. If your boyfriend becomes worried for your soul, will you go through the motions for him, otherwise, how will he feel when you reject his life-or-death concern as a superstitious fairytale?
You're probably right that there could be problems in the future. This sounds like a fantastic love story, with fantastic lessons you're learning about kindness and respect, but not all love stories end with the couple staying together for good. There are serious areas where you'll either need to grow together, talk about, or even possibly ignore and suppress.
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Rating: 5
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Thank you for answering. I am in no way considering marrying him any time soon. I have my studies to finish, my college life to start and a whole world to explore before settling down. I do agree with you on the religion part, but up to this point we've both avoided the subject. We're still young, we still have our grades to keep, our families to enjoy, our friends to hang out with. So we're taking it very slow, which is great. The only time we did discuss the topic, he was very mature and agreed to disagree on religion. Honestly, I wouldn't like to debate him on my beliefs but if someday marriage does come up, we'd have to talk a lot about what we'd want to do for the ceremony and how his family and mine (both families are catholic) would deal with something out of the chuch. Thank you again!
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