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Question
Dear father Angelo,
I’m writing to you because I have a problem. But first, let me thank you for all the time you spend answering our questions!!
Let me go straight to the point. I’m writing to you because my “fiance” (also my first boyfriend) , if he can be called like this (pretty soon it will be one month since our engagement), has been asking me for a long time now to “take a step forward” in our relationship (I guess you understand what I mean).
He always tells me that this is how you demonstrate your affection … I’ve always answered that this can only happen after marriage, only when two people become one flesh and are willing to procreate!
But he insists by saying that either I don’t love him or we will always be together so there’s no need to wait for marriage!
I must say that I am a believer and I don’t want to do this just because he has no problem with it.
I have already gotten angry with him many times because he wears a crucifix around his neck and ,at the same time, commits acts that, in my personal opinion, are an offense to God!
I don’t know how to turn him away from that fixation of his!
Hope you will answer soon and help me to solve this problem!
Thanks a lot!!!
My dear,
1. By acting like this your boyfriend manifests immaturity.
If he cares about you he should respect you.
Respect is the basic form of love.
If there is no respect, there is no love but concupiscence, sensuality and many other things.
At the moment you’re not his forever.
You will be so only from the day of your wedding.
Right now you’re free to put him out of your life, and he’s free to do the same with you.
This is another reason why he shouldn’t take away your virginity.
2. Virginity is the seal of your love, kept intact only for him who will give himself to you forever.
With such a treasure you will go to your wedding and you will be saying to your groom with facts that he can trust you and your loyalty forever.
3. One step forward is what your boyfriend has to take, an absolute necessity to be in a relationship with you.
This step forward consists in manifesting concretely that he won’t give himself to anybody, not even to you, before giving himself up with marital consent.
It is only through the marital consent that he will donate himself for real, and that won’t be just an episode.
4. Having a sexual relationship now would be a lie not only because he would be aware that he’s free from any commitment to you, but also for the use of contraceptives that would inevitably occur.
Contraception is the clearest manifestation that there is no intention of total self-giving because it prescribes the refusal of parenthood while the capacity for it is exercised.
5. He told you that you can only show your love by sexually giving yourself to him.
In this regard, here’s what you could tell him: would you be happy if I, instead of being a virgin, had given myself to different guys that were asking me to take one step further, just as you’re doing now?
What would you think of me if I’d acted this way?
Would I be someone to be trusted?
6. Help your boyfriend, then, and challenge him if necessary to take one step forward in the truest sense of things: to become someone that can be trusted,someone that can dominate himself.
Someone that can hold on and wait for you, who respects you.
Someone that doesn’t want to ruin and desecrate at all costs the flower of intact and pure love, which you desire to keep for the man who will grant you his love forever under the seal of God on the day of your wedding.
7. Shall the white dress you will be wearing at the altar be the exterior sign of your probity, purity and loyalty.
Your boyfriend is not worthy of you until he understands this.
That’s why he should definitely take a further step towards maturity, faithfulness and the awareness that all this means self-giving with loyalty.
8. There’s no need to be a Christian to understand what I just told you.
Nonetheless someone who professes to be such and wears a crucifix around his neck should understand it even more.
9. Meanwhile, pray a lot for him.
If possible, pray with him as well.
And you should add small sacrifices to your daily life without complaining.
It’s the small sacrifices that make prayer more persuasive in the heart of God and in the heart of your boyfriend.
I bless you both and I gladly assure you of my prayers.
Father Angelo
