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Question

Hello Father, I’m writing to you about my terrible suffering… I’ll explain better by telling you my story.

I met my boyfriend in August 2016 and we fell in love immediately. At first there was much intimacy and we felt very well together, even in the bed… then he moved to my city and we started cohabitation with the intention of  getting married. In fact, when the relationship became very serious, that is when we started living together, we also took a premarital course. Once we started living together, he decided to have no more sexual intercourses with me and we practiced total chastity (even if I’ve never agreed). Then, for tax matters, we decided to get married at the city hall but, despite this, chastity continued (it has to be noticed that I’ve always suffered a lot because of this but I haven’t abandoned him, because I love him, despite I’ve always shown my suffering). Considering that this is the third year we live together and this fact makes me feel very sad, even because we are planning to get married… I wonder if my situation of suffering, due to total chastity, is normal, because it really makes me feel sad; on the contrary he is calm, but I’m starting to see him as a roommate and as a good friend, because we no longer have a sexual life or intimacy… since in August I should marry him but I feel very sad because of this situation, what should I do?

 Thank you very much

Answer from the priest

Dear,

1. There was a twofold mistake at the beginning of your story: sexual intimacy between two people who have not given themselves to one another. In other words: who are not husband and wife.

And then there was the will to live together.

2. About the first mistake: there is a very profound difference between sexual intercourses between two people who still have not given themselves to one another and those between spouses.

In the latter the donation is total (they don’t reserve themselves anything) and therefore it is true.

On the contrary, in the first case it is false because they don’t give themselves totally (with contraception being the evident proof) and then because they know that, until they say “yes” in front of the altar, they are not one another permanently.

3. There was also the other mistake, the cohabitation that, into the Church, brings to an irregular condition, that is evidently against the law of Our Lord.

This condition, as everyone knows, takes away the chance to go to confession and to receive the Holy Communion, until there is will to change life.

4. In front of this ultimatum, your boyfriend has stopped.

He understood his twofold sin and, because he couldn’t come back, he decided in front of God to do at least what he could do: stay chaste despite a civil wedding that, for two people baptized in front of God, is null.

5. He decided to do this because he must have  understood that those sexual intercourses lacked the most important thing, the one that prevents you from  giving yourself in a true way and to get involved.

And maybe he also felt that he was not even satisfied as a man because in those acts something was missing, since they are deliberately distorted in their most intimate meaning.

He postponed them to a moment in which they’ll really express your dignity of man and woman and the will of God about you.

6. You should be proud of a boyfriend like him.

A man like him, who is strongly determined to pursue  the good and God and who, for three years now, overcomes any temptation, gives you the certainty that he is firm in keeping togher the family that he will form, in good or bad times.

7. I also understand  his suffering in  seeing you, the person he loves, unable to  understand what is animating his behavior, when instead he would like you to do the same.

He sees you sad because you are surrounded by something that burdens you, something that prevents you from flying high and to understand the good that God has reserved to those acts when they are done with purity and fullness of heart.

8. Therefore, you too should fly high.

Thank God because he made you meet a boyfriend like him.

Ask God the grace to have him always by your side and to become worthy of him.

I remind you to Lord from hearth and I bless you.

Father Angelo