feeling unsettled

You never know, wife: The way you handle this might bring your husband not only back to you but to God. You never know, husband: The way you handle this might bring your wife not only back to you but to God. (1 Corinthians 7:16)

Was just chatting with the boyfriend’s younger brother. Same age as me and quite similar I suppose in mind-sets. It’s not so surprising since they had the same upbringing and I and the boyfriend have a similar worldview. He said that he had recently come to the decision not to have sex again until he was married.

I found myself feeling ashamed when he said this. After all, wasn’t that the decision I had sort of come to myself five months ago? I hadn’t gone so far as to use the ‘M’ word because, frankly, I never imagined myself being in the position to get married (that darned self-esteem thing again), but had I lost any sense of the principles I was trying to discover?

Now that I reflect a little more honestly, I think that I fell into the same trap I allowed myself with some of my more inappropriate one-night-stands: saying yes because it was easier than saying no. The boyfriend status had made it seem less inappropriate, but I was still not assertive enough to stand by what little principles I was trying to find.

This makes me sad because it brings the boyfriend down to the level of the boys in my past. I don’t want to do that to him, but equally I don’t want to mention the ‘M’ word as a panicked dash to principled safety. Firstly because, while I really do like this guy a lot, I’m still nervous about another six weeks, let alone a lifetime; and secondly because he broke up with his last girlfriend because she wanted to know if they’d be getting married at some point in the future.

I am feeling ashamed and guilty right now, which is little different from how I’ve felt for the last four years. Or rather, how I’ve felt in conversations with Christians who are ‘better’ than me. It’s also how I feel in conversations with non-smokers, people who eat their five portions a day, people who exercise regularly, people who rarely – if ever – swear. Perhaps I’m losing sight of why I’m feeling guilty simply because it’s my default emotion when I’m feeling unsettled.

I need to pray about it, but this brings with it the possibility that I need to rethink this relationship, which means talking to the boyfriend, which means maybe jeopardizing what we have, which means almost certainly carrying on saying yes because it’s still easier than saying no.

There’s an extra dimension to this whole issue: if my boss finds out I’m sleeping with my boyfriend, there will almost certainly be a disciplinary meeting, because I am not being ‘Christlike’. I’ve laughed about this, but I’ve also been worried by it. It’s so easy to mock conservative Christians when you’re a liberal academic type, but it doesn’t make you right. What the conservative line lacks in compassion it makes up for in righteousness.

I am certainly not righteous enough, but is it ok to give up trying?