Being a 27-year-old Catholic virgin has led me into despair
I made a post yesterday telling my sob story about how I can't find a traditional Catholic woman to date/court and hopefully marry, and how the girl I was dating shattered my image of her by revealing her "non-Catholicity" and expecting me to engage in sexual activity. This has triggered a major existential crisis for me and I don't feel comfortable sharing this with any of my friends or family, so I thought I'd see if any anonymous Catholics can give me advice or relate to this.
I'm the youngest of 8 kids, raised by very old and traditional Catholic parents. Catechized well and went to all Catholic schools until med school, and I was active in Catholic youth groups for most of my childhood and adolescence. Point I'm making is that I was a cradle Catholic who was committed and never lapsed and was very much about practicing abstinence and purity b/c of my lifelong Catholic belief and influences. I'm not sinless, I've struggled with major pride and arrogance, but I've always been a "good Catholic kid" and I've never been sexually active at all (I'm 27). Never watched pornography other than brief exposures to it as a kid from other teens, and I've only masturbated 3 times that I can remember (not that I don't have a strong sex drive, I just felt so guilty about it that I was effectively deterred).
I've always respected girls and been good at being friends with them (probably due to my close rel'ship w/my mom and sisters), and I've had girlfriends but it was nothing very serious. The first girl I thought of as a potential spouse was this girl that triggered my turmoil. Sorry I took so long to get to the point. I feel that I've been raised with a traditional Catholic morality (due to my old Catholic parents) especially on sexual matters, but this seems to have prepared me for a different world than the one I'm in.
I feel ashamed of being a virgin b/c people act so surprised and weirded out by this fact about me. And I'm depressed b/c I did all this so that I could give myself only to my wife (as my parents did to each other and so instilled this value in me), when there are no traditional Catholic women my age who could possibly reciprocate this, and I don't think I can handle being a virgin and marrying a woman who's been w/other men. The idea is too painful for me. So it seems like I spent all this time in abstinence and repressing all this sexual tension for no real reason, making myself a virgin (which women don't even really like), missing out on sex and intimacy, just so I can end up a man with no experience marrying a woman who's already given herself to other men and had other men inside of her, which would drive me insane.
In the other thread people pointed out that my requirements for a wife, basically the values that my parents emphasized as essential for a marriage, are pretty much impossible to find (smart, somewhat educated, same age group, totally orthodox/traditional Catholic, no contraception, stay-at-home mom, and same level of sexual experience as me, i.e., a virgin). Even if my daily prayers are answered and I find a traditional Catholic girl the odds are low that she'll be a virgin like me. I'm seriously thinking about just entering into a shorter-term relationship with a girl and having sex with her (I wouldn't do this to a girl who would be heart-broken by this) and afterwards confessing the fornication just so I don't have to deal with this tension and turmoil of being a virgin who marries a woman with previous sex partners. I seriously can barely focus at work or sleep over this whole thing, can someone offer some advice?
Posted Dec 2, 2015, 10:40 PM UTC