an ongoing debate about premaritial sex:

[ruejacobs]

recently, my eldest daughter moved into her fiance's home. now, i have always been leery of marraige (i had a particularly nasty divorce and a perfectly dreadful experience being married in the first place....i won't bore you with the details). this daughter of mine only just turned eighteen. but, seeing how she is now responsible solely for her decisions, i have told her gently that i do not think she is old enough to marry yet and let it go at that. my mother, however, feels a need to control everyone in our family, and began sending very unpleasant emails to me and my daughter regarding how sinful she believes the young lady to be, calling her unspeakable names and planning an 'intervention' to 'help' my daughter become 'right with god' again. these emails are hurtful and cruelly worded.

i am compelled to defend my daughter against these spiteful holier-than-thou attacks. after all, my grandmother (who is 87) lives with a man she is not married to and is very much in love with him, my mother had three different husbands, and had oodles of premaritial sex when i was growing up, even having an abortion at one point when i was six or so....all while attending church, singing in the choir, hosting bible studies, and teaching sunday school to children and teenagers; and my sister (who my mother adores and has only positive things to say about) lived with various boyfriends until she married in the late nineties, and i myself, well, i'll be married when i feel it is time to marry and not a second before. i am quite happy with my present live-in partner, and we actually will get engaged in our own time.

so it's not like my daughter is some 'black sheep' out rebelling against our established family role-models, or anything.

for reasons that are complicated, i cannot break ties with my mother. i love her, believe her to have good intentions, and hope that one day she will find a way to embrace the religion of her choice without being harmful towards the other members of my family. she is, despite her abusive ways, my mother.

i have tried to send her replies to her abusive emails telling her that the christian god i believe (i actually am not christian, but agnostic...maybe?) in is not about encoraging people to tear eachother down, but instead is about nurturance and forgiveness. this did not go over well. i was sent a lovely little bible lesson about some old testament figures and their adventures beteen the sheets...and how god didn't like them much (well, i know the david and bathsheba story ty very much...and my interpretation is that god was p/o-ed more that david killed a guy to steal his wife...not that they had premaritial sex). i was tempted to send her a few examples of my own regarding how nicely rewarded other old testament figures were when they went for an extramaritial romp...Tamar, for instance....but i stayed my hand and took a few deep breaths. i do not want this to turn ugly. i told her that i couldn't imagine god being overly fascinated with what people chose to do with their genitals as an expression of love between two consenting adults. i find it hard to imagine god peeking in their windows late at night and demanding, "What are you two up to in there? stop it this instant or i'll smite you!". i pointed out that god has bigger fish to fry, like war, famine, disease, poverty, and so on.

i pointed out how absurd and painful it is to hear your precious treasured child crying and saying, "Do you think Nana will ever forgive me?" for loving somebody! for loving somebody! i suggested that she not critisize my daughter when she did not critisize my grandmother or my sister for the exact same behavior. i pointed out that she never called my sister a whore, or pitiful, or any of the other unprintable things she wrote and said about my own daughter.

and she said she was sorry that she had ever had sex outside of marraige. (well, the thief is never actually sorry that he stole, but he's very very sorry that he has been caught! and my mother had no regrets about her own behavior until she began judging someone else for behaving the same way and realised how hypocritical she sounded!).

i'm not quite sure what to reply to her. i have tried asking her not to send me hurtful things in her emails, but she cheerfuly ignores these requests and mixes her spiteful diatribes against my children and myself in with emails about my grandmother's health and other important family business that i am expected to attend to...

what to do?

 

[ayani]

oy... it's always more complicated when the issues come to life, isn't it?

Biblically, sex before marrige is wrong. sex, as God intends it, is to be between a married man and his wife, between a wife and her husband. anything else falls into the category of sexual immorality, or adultery.

your daughter may love her fiance very much, and if there's genuine love between them, that is awesome. but loving someone doesn't mean you have to have sex with them. on the other hand, your mother is turing a blind eye to the same sin in others, while making your daughter feel rejected and unloved. that is not Christian, and it must make your daughter feel awful. a Christian is called to identify and not condone the sin, but to forgive and love the one who is acting in sin.

it's very easy to get into a holier-than-thou mindset, but every Christian should realize that God looks at and appreciates our hearts, not our pomp or self-righteousness. sex before marriage is a sin. God asks those who love Him to wait until marriage to have sex with those they love. of course He still loves and cares for the couple who lives together, but so far as blessing a relationship that violates what He has asked us to do / not do, Biblically, His blessing is solely on marriage, more specifically a marriage that is centered around Him.

my view- your mom is wrong to be so unforgiving and hard-hearted towards someone who loves her. yet Biblically, your daughter would do best to marry the young man whom she loves and is now with. as a Chrstian dad, you should let her know this, and let her know what God has said on the matter. your mom is right to disapprove, but she's doing so in a destructive and hypocritical way.

 

[ruejacobs]

here is the email i am thinking of sending to my mother. i am actually not a christian, and i am pretty sure my mother is aware of my spiritual beliefs, as i have told her from time to time over my life that i am no christian. i do, however, feel that chrisitianity is a fundamental basis of my family and try very hard to not offend the other members of my family by speaking of my personal beliefs. i just find it difficult to communicate with them when defending my children's or my own life choices and need an outside opinion to see if this is too harshly worded. maybe you, as a christian, could tell me if i am expressing this with enough tact. please offer any advice you might come up with reading the wording of the email. it is not my intention to make my mother feel like she is disrespected or unloved, i only want her to understand that she has been behaving abusively and maybe then she will stop!

as i said before, i cannot cut ties with her, because i love her very much, and i must be in contact with her because i am the one person she goes to for advice and for assistance with taking care of my other family members' needs. so i am hoping that somehow, i can help her to treat my children and myself with a little more compassion and tolerance.

tell me what you think:


Mum, i'm trying to phrase this as tactfully as possible, so please don't take offense to my words. remember how Nana speaks to us all and step back and really look at what you are saying to me about C----- (my daughter) and myself. you don't like the way Nana (my grandmother) makes you feel when she judges you and yet, she could say the very same thing to excuse herself as you did..."i only say this because i am concerned about you.". it makes you uncomfortable to say the least.. you have confided that she hurts you very deeply and you feel as if you will never measure up to what she wants. you have said that you have reconciled yourself with never feeling wanted or loved, and yet you perpetuate the cycle.

you repeat her actions with the way you criticise and judge my children and me. and you look the other way when it comes to J------. ( J---- is my sister) i hope i never attack my own children and make them feel as degraded, worthless, and unloved as i feel right now. because when you say these things about my children, Mummie, you say these things about me. i am, simply put, my children... in the sense that my children are the best thing about me. to belittle them is to drive a knife into my heart. i have said this before and yet you ignore it and keep plunging that knife to the hilt and twisting and twisting. why do you do this?

Mummie, i'll bet the only reason you quit having sex is because of your age. and that the only reason you quit having premaritial sex is because you eventually got married. i'll get married when i am ready to and not a second before. and i believe C----- is being prudent by not marrying right now, as she feels she has had quite enough exitement recently and does not need more at the present.

why did you not ever call J----- a whore or a prostitute or say that her life is 'pitiful'? why did you not throw her out of the house? she slept around too. how many petals (my mother made allusions to my daughter's virginity being petals plucked from a rose until the rose is bare and ugly and 'only trash') did she lose before she tied the knot? is it only because she did not care what you thought about her that you never attacked her, too? do you only want to hurt the people who love you? why is that? i decided long ago that my personal business is mine alone and do not care what others think of my choices.

i am comfortable and secure in my knowledge that my own personal interpretation of god is that he is not so quick to destroy his own creations for enjoying his gifts. and love, physically manifested respectfully between consenting adults, is a gift of god.

as long as the proper precautions are taken to avoid pregnancy or disease, i see nothing wrong with what C----- is doing. she and B---- will wed when they are ready to wed. it is not our decision. we are not biblical prophets with grey beards and sackcloth and we should never presume that we were put here to be god's enforcers. and remember, Mum, that cursing others with predictions of calamity is a 'karmically' dangerous avenue.

i say 'karmically' in the secular sense. when we actively hope for and speak about bad things happening to others, regardless if it actually happens to them, bad things will happen to us ten-fold. instead of repeating that horrible things will happen to C----, or me, know that the god you worship has his own little scoreboard and his own naughty-and-nice list, and each evil thing that is said, or thought towards another human being, is another check by your own name.

the god that i worship does not punish us for acting according to the nature he imbued in us. he does not reward others for having a nature he also granted to them. a rabbit cannot help being timid, because god made him that way. a mountain lion cannot help being ferocious because god made her this way. why then would god punish the mountain lion and reward the rabbit for being true to their nature? true when the mountain lion becomes old, she no longer hunts...but then the poor creature goes hungry. and i'm sure if she was given a choice, that mountain lion would throw away all her accolades for being gentle and not killing the rabbit, just for a bite of dinner!

to be cruel to a young lady and lead her to believe that she is somehow flawed for doing the same thing as her very aunt, to treat her differently than you treated her aunt is hurtful. what is your god's law on punishing one person for an act but rewarding another for the same thing? why is there a double standard? if you did not attack J------ on a regular basis for indulging in this same behavior, why are you compelled to attack my own child who i treasure as much or more than you treasured J-----?

and how would you have felt if someone routinely told you that J----- was a whore or a prostitute, or was worthless, pitiful, acted like a 12 year old, and so on? how would you have felt to be told very often that she would end up being passed around as a sexual party favor from man to man to man because she had premaritial sex? what would make you think that saying such things is not abusive?

it really does hurt when you attack my children. i love them and value them more than any other human being on the face of this earth. no person is more precious, more perfect than my own children to me. i know, Mum, that you are aware the things you say are a knife in my heart, (i have told you often enough this is true) yet you continue to cheerfully say them. what kind of pleasure must this behavior give you to continue to hurt me and my children? please stop criticizing and judging my children. i love them and know them to be the most precious creations of god in the world today. you cannot dissuade me from this belief. i simply value them more than i value any other person.

you know that i love you, Mum. but i am in alot of emotional pain right now. i have been trying to defend my children from the criticism for a long time now. if it isn't Nana, then it's you, spewing hate towards them, telling them hurtful things, and then contemptfully saying they have no self-esteem. they need nurturing, not destruction. they need to know they are loved and valued, and are not the things that you have called them.

i love you, Mummie, please don't feel hurt or angry because i wrote this.

love,
a-----

 

[dawny0826]

What to do? Love your family, despite their flaws and encourage your daughter to live by HER own convictions and follow HER heart.

 

[Charity]

Your mom is sitting herself up as a judge, jury and she is convicting your daughter herself. What she is doing may cause more harm to your daughter and turn her away from religion forever.
It is wrong to push your convictions on someone else. All you can do is tell them what you believe to be true and let them know that no matter what decision they make that you will be there with love and support.
For your daughter to rush into a marriage just because "it is deemed the proper thing" could be a big mistake.
My dad gave me a philosophy years ago and I have found it to be true, "The people who have made many mistakes and messed up their own lives are usually the first to try and tell someone how to run their lives". Maybe their intentions are good, but their methods are disasterous.