Sexless in the City

It has been in my heart and on my mind.

Single women in the christian church.

When I see a group of christian women together, when I have memories of me and the girls...

going out to eat

going shopping

going on vacation

the christian single life reminds me of sex in the city...

no, wait a minute. My bad.... I meant,

Sexless in the City.

 I know women who are virgins at 40 years old-and older. Women who were waiting on God to send them that man from the clouds of heaven. Women who were virgins when they became a christian  and years have passed them by while they dated Jesus. At 40, if you're gonna end up being single,  you might as well have enjoyed the ride like Carrie and the girls!

I also know people who weren't virgins, but spent their lives trying to be "born-again virgins".  It was always a battle trying to resist the devil as he showed up in the forms of strong, maculine men.  In the church if you had sex before marraige, you were like a parolee who went to jail for committing a heinous crime. Things would never be the same on your wedding night because you already gave away God's most precious gift. Many times I sat there and listened as pastors applauded young couples in the church for both being virgins on their wedding night, how they decided to wait to have their first kiss on their wedding day.
The pastor knew good-and-hell-well that that's not how he did it and if he could go back he wouldn't do it the second time around, either. Ironically the audience was usually full of members 20-40 something. No grown-ass adult would tell their partner that they can't kiss on the lips until their wedding day. This mentality screwed single women up.
 The process of finding a mate was so over-spiritualized that it crippled women from being able to function normally. On sexless in the city we missed the ride. We stood outside the gates watching everyone else play. We stayed parked in our morally superior space and watched single women live their lives.  It helped our cause that these women seemd no happier than us. They were miserable in their relationships. Suffering from abortions and single mother- hood, starving themselves to get thin because a boyfriend was calling them fat and ugly.


It never sat right with me that I was here making these long lists to God for qualities I wanted in a husband and people to the left and right of me were hooking up and getting married-and most of them weren't even religious!

I didn't see these girls praying long elaborate prayers and servicing God faithfully, aka keeping yourself sexually pure a.k.a not having sex.  I didn't see them writing lists to God for what they wanted in a husband. No where were they dedicating their lives to "the kingdom"...

No, these people I speak of were not doing these things.

They were impure, sexually involved before the wedding, and sometimes even living together. Still, and without God's approval, they somehow managed to find companionship while I sat at home friday nights shoveling down rainbow sherbert .

I was in a church that emphasized purity as they defined it. You were only allowed to date within the church (because only members of the church we were in were "saved")   On these dates you were not supposed to be alone with the person in your house or apartment. You weren't allowed to flirt with one another on any level. You had to go on double or quadruple dates. If you were interested in the other person there were specific steps you needed to take in order to be considered " righteous",   "pure"     "doing it God's way"...

This process of having to go through the chain of command in order to do something as natural as date someone romantically took our hearts away from us. In my situation we had to go through what we called "dps" or discipling partners. DPs were people assigned by the church  leader to be your spiritual supervisor. We were not allowed to tell the person how we felt until the guy  in the relationship got the approval stamp from the minister. Every inch of our relationship was monitored closely and scrutinized for any speck of this impurity. When our hearts broke through to the surface, if we showed any signs of passion for each other we would get checked for it, saying we needed to "slow down" or were told we were too consumed with one another and should step back to focus on God and make him #1.  If we made out with our boyfriend, we had to confess our sin to our spiritual mentors for absolution. Lord knows the mess that made in people's lives. Usually they had to take a sabbatical from each other and be on probation, becasue this god didn't want them together if they were going to cause each other to sin and be disloyal to him.
The whole idea behind the madness was our hearts were deceitful amd wicked so we needed outside spiritual "help"  in order to remain pure and also to be good christian role models for the non-christian singles out there.

The truth was, dating in the church really wasn't a relationship, it was a process, an assemlyline where at each station you got "fixed" until you emerged as the final product- a perfect christian marriage. Oh, how the church leaders were proud as they loooked upon their creations. After all, the church was in the buisness of producing marrried couples. Great PR, great....



 The biggest challenge is to work through the guilt. I let the church get inside my head with the sex thing.  I felt so guilty all the time.

Guilty for looking at men.
Guilty for wanting to have sex.
Guilty for wanting to have sex, married or not.
And guilt fro the m word...masterbation.

The christian teachings about pre-marital sex really messed me up. These girls, who were in monogomous relationships with boyfriends they were sleeping with, these girls who I thought I was being a role model to, showing them how its supposed to be done, probably didn't admire me at all. Looking back (you know hindsight is 20/20) they didn't say it, but I could see it in their eyes.

They admired my loyalty to my faith but they weren't admiring my lifestyle. This "sexless" lifestyle appealed to no one but the people teaching it to us because they believed this god was one that demanded holiness.

They forgot Jesus walked among us. They forgot he died on the cross.

We pushed so hard to convert people to this idea of "being like Jesus". We emphasized his excruciating death on the cross and shoved it down people's throats. "Jesus died for YOU..." 

Now, don't you feel responsible?
No way did the church believe in what Jesus did on the cross, because they made the walk with God a walk FOR God and a lawbook full of holiness requirements to fill before this god would accept you.

When I realized that Jesus was perfect - not so that I would never sin again but so that I could live withour fear of what would happen WHEN I sin -  I graduated from penance 101 and moved on.

Out in society again, dating sucks big time. I almost want to run back to church again...almost. It is so easy to go on one date and freak out. But then I think about the guys in the church (another blog on that for later) and I am faced with some tough choices. Live life raw with its up and downs, and its broken hearts and insecurities..... or go forward witht the God I finally know in my heart and see where it takes me.


Like Stella, it's time to get my groove back(smile)....episode two...