The Mormon Therapist
Thank you so very much for your blog!! I just discovered it yesterday as I was googling for a Mormon therapist. I’ve never been to therapy or used counseling before, but my boyfriend and I are planning to marry soon. We are both in our late 20s. He is a convert who was sexually active before finding the church, I am a lifelong member and virgin. One of the things I love about him so much is that he embraced the gospel when he was in the middle of a world where celibacy and soberness are strange and even ridiculed. He is a rare individual and I have great respect and much love for him. We have a very good relationship and he makes a concerted effort to have good communication and we try to be open and honest with one another about most everything – except that we’ve never really discussed this one part of him. I think I mentally was able to accept the fact that he had had sex in his past (he’s been a member for a few years, so its not even a recent past), but as soon as we started talking seriously about marriage and actually planning to get engaged, I found I had some strong emotional issues with the fact that he had had sex before. It surprised me because I thought I was progressive enough and mature enough to appreciate that his entire life experience contributed to making him the wonderful man he is and the wonderful man that I love. And yet I still had these doubts and insecurities and even emotional pain and feeling of hurt that would very randomly occur to me, and I did not feel like I had the emotional tools to handle them. That is why I started looking for a Mormon therapist who would understand my sexual values and even understand and maybe help me understand how Mormon cultural expectations could be having some kind of subconscious effect on my ability to let go of his sexual past. I avoided actually brokering the topic with my boyfriend, he had told me that he had had sex in his past life and that was pretty much all that was said. I didn’t acknowledge it too much and he didn’t provide any other comment on it and we haven’t discussed it since. I even began feeling guilty about feeling any kind of emotional pain about this since I know he has gone through the repentance process, and I have a firm faith in repentance and forgiveness and the incomparable healing power of the Atonement. I didn’t want to tell him I was feeling hurt by his past because I know in my mind that this is in the past and has been accounted for, but my heart still wanted to feel some pain about it for a reason my mind couldn’t figure out on its own. I couldn’t understand it and couldn’t figure out how to deal with it. But I didn’t want to bring it up and have him feel like I was accusing him of anything or angry with him about it. Since finding and reading some of your extremely helping posts on the topic, I have come to understand that I’m not as upset by the fact that he has had sex before as I am about the fact that I don’t know how he feels about it now. We haven’t had an open dialogue about it and so I harbor all kinds of ridiculous thoughts like: maybe he had super awesome sex with a super hot girl that he will never forget and I will never be as fun or wonderful as her and he will never forget her in favor of me, maybe he will treat me as a student and play the role of a teacher and I won’t feel like we’re getting to discover sex together, because he has a sexual history that doesn’t involve me that will somehow lessen or disparage the quality of our sex life, etc. Your blog did a lot to open my eyes to the fact that we just need to discuss the issue and then put it away permanently. I don’t kid myself that the fact won’t ever occur to me again or that I will never feel insecure about it again. But without needing or getting detail about his sex life, he can tell me basic things like number of partners, exposure to STDs, and then I won’t feel like its some dirty little secret he’s keeping all to himself.
- Much of what you’re feeling are normal responses. Hopefully the mere knowledge that your feelings are normal will help you feel less anxiety over the course of your relationship. Feeling guilty about feelings you have little control over is not going to be helpful, so give yourself a break and be patient with yourself. I encourage you to read through my other posts regarding “premarital sex” (under topics in the left column) that address these types of feelings more at length.
- I think you’ve done a great job of getting down in writing all of the many conflicting feelings that you’re currently experiencing. Basically, I would encourage you to find a relaxing and comfortable setting where the two of you can sit down and go over this post you’ve written me pretty much word for word. You discuss your fears, your insecurities, your hopes, your love for your fiancee and not wanting to drag him down or bring up his past in a negative light, etc. etc… This is exactly what you should be sharing with him. It sounds like he is willing to be open with you and is concerned about your feelings in all of this (both good signs). Therefore, I suspect your discussion on this topic should be highly successful.
- Prepare yourself to listen with an open and loving stance: in sharing his past with you, your fiancee will be putting himself in a vulnerable position. Much of how you respond to the information he is willing to share with you will set the foundation of how safe it will be to confide in you in the future. What is way more important than any previous mistakes or regrets either one of you may have, is that you are both a “safe place to fall” for the other as you move forward in your journey together.
- If things don’t go as you had hoped or if you still find yourself fighting worrisome feelings, you might consider getting some pre-marital counseling to help you discuss this issue. Pre-marital counseling can be a very useful tool for couples to engage in before marriage regardless of what is going on (even if there are no foreseeable problems) and I encourage it for all engaged couples. It can be a fun and reassuring venue to explore topics you may not have thought of discussing. There is an interesting trend happening in other churches where they don’t even allow a couple to get married without undergoing some type of pre-marital program. Because of this, there are usually many pre-marital resources of varying sorts in communities (i.e. churches, community centers, therapists, clinics, etc.).
- My guess is that once you have communicated openly about this issue, once you have more information on your side of the equation, and once you have moved forward with your own sexual relationship (that I hope you fully look forward to and enjoy), your feelings of sadness or concern will dissipate greatly. It’s difficult to forget about something like this entirely so you may have a twinge of sadness here or there. But as long as the communication between you and your spouse remains honest, forthcoming and loving I can be confident in telling you that you will have little to worry about.
- Once you have your discussion and get the information you need, I highly encourage you to MOVE ON. You both have too much ahead of you to be wasting precious time and/or energy ruing over things in the past that you have no power or control over and that more importantly, have been atoned for. This will be an excellent opportunity for you to apply the atonement in your life in a way you may not have had otherwise. Allow for that peace and calmness to quiet your storm.
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