Arleen Spenceley

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I said to a man on his couch in a Tampa apartment. He—then in his late 20′s and interested in me—nodded, and waited for me to say it. I, then in my early 20′s, breathed in before I did: “I’m saving sex for marriage.”

I breathed out while he silently processed what I had said. Then he turned his face toward mine and spoke: “If you want to wait, I’m willing.” But waiting had never been part of his world. He agreed to abstain from sex with me because he knew that if he didn’t, I wouldn’t date him. He agreed to behave as if he practiced chastity, but was only bound to nonmarital abstinence by my prohibition of nonmarital sex.

He respected my boundary, until he didn’t—until he mocked my decision to save sex and chalked it up to “immaturity,” in effort to manipulate me into changing my mind. He said “no guy will wait that long,” and begged me to break my promise to practice chastity. Instead, I broke up with him. I learned a lot in that relationship, including this:

I’d never date a guy again who was only “willing” to save sex. Here’s why:

Because I don’t want a man who acts chastely; I want a man who is chaste. 

We who practice chastity have apprenticeships in self-mastery. We promise to govern our appetites instead of being governed by them. A man who is “willing” to save sex in order to date me isn’t a man who governs his appetites. He’s a man who makes chaste girlfriends do that for him. If I date him, I govern two sets of appetites, which makes me an enabler: he doesn’t have to practice self-mastery if I master him.

Because a man who doesn’t practice chastity doesn’t define sex the same way I do. 

We who practice chastity believe sex is a sacred, physical sign of the the commitment spouses made to each other on the altar where they were married, ultimately designed to bond them and to make babies. A man who is “willing” to save sex—but would have nonmarital sex if he had my permission—does not by default define sex the way I do. How can we be united by sex in marriage if we can’t agree on the purpose sex serves?

Because a man who would forsake virtue (his or mine) if only I gave him permission is a man whose standards are too low. 

A man who is “willing” to save sex is a man whose choice to abstain from nonmarital sex likely isn’t underlain by much other than the absence of my consent. He’d be as content—or more—dating a woman who doesn’t practice chastity. But I don’t want to marry a man who settled for a chaste woman. I want a man who wants a chaste woman, who holds a high bar for me because he wants me to become the woman God designed me to be.

Because men are capable of more than the world around them says they are. 

“No guy will wait that long” is a lie, and boys who are taught that turn into men who believe it. But I hold up a higher bar than that for men because I think my future kids deserve a dad who can reach one, because I believe men can reach one, because I believe God created them able to do it.

[Click HERE to read part two of this blog.]

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Arleen Spenceley is author of forthcoming book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, to be released by Ave Maria Press in Fall 2014. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com and tweets @ArleenSpenceley. Click here to like her on Facebook.

 

As a Catholic, I believe that dating is for discerning marriage — for discovering the truth about each other. For deciding whether to choose to love each other until death.

Sometimes, dating is fun. You can go to aquariums together and stuff. There are otters at aquariums. Need I say more? Dating is good. If you pay attention, you learn about God and each other and yourself. Sometimes dating is easy — when you’re laughing, or at Adoration, or noticing a new reason to appreciate him or her.

But sometimes, dating is hard, like when there is conflict. Miscommunication. Insecurity. Distance (all the kinds). Inconsiderate decisions. Resistance to vulnerability.

Humans doing what humans do, given the fall of man.

But what fascinates me — I mean, this truly fascinates me — is that some people who are dating break up when it’s hard, because it’s hard.

Not because it’s bad. Not because it’s abusive. Not because the relationship hurts your relationship with Christ. Not because they don’t like or love each other.

But because it’s hard for a minute (or a day, or a week).

Do you know what that means? It means that we are discerning marriage without considering the vows.

Because when we get married, we promise to be true to each other in good times and bad, in sickness and in health — to love and honor each other for all our lives.

Except we (lots of people) will dump the person who dates us because of a bad time. We date in order someday to promise that we won’t walk away when it’s hard, but quickly end quality relationships that provide us with chances to practice that.

Perhaps we should reconsider.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of the book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin (Ave Maria Press, Nov. 2014). She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times, and has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com. Click here to follow her on Twitter, click here to like her on Facebook, and click here to follow her on Instagram.

Recently, I received a call from my good friend Americo, who I’ve known since I was 11. First he was my brother’s youth minister. Then mine. And by the way he is brilliant.

That day, I had emailed Americo a dating question: How do we know that our standards are solid and not a sign that were hesitant to make the act of faith that marriage requires? It’s the “how far is too far” question, standards edition. An effort to reconcile having standards and faith, without using one to negate the other.

He replied. Then he called. When Americo calls (regardless of his claim not to be an expert) you take notes.

What I read in them after actually gave me heart palpitations. This is gold. This is vital information we must know if we’re single. It’s what we have to tell our single friends if we’re not. Stuff I have to share with you:

We discussed the most important standard in dating.
“To what extent does one have standards and even prerequisites for their future spouse or potential candidate? That is a little tricky,” Americo said. “But all things in order.”

As in—there is an order. A hierarchy of standards, if you will. So what is the paramount standard?

I think I used to believe that the paramount standard was attraction. I thought that’s where you start—you pick from the pool of people to whom you’re attracted, and see which of them meets your standards. Americo proposed a different standard:

“I think the person has to bring out the best in you,” he said. “And you’ve got to be committed to bringing out the best in them.”

The paramount standard in a potential spouse is his or her commitment to your becoming a saint. That is where you start. You pick from the pool of people whose association with you makes you a better person, and see to which of them you are attracted. If somebody doesn’t bring out the best in you and doesn’t desire the best for you, then an attraction to him or her is irrelevant.

We discussed other standards in dating.
“Sometimes, if our list of check boxes is too extensive, we might jump to an assumption and make a decision prematurely,” Americo said.

If you rule out people who bring out the best in you because they physically aren’t your type, he said, “you might miss out on somebody beautiful because you don’t see them that way, at first.”

Then he said that Holy Spirit goggles are a thing, as opposed to beer goggles. He went on to propose that if we’re open to looking at people like God looks at people, then people who once were too tall, or too short, or too whatever else, suddenly can become beautiful.

He also concluded that whether somebody brings out the best in you makes a difference because how a person makes you feel about yourself can affect how you see him or her.

We also discussed why it’s important to focus on Jesus.
Our needs have to be fulfilled by Jesus (which implies that we have to be focusing on Him, seeking Him first). If we aren’t focusing on him, we are going to hunt elsewhere for other people to meet the needs that Christ is supposed to meet.

“And those people are going to let you down,” Americo said.

We have to find wholeness in Christ so we can give ourselves wholly to our spouses. We aren’t supposed to search for spouses because we are empty, but because we are filled by Jesus, and therefore have love to give.

After we ended the call, I read my notes. I texted excerpts to friends. One of them — seminarian Mark LaBelle—profoundly summed up what I discussed with Americo this way: “Attraction as path to pleasure vs. attraction as path to virtue.”

Imagine a world in which what propels us to act on attraction is the pursuit of virtue instead of the pursuit of pleasure. A world in which pleasure is the bonus, not the goal.

That gives me heart palpitations, too.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of the book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times, and has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Recently, during a radio interview, the Son Rise Morning Show’s host Matt Swaim asked me if the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage would cause a marriage crisis.

And I said no.

Because it won’t.

But last Friday, a lot of Christians responded like it would—“as if everything was perfect last Thursday,” one of my readers wrote on his Facebook page.

People are freaking out because of the Supreme Court’s decision to redefine marriage. But I don’t understand why few have freaked out about our own decisions to do the same thing.

If we deny that we’ve been complicit in turning marriage into what it isn’t supposed to be, we aren’t being honest with ourselves. Because marriage is not merely about the “affective gratification of consenting adults” (to borrow a line from a statement written by the Florida Catholic Bishops.) Except that is exactly what lots of us make it about.

As I wrote in my last post, we make marriage about affective gratification when we treat attraction as the paramount standard for finding a spouse, instead of his or her commitment to our sainthood. It’s what we make marriage about when we pursue sexual compatibility before marriage instead of achieving it after the wedding. It’s what we make marriage about when we don’t cooperate with our fertility but stifle it, and when we treat love like it’s a feeling and not a choice.

The Supreme Court’s decision was a natural next step in a culture in which marriage as God designed it is so seldom modeled that few know it exists—a culture in which there widely has been no discernible difference between marriage as lived by people in the Church and marriage as lived by people outside it. But there should be.

And there can be.

But first, we have to learn it.

The real crisis is that married people exist who don’t know what marriage as God designed it is. Nobody ever defined it for them. Which is tragic. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church exists, and Theology of the Body exists, and Love and Responsibility exists, and Men, Women, and the Mystery of Love exists—invaluable resources (among others, including some that aren’t books!) that define marriage as God designed it. Which is awesome. If we want to make marriage into what it’s supposed to be, we have to learn what it’s supposed to be. Buy a book. Take a class. Start a small group to discuss.

Then, we have to live it.

Knowing what the Church teaches about marriage and believing that it’s right changes everything. It changes who we choose to date and how we date and whether we date at all. A person who believes that marriage—like all vocations—is designed to result in the destruction of self absorption cannot date the same way a person dates who thinks marriage is merely supposed to result in affective gratification.

The point is, there is a discernible difference between marriage as lived like God designed it and marriage as lived like He didn’t. If we want to make marriage into what it’s supposed to be, we have to prove that—which we can do while we’re single or while we’re married, even if we married before we knew what marriage is. (“A marriage can become a noble Christian discipleship, even if it did not begin with a mature decision.” -Fr. Benedict Groeschel)

And then, we have to give it.

As in we can’t do to others what was done to some of us.

We can’t let our kids turn into adults who don’t know that love is “an authentic commitment of the free will of one person resulting from the truth about another person” (St. John Paul II). Or that marriage is designed to be an indissoluble union between a man and a woman (so date wisely). Or that sex is a sacred physical sign of the vows that a husband and wife made on the altar where they were married, designed both for procreation and to be an expression of the unity achieved by the sacrament of matrimony. If we want to make marriage into what it’s supposed to be, we have to educate others—a responsibility that, when skirted, causes the kinds of crises we decry.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of the book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times, and has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

I am 29 years old, and I have never had sex. Not even close. My decision to practice chastity implies that I never will, unless or until I am married. Which means if I do get married, I won’t have any sexual “experience.”

So a young adult who reads my blog once asked me the following question:

“Why would you want to have an awkward wedding night?

I don’t. Nobody who saves sex saves it because they want the wedding night to be awkward. The reader’s question is probably rooted in a fear that sexual inexperience will result in awkward or “imperfect” wedding night sex. This disturbs a lot of the people I’ve encountered who have responded with shock or pity to my decision to save sex.

But their discomfort with sexual inexperience at marriage is normal. I expect it out of the culture that prefers preparedness for a wedding night over preparedness for marriage—a culture that probably doesn’t even discern the difference. It’s a culture that is curious as to why I can enter marriage without any sexual history and be undisturbed by that.

I’ll tell you why: because we don’t have to be disturbed. Entering marriage without prior sexual experience expresses confidence in our commitment to each other, and not knowing what to expect authenticates it. A couple that won’t save sex because they don’t want to have to communicate on their wedding night isn’t likely to communicate well in a marriage.

Entering marriage without sexual “experience” is a choice worth making for the following reasons:

In holy matrimony, very little depends on wedding night sex. 
If you marry in the Church, you agree to love and honor each other all the days of your lives. This is a process. Just as you will need to grow in love in thousands of other ways throughout your marriage, a couple will likewise need time to learn how to best express physical love to each other. It’s not something to fear, but to anticipate with joy.

Authentic love transcends sexual inexperience.
Love is patient, and kind, and doesn’t dump you because you lack sexual experience. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. A couple that has entered a marriage based on authentic love has been given a safe space for trial and error, in which they can discover the mystery of sexual intimacy together.

Chaste living strengthens your ability to love
By saving sex for marriage, chaste couples gain experience in patience, self-mastery, fidelity, and other forms of intimacy that ultimately will serve to strengthen their marriage.

The pursuit of virtue is worth sexual inexperience. 
Chastity is a virtue. It’s a decision we make over and over to do the right thing regarding sex, which we as Catholics define as a sacred, physical sign of the vows a husband and wife made at the altar. According to St. Gregory of Nyssa, “the goal of a virtuous life is to become like God.”

The virtues require us to wait and work in a culture that “doesn’t wanna,” to live lives that don’t align with what the world around us values, and to risk, by being chaste, what some fear could be an “awkward” wedding night. But you know what? That’s worth it, because it’s part of our efforts to become like the one who created us (who created us able to love the same way he does). And that isn’t awkward at all.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of the book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin (Ave Maria Press, Nov. 2014). She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times, and has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com. Click here to follow her on Twitter, click here to like her on Facebook, and click here to follow her on Instagram.

Chastity is for lovers. That isn’t solely the title of my book, but a truth I believe with my whole heart. It’s a virtue for all of us—single, married, priest, nun—that creates conditions in which we can do what we were designed to do: love God and each other.

Chastity doesn’t separate sexuality from the rest of the stuff that makes us human, but helps us arrange our lives in such a way that sexuality isn’t misused (See CCC 2337). It requires us to discern before we act on an urge instead of acting because of an urge.

We live, however, in a culture that isn’t conducive to chastity, a culture that creates conditions in which we believe we can and should get what we want when we want it, without consequence. We live in a culture that teaches us to act on all the urges ever.

That means that very few parts of our lives require what chastity requires of us. Which means chastity, for some of us, is difficult. But practical ways exist to get better at practicing it—exercises that cultivate skills that are transferable to chastity. Here are five of them:

1. Turn off the radio. 

Whenever we get in a car, the first thing we turn on after the ignition is the music. Try making room for silence instead. Doing so fortifies your ability to exist with a desire, without satiating it. Contrary to what the culture that surrounds us says, our lives don’t end when we don’t act on urges. Not acting on this small urge will make not acting on bigger urges easier.

2. Do the chore you hate the most. Immediately. 

Vacuuming is the household chore I hate the most. Which is exactly why it’s in my best interest to vacuum now. Doing the chore you don’t want to do fortifies your ability to transcend the sin of sloth, which is “a sadness arising from the fact that the good is difficult,” according to St. Thomas Aquinas. I know it’s good to vacuum: clean floors trump dirty ones. But vacuuming is difficult: it requires me to exert myself when I don’t wanna. The sloth that stops us from doing chores we hate is the same sloth that stops us from practicing chastity. If you can transcend it in chores, you can transcend it in relationships.

3. Fulfill your worst responsibility first. 

As professionals or as students, we each have responsibilities to fulfill. Among them are responsibilities we’d rather avoid. As a journalist, I don’t enjoy calling the subject of a story to divulge that I’ve discovered the criminal record that he or she forgot to mention. It’s super awk. Sometimes people yell at me. Which is exactly why I should do it as soon as possible. Starting your day by doing what you have to do but don’t wanna fortifies your ability to do the right thing, despite discomfort—such as telling a guy or girl that you’re saving sex (or sex from now on) for marriage.

4. Let somebody else have the last piece of pie. 

Or the last red velvet Oreo cookie when they come out next month. Or the last handful of kale chips, if that’s your thing. Whatever. The point is that letting somebody else have the snack you really want fortifies your ability to forego what you want for the sake of somebody else’s good. If you can sacrifice for the good of your beloved’s palate, you can also sacrifice for the good of your beloved’s mind, body and soul, which we all have to do to authentically love.

5. Make an intimidating commitment. 

For all of 2015, I will not ever eat dessert. Dessert is my favorite meal, so this was a daunting commitment to make. But I did it because promising to do what you think you can’t fortifies your ability to accept that you are stronger than you thought you were. We are created able to practice chastity, which the culture that surrounds us calls impossible. Committing to do what intimidates (but is good for) you will remind you that you that you can do this.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of the book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times, and has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Image via Flickr, CC 2.0.

In his quiet apartment, I stirred a pot of mac ‘n’ cheese while I watched him watch TV. He sighed. So did I, and for the same reason that he did: As of a few minutes earlier, I wasn’t his girlfriend anymore.

His was a sigh of resignation. Mine was a sigh of relief.

When we first met, I was 23. He was 27. I wanted a chaste relationship. He didn’t. We dated anyway. He was “willing” to save sex for marriage: he saw no merit in it, outside of getting to date me, but agreed, under protest, to abstain.

The first time he asked me to do what I couldn’t, he said please. I said no. I always said no. He was frustrated by my objection to helping him satisfy the urges he didn’t want to govern. Eventually, he was mean.

“Your boundaries are killing me,” he said.

“You’re not a 13-year-old.”

“No man will wait that long.”

His “willingness” to save sex—which, as implied by the quotes around the word, wasn’t actually willingness—had waned. He wanted me to break my promise to practice chastity. Instead, I broke up with him.

I picked the pot of mac ‘n’ cheese up off the burner, and was sure I’d never date a guy again who was only “willing” to save sex. Last year, I wrote about it.*

The post, called “Why I don’t date men who are ‘willing’ to save sex for marriage,” is the most-read thing I have ever written. It struck chords. It also struck nerves:

“By automatically avoiding these men, you rule out the possibility that Jesus might be presenting you with an opportunity to aide in someone’s conversion…”

“I would not automatically disqualify someone if they were (“willing” to wait). Not every guy received good formation, often through no fault of his own”

“(His) willingness is a step in the right direction and is worthy of great respect!”

My decision not to date men anymore who are “willing” to save sex didn’t always sit well with others. After all, an unchaste man’s decision to abstain from sex is indicative of his potential to change. Indeed, my decision to date a man who doesn’t believe what I do—about Jesus, about sex, or about anything at all—could be a catalyst for his conversion.

And I want a catalyst to exist. I want him to know we were designed by Love, for love; we are created able to become like God’s son, Jesus Christ, who—out of love—died and rose that we might live.

If an unchaste man knew what I know, he would want to practice chastity.

He could learn if I date him. But I still won’t. Here’s why:

Because chaste people don’t owe unchaste people a chance.

Neither my attraction to an unchaste man nor an unchaste man’s potential to change obligates me to date him, because nothing obligates any person to date another. It is your right to have a stable set of standards, and it is your right to rule out the people who don’t meet them.

Because people who practice chastity do exist. 

Is a chaste person hesitant to rule out an unchaste person because he or she can be the catalyst for his or her conversion, or because he or she is afraid that people who are already chaste don’t exist? But people who practice chastity today—regardless of their pasts—do exist. I don’t meet them while I’m dating a man who doesn’t.

Because a romantic relationship with a chaste person isn’t an unchaste person’s only path to chastity. 

Any unchaste man I meet does need Jesus. He does need virtue. But I do not need to be his girlfriend to introduce them to him. A chaste person’s decision not to date an unchaste person doesn’t deprive an unchaste person of what he or she actually needs: an introduction to chastity, and an encounter with the Holy Spirit. If we treat unchaste people like they can’t become chaste unless or until a chaste person dates them, we underestimate them, and we underestimate God.

*Click here to read “Why I don’t date men who are ‘willing’ to save sex for marriage.”

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Arleen Spenceley is author of the book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times, and has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

 

I sat at the foot of the bed with crossed arms and my mind made up while I ugly-cried: “I will never meet another guy who likes me.” I was 20 and mildly dramatic and my path—one I briefly walked with a blue-eyed, black-haired bass player—had been pulled out from under me.

By text message.

On New Year’s Day.

Single, and I didn’t want to be. Perpetually, too—I was certain. My sole shot at someday becoming a spouse had expired because a boy who smelled like smoke and wore eye liner said so. I grieved, which is natural and good. But then I threw a pity party.

The same pity party I threw when I had never dated before and worried I never would, which I also throw when I am periodically tired of how single I am, again. At the foot of the bed, I told stories to myself about my relationship status. The stories I told were a lot of things (sad, frustrating, neverending). But the stories I told weren’t true.

I snapped out of it (for reasons that include but are not limited to “my mother is a therapist.”). But my heart hurts now, because in real life and online, I have interacted a lot lately with unhappy single people.

Single people who are telling stories. Sad, frustrating, neverending stories. Stories that aren’t true, that we who are single for who-knows-how-long or forever, ought not say to ourselves anymore.

Stories like these:

1. “Nobody wants to date somebody like me.”

If you have met all the people, asked all the people if they want to date somebody like you and all the people said no, then you’re right. But you have not met all the people. You have not asked all the people if they want to date you. That story isn’t true. What is true is that whether you are dating does not determine whether other people exist who want to date you.

2. “I’ll never meet somebody who meets my standards.”

If you are a time traveler or a psychic or a prophet, then I guess that by virtue of having done your homework, you could be right. But you are not a time traveler. You are not a psychic. You are probably not a prophet. Science says it is impossible for you to know right now all the things you’ll know at the end of your life. So does math. And religion. And logic. The point is stop it. I know a lot of people who once said “I’ll never meet somebody who meets my standards” who are now married to somebody who meets their standards and have four children.

3. “Single life is not a calling from God.”

Except it might be, and if it turns out to be yours, telling yourself it isn’t is going to unnecessarily disappoint you. “Some people must accept that, in the Providence of God, they have been called to a single life. Worse things could happen!” (Fr. Benedict Groeschel). Neither I nor Fr. Groeschel are asking you to decide today to be single forever. I am, however, asking you to decide today to tell yourself a different story about single life from now on: that if your vocation involves it, that isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you.

4. “I’m unlovable (or unattractive, or boring, etc.).”

If you are not a human, then maybe. But you are a human, and humans are of intrinsic, infinite value, on the neverending receiving end of authentic love and unabashed affection from the creator of the universe, in whose not-unattractive, not-boring image you are created. You are not just lovable. You are loved.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of forthcoming book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, to be released by Ave Maria Press in Fall 2014. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com and tweets @ArleenSpenceley. Click here to like her on Facebook.

 

 

You’ve probably heard of the Stanford marshmallow experiment. In the ’60s and ’70s, Walter Mischel—then a psychologist at Stanford University—put one preschooler at a time at a desk on which he had placed a bell and a couple marshmallows or other treats equally tough for a kid to resist.

“The researcher told each child that he had to leave, but that when he returned, she could eat both marshmallows,” wrote Michael Bourne in a January 2014 New York Times Magazine article. “If she wanted one marshmallow before then, however, she could ring the bell and eat one, but not both.”

Once alone, the children stared at the marshmallows, or sniffed them, or buried their faces in their hands while they pined, or ate the marshmallows like all that is good depended on their digestion. The study, which discerned differences between people who delay gratification and people who don’t, points to an important truth: We are not unlike preschoolers who are left alone with marshmallows.

We have urges, desires, interests, instincts. We want stuff, like to flirt with or date somebody. Some of us are inclined to get or do what we want as soon as we want to get it or do it. Few of us consider this: like for the preschoolers who agreed to wait 15 minutes because it meant two marshmallows instead of one, there are good reasons to delay action, even if what you want’s within your reach.

But we resist it because moderation is a lost art.

To moderate something is to preside over it. It’s to decide, in the case of desire, to act only when it’s prudent to act—a process that compels us to discern before we do stuff, to accept that delayed reaction to desire doesn’t imply that we’ll never get what we want, and to acknowledge that desire for something doesn’t determine how right for us it is. We ought to bring back the art of moderation for these three reasons:

Moderation keeps us virtuous. 

Virtue requires us to moderate our urges, desires, interests, instincts—to prepare with prayer and thought before we act on them. Chastity is the virtue with which we moderate our appetites instead of being controlled by them (CCC 2339). Modesty is the virtue that “encourages patience and moderation in loving relationships” (CCC 2522)—it compels us to think before we speak or act. Temperance is the virtue that “moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the will’s mastery over instincts and keeps desires within the limits of what is honorable” (CCC 1809).

Moderation points us in the right direction. 

To preside over a desire means we wait to act on a desire until prayer, critical thought, and context determine that it’s a good idea to act on it. You can’t predict how long it’ll be before it’s smart to act, or whether it even ever will be. That can make a heart hurt. But those are growing pains, and growth puts us in better positions. It orients us toward what we are actually designed for. Time will tell whether that aligns with what we’ve desired. If it does, we will be better prepared—by moderation—to act on that desire. If it doesn’t, then by then, our desires likely will have changed.

Moderation prepares us for what God has prepared for us. 

Sometimes, like the preschoolers who ate the marshmallows without hesitation, we do we want—like flirt or date—as soon as we want to do it. We think that by not immediately acting on a desire or interest, we risk missing out on something great. But patience, prayer, and thought before we act is what’s going to unveil the things that are truly great—the purposes God wants us to serve, the vocations he wants us to live, and the will with which we must align our lives.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of forthcoming book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, to be released by Ave Maria Press in Fall 2014. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com and tweets @ArleenSpenceley. Click here to like her on Facebook.

 

 

A stack of save-the-dates and wedding invitations covers a corner of my desk at home. Within the next eight months, five more of my friends and their significant others will have wed, while I—now nearly 29—will have not. That I might witness all their vows without a date doesn’t bother me at all as I write this. That doesn’t mean that how single I am has never bothered me.

“My wedding” sounds to me like the start of something so difficult but so good. In the sacrament of matrimony, we are given to each other by God, and we are given to each other by each other. It’s a miracle, because two people turn into a unit designed to result in the destruction of self-absorption. A marriage is supposed to be a space where we can work together to become holier, and guts are safe to spill, and virtue can blossom, in which love is absolute and unfailing, just like God’s love is for us.

I want that. When I am reminded that I want it, I sometimes start to ache.

The ache is a dull longing, and when present, a constant distraction. It starts in your heart, or in your soul, or in your gut, and is rooted in the belief that something or someone is missing. It can make a person whimper a little, or binge eat pepper jack cheese sticks. It has arrived when I’ve been a third wheel a lot or when all I’ve seen between my world and a good man’s is an iMessage he isn’t sending. It arrives when I think too much about five weddings and no dates.

When I have ached, I’ve sighed a lot, and have felt mildly unfulfilled, and noticeably alone, and irreparably restless. Each time, I’ve made myself agree to wait longer for whatever’s missing to show up. I’ve resolved to accept that for now, I’m alone.

Until the last time I ached.

The last time I ached, I learned the most important thing to do while you’re single. I sighed that day like I usually do. I was restless. But I thought a thought that probably didn’t come from me:

“You don’t ache because you’re alone. You ache because you’re looking in the wrong direction.”

The whole time, every time I ached, I ached because I was waiting to receive from significant others what significant others are not even designed to give us. I ached because I wasn’t paying attention to the source of my peace. As I ached, I associated how I felt with what I thought was missing: a guy to date, and to bring to other people’s weddings.

But nothing was missing. I only felt unfulfilled, alone, and restless because I had turned my head. I wasn’t looking anymore at what all of us actually long for, whether single, married, or religious. Because the most important thing to do while you’re single, as it turns out, is the same as the most important thing to do while you’re not:

Focus on Jesus.

There is no date that can do for me what Christ does, no iMessage that grants peace like the peace that comes from eyes on Him. There is no wedding that’s better because a guy’s beside me than a wedding I attend with Christ before me, and no way I can be a wife someday if I’m not looking at Him.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of forthcoming book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, to be released by Ave Maria Press in Fall 2014. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com and tweets @ArleenSpenceley. Click here to like her on Facebook.

 

 

In 2009 and 2012, I wrote essays for the Tampa Bay Times about why I’m saving sex for marriage—essays that sparked impassioned reactions. Some feedback came from readers who agreed that saving sex is a good idea. Other feedback came from readers who shared why they think premarital sex is better.

But their reasons—which still show up in my inbox—have this in common:

They’re myths.

Today, we bust them:

Myth 1: “You should have sex with the people you date because you wouldn’t buy a car without test driving it first.” It is true that one would not buy a car without test driving it. It is also true that cars are objects, and that a person who owns a car is supposed to use it. But people are not cars. We’re not objects. A married person is not supposed to use his or her spouse. A married person is supposed to participate in “total mutual self-giving” (CCC 1644), and to exemplify the “absolute and unfailing love” God has for us (CCC 1604). The need for a test-drive, when the quest is for a car, exists because we have to see that the means (a car) serves its purpose. The need for a test-drive, when the quest is for a spouse, is a myth, because a person who treats a spouse like a means to an end is a person who doesn’t love.

Myth 2: “You should have sex with the people you date or wedding night sex will be awkward.” Or underwhelming. Or just plain bad. This myth—that we ought to have premarital sex so sex isn’t uncomfortable on our wedding nights—implies that the quality of wedding night sex is paramount, and that how immediately sex is pleasurable is what determines its quality. This myth requires a person’s focus to be on preparedness for a wedding night. It perpetuates the misguided belief that physical pleasure is what makes sex good. It isn’t. Unity makes sex good. Procreation makes sex good. That it feels good is an added bonus. Sex that isn’t immediately pleasurable requires a couple to use teamwork and communication and patience—skills a couple uses to practice chastity while they date, skills fostered when we prepare for marriage rather than just for a wedding night.

Myth 3: “You should have sex with the people you date because you need to know you are sexually compatible.” This myth wouldn’t be a myth if sex were static. But it isn’t. Even secular sex columnists agree (“Most people don’t start out very good (at sex),” one wrote; sex “skills” are learned, wrote another.) And indeed they are, with communication, practice, and patience. Which outs what actually underlies this myth: The quest isn’t for sexual compatibility. It’s for effortless sexual compatibility. Sexual compatibility can be achieved within a marriage over time, but our culture seeks compatibility that’s effortless because that sort of sex would not require what we are far too quick to avoid: work. A marriage doesn’t have to be doomed for newlyweds who discover that the sex isn’t effortless; instead, it can be fortified, when a groom and a bride agree to learn together.

Why the world says it’s ok to learn with each other before you’re married but not ok to learn with each other after you’re married remains a mystery. #Facepalm.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of forthcoming book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, to be released by Ave Maria Press in Fall 2014. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com and tweets @ArleenSpenceley. Click here to like her on Facebook.

 

I smiled at the face on my computer’s screen—a MySpace profile pic of a Christian boy with bright eyes and a bass guitar. He was 21 and part of a band made up of a handful of my friends. I was 19 and had seen enough to come to a quick conclusion:

I should date him.

We texted and talked, and felt tethered to each other before we ever met face to face. I chose him, and he chose me, and we forged onward, determined to share life without discerning whether we should.

This is because discernment is a lost art. We cross paths with a person whose gaze raises our heart rate, whose humor gets us every time, or who gets us. We are physically attracted to him or her, and mentally distracted by his or her presence (or absence). We decide with haste to date him or her based mostly (if not solely) on what we feel when we first meet, without acknowledging dating’s purpose: to discern marriage.

The result? We aim in dating to maintain the warm, fuzzy feelings that brought us together. We date without discerning. But discernment is an art we can bring back, if we ask important questions while we date, including but not limited to these:

Do I know the truth about this person? In his brilliant book Love and Responsibility, St. John Paul II wrote that “feelings arise spontaneously—the attraction which one person feels towards another often begins suddenly and unexpectedly—but this reaction is in effect ‘blind.’ Where the feelings are functioning naturally, they are not concerned with the truth about their object. … And this is just where emotional-affective reactions often tend to distort or falsify attractions: through their prism, values which are not really present at all may be discerned in a person. … This is why in any attraction—and indeed, here above all—the question of the truth about the person towards whom it is felt is so important.” I decided to date the bassist based on spontaneous feelings, and I focused on keeping them strong instead of on discovering who he was.Through the prism of feelings, I could justify his decision not to tell his parents about our relationship. I could rationalize his decision not to demote his “ex-girlfriend” from her first place position in his MySpace “Top 8.”

Do I actually like this person? In dating relationships in which I’ve been committed to discovering the truth, I have learned more than once that I don’t like this guy. The charming one, who turned out to be a narcissist. The funny one, who turned out to be immature. The other funny one, who turned out to be to local strip clubs what Sam Malone was to Cheers. Some of us—like I, in the relationship with the bassist—forge onward regardless of whether what we learn means we don’t like a person, because we don’t pause long enough to notice that we don’t. Others are pressured (from within or from without) to work on relationships not actually worth their time. But our commitment in dating is not until death. It’s until we’ve discerned that we shouldn’t get married.

Does the world need a kid who’ll grow up and turn into one of us? If you wouldn’t want your child to turn into you or the person you’re dating, you ought to ask another question: Why not? In the answer, you’re likely to find important evidence: not that you or he or she should never procreate, but that you (or he or she) is currently more open to maintaining a status quo than to growing, that one is a reckless decision-maker, or a self-absorbed ignorer of surroundings—that one isn’t yet prepared for marriage. And that requires us to ask this question: is a person who is unprepared for marriage a person who should date? If not—and I’d say not—we have used the art of discernment to determine what we ought to do next.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of forthcoming book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, to be released by Ave Maria Press in Fall 2014. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com and tweets @ArleenSpenceley. Click here to like her on Facebook.

 

My phone rang mid-day on a Monday—an unexpected call from a friend in a crisis sparked by a spouse’s newly revealed infidelity. I thought of my friend last week as I read a column on HuffPost Wedding, a request by life coach Lisa Haisha to reconsider monogamy, which is a promise implied by marriage but breached by many-a-spouse. The divorce rate, Haisha wrote, “coupled with the prevalence of adultery,” is indicative of what she thinks we need: to let marriage evolve, to let each couple decide if infidelity is ok.

The column admirably encourages spousal self disclosure, but it also implies that monogamy in marriage might not be important, as if infidelity’s prevalence is a reason to redefine a covenant. But if we redefine marriage to include people who don’t want to be faithful, we redefine marriage for people who don’t want to be married. Their choices do not negate the truth: monogamy in marriage is important.

This is, as Haisha wrote, the first time in human history in which the death that dissolves a monogamous marriage may not happen for several decades. She also wrote that monogamous marriage itself is new compared to plural marriage, that adultery might be inevitable, that it’s so normal among married women and men that we all ought to be free to change marriage’s boundaries to include it. But norms aren’t normal because they’re good. They’re normal because we keep them that way. The onus is on each of us to consider norms critically, to admit that a new definition of marriage is desired because it’s easier to change marriage into something that allows for infidelity than to become people who can be faithful, not because monogamy isn’t important.

As a result of a longer life expectancy, a couple indeed can be married for 60 years, Haisha wrote, and she followed that up with a question: “Is it realistic to think that two people could be emotionally, mentally, physically and sexually compatible for that long?” In short, and even in my opinion, no. But the absence of constant compatibility in a marriage doesn’t warrant a rejection of monogamy. That’s because constant compatibility in marriage is impossible. People are compatible when they can exist together without conflict, which means compatibility, by definition, is not constant. But that compatibility waxes and wanes is not proof that monogamy is irrelevant. It is proof that monogamy is important. It creates a safe space in which a couple can use the communication Haisha suggests couples use—and not to redefine marriage, but to achieve compatibility again and again.

Couples who are monogamously married for decades and are happy are few and far between, Haisha wrote. But unhappily married couples aren’t unhappy because they are monogamous. They are probably unhappy because they aren’t communicating (or because they probably shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place). Widespread marital misery is not an excuse to permit adultery, but evidence of what a marriage actually needs, of which too many marriages are devoid: love. Real love, selfless love—the kind of love I, a practicing Catholic, learned from Jesus. Maybe monogamy is hard, and maybe it is rare, but it reminds us that relationships don’t thrive if they don’t involve work, that marriage is designed to result in the destruction of self absorption. Adultery says “nothing is more necessary than gratification” and monogamy says “nothing is more necessary than love.” And in a marriage, I can’t imagine anything more important.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of forthcoming book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, to be released by Ave Maria Press in Fall 2014. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com and tweets @ArleenSpenceley. Click here to like her on Facebook.

 

I curled into a corner of the couch, pointed the remote toward the TV, and channel surfed to TV Land, where the woman in the sitcom on screen made a “shocking” discovery:

Her son had never had sex.

“Twenty-six years old and still a virgin,” she said. “The Elephant Man lost it before that.”

The actor’s line was a crass crack at comedy—a reference to a guy with severe deformities who lived in London in the 1800s. It was a promotion of the inaccurate notions that everybody’s doing it; that people who are virgins are virgins because there is something wrong with us (I’m 28 and I haven’t had sex, either.); and that virgins aren’t as good as people who have had sex. But I put the remote down, eager to see more of how cable TV treats people who are sexually inexperienced.

During the rest of the episode, the young adult’s mother referred to his virginity as “a problem.” After he finally slept with somebody, his mother declared what she long had hoped she could: “My little boy’s a man!”

The character’s voice is one of countless in our culture that says there is something bad about not having sex, something wrong with you for deciding not to. To all who have ever received that message, I offer this:

Ignore it.

Ignore it, because not everyone is doing it. People who are saving sex – or who are saving sex from now on – may be few and far between, but none are alone. Friends of mine and I are proof.

Ignore it, because somebody’s virginity isn’t a problem. Somebody else’s fear of it is. Our culture does not discourage virginity because virginity is bad. It discourages virginity because virginity is different. Because virginity is hard. Because we live in a culture that mistakenly values fitting in more than it values chastity, which requires abstinence from sex outside a marriage, and leads us toward authentic love.

Ignore it, because sexual experience is not what makes a boy a man, or a girl a woman. Sex isn’t a rite of passage; it’s the image and renewal of a bond built by matrimony, designed to unite spouses and create new life. “Our culture glorifies sexual prowess—many people simply assume that sexual experience and personal maturity go together, and that anyone who is virginal or otherwise inexperienced is for that reason a mere child,” wrote Margaret and Dwight Peterson in their book Are You Waiting for The One? “… In reality,” the authors continued, “experience and maturity are not the same thing.”

Ignore it, because we have been instructed not to conform to this world (Romans 12:2), and because what other people think of us is irrelevant to our value. The culture that surrounds us doesn’t get to decide how good we are; God does—and he showed us how good we are by creating us in his image.

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Arleen Spenceley is author of forthcoming book Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, to be released by Ave Maria Press in Fall 2014. She works as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com and tweets @ArleenSpenceley. Click here to like her on Facebook.