a hopeless romantic pt.IX: Never Enough

I spent most of the weekend asking myself a question some of you may be wanting to ask too. Why did I let it get this far? And truth is, that’s a question I don’t have a clear answer to. It started with a kiss and one thing led to another. It would happen twice prior to the engagement and a part of me thought it would end there. He would soon tell me how in prior relationships he’s been taken advantage of and didn’t want to feel like he was just a piece of meat to me. Yes, he was telling me this. I’m not in the slightest minimizing his experiences but . . the nerve right? Nevertheless, ‘perfect,’ I thought. This will end here, no one needs to know, we’ll be fine moving forward. The lie detector test determined, that was a lie. 

After being interrogated by multiple individuals of our compatibility and letting them know that I was for sure ready to move forward, they gave him the go to propose. (sidebar: after breaking it off, I learned that he had been trying to propose for weeks but he wanted to do it his way and not our way. He would ask me numerous times how I wanted it to happen. What kind of question? Did I really need to say? I thought it was obvious; I wanted the NDWC-style celebration like everyone else. He however, wanted it to be intimate, exclusive, just me and him if possible. He, even then, was trying to force his way. He never wanted to do anything, like “everyone else”). 

I was so anxious during this time as I knew a proposal was coming, but I didn’t know how. Most of you know the details of how it happened. He put together a last minute surprise party just days after getting the green light. I wasn’t even able to ‘get cute,’ like how I wanted to because I knew if I told him how I wanted to look on my engagement day, it would frustrate him to have to wait longer. I, to this day, wonder, were people really happy for me or were they concerned because of how things were moving? I may never know. I didn’t even cry and that in itself, concerned me. Nevertheless, I said yes. We were now engaged. And our dynamic took yet another shift. 

For the next three months, we would spend almost every day in an argument. Whether it was about finances or the wedding, about me making decisions without first asking him or about how I didn’t care about him. There was one thing after another. It was during this time that I began to hide. I couldn’t handle having conversations with him anymore. I was glad that our work schedules were opposite of each other, the less time I had to talk to him, the better. He would badger me with the fact I didn’t like having serious conversations or talking about things that “mattered,” when in all actuality, I was tired of fighting. I was tired of pleading my way and it being turned down. I was tired of expressing my feelings to later have them used against me. I just wanted to have a normal conversation. I just wanted peace and happiness in my relationship and contrarily, only had it whenever we weren’t talking. This stage was suppose to be fun and exciting, not annoying and tiresome. Not emotionally and mentally draining. In the How to Prepare For Marriage series, we were told we must love to be around our person all the time . . & I didn’t have that feeling at all. Our act in testing the waters hadn’t stopped either. I began to feel like this was the only way we connected. Maybe this is the only thing to keep him satisfied or under control, yet that didn’t quite work in my favor either. 

Back to my question from the beginning, why did I let it get this far? Did I want it to happen? No. Did I want it to stop? Yes. Many times I thought it would. We tried to set boundaries for ourselves like one-armed hugs or not looking into each other’s eyes for too long, but every moment we were alone together just set us up for failure. I never let him fully penetrate me, I had to save something for marriage right? It also lessened the guilt of us “having sex,” but, even oral sex is sex right? He even once asked me why was he the only one to initiate physical contact between us. The real answer was because I felt guilty and didn’t know how to stop it. Who could I tell? I had took his side, I had ignored the concerns of my leadership. I had to figure this one out for myself. The answer I gave him was that I didn’t want him to feel like I was “taking advantage” of him. Yes, you can laugh. I do. Now, looking back of course. There I was, putting his feelings before mine. How silly, right? So many times he would tell me I was worth the wait and I believed it. I don’t know if his intentions to stop were ever real but I felt like there was nothing else I could do whenever a moment presented itself. He was the man and I didn’t believe I had the power to turn down or say no. The sex (subconsciously) may have been the very thing that began to turn me into who he wanted me to be. All of his ways were making sense. Not only was I compromising my purity, I was hanging out less, I was leaving out with him directly after church services. We had joined finances despite my fear. I committed to a $1,000 budget for the wedding. I was checking in so that he’d always know where I was. I was asking his permission if I could buy myself lunch and letting him know what groceries I was purchasing. WE WEREN’T EVEN LIVING TOGETHER. . . .

. . sorry . . (pause for dramatic effect).
* re-gathers myself * . . continues . .

I, if you can tell, was being crafted . . or rather, manipulated. Yet still, everything I did was never enough and I couldn’t bare it. About a month after our engagement, I found myself on a social media fast, because I needed an answer to a question I had been asking myself: was this for me?

Until next time . . 

DISCLAIMER: To all my non-New Destinions, I felt this a good place to make the note that I had no intentions on even kissing this man prior to our wedding day. I even thought us having conversations about sex during our dating phase was too much but he kept convincing me that nothing was off limits. The standard was that all physical contact with the exception of holding hands (once engaged) was reserved for marriage. No kissing. No gropping. No fondling. Nothing. Neither were we to be alone together until we were engaged. To some, this may be extreme; to us, it’s what works. I valued the process and I had hoped to have been successful at it myself, but I wasn’t. So, I tell my story so that others, especially the younger ones at my church that look up to me, will not fall the way that I did. It was not only a standard set within our church, but it was one I set for myself. And some days are harder than others, but God’s grace carries me through the guilt and the shame. So I say this to say, ladies—set your standard and don’t let any man come between YOU and your eternity with God.