As a sex-less, conservative Christian, how do I cope with living in a very sexual world?
(I realize this isn't the best venue for this question, but please humor me! I've found MeFi answers on similar topics to be very helpful in the past.)
I'm a 30-year-old Orthodox Christian male living in a fairly liberal area. One of the tenets of my faith is that sexuality is strictly reserved for marriage and (ultimately) procreation, so I've avoided any sexual activity or even dating up to this point. As a fact, this does not bother me; I have close friendships with women and I don't need to be in a relationship to feel validated or complete. However, I sometimes can't help feeling like an overgrown child in the world of adults. Everyone's having sex. It's a fundamental part of most people's lives. I'm not, never have, and probably won't be in the foreseeable future (if ever). This degree of intimacy is simply inaccessible to me, and I don't quite know how to process this fact. I also don't know how to ignore the fact that if I do decide to take up dating someday, I will be woefully inexperienced and basically an instant DQ for my age group. Simply put, I don't know how to stop feeling like an immature half-person compared to my peers (and shrinking every day).
It's not even the sex per se, but the societal expectations that trouble me. In effect, I need to reconcile my religious belief that sex is nice but optional, with the societal expectation that sex is a vital formative experience and very nearly a basic human need that everyone dips into from 18 onward lest they explode. And obviously, the proliferation of Tinder etc. in recent years has not made this any easier.
Anyone here face a similar quandary? How do you cope with this stuff?
(I guess I could find another Orthodox Christian to date, but I feel like I have too many liberal convictions to enjoy being with someone who was super conservative, but also too many conservative tenets to be with anyone who took their faith less seriously. Also, I feel like I don't really want kids, which cuts my dating pool by like 95%. Basically, I'm in a constant state of unresolvable cognitive dissonance and kind of stuck on that front.) |
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