#ikisseddatinggoodbye

In classes, I observed that the only normal interactions I had were with my professors and with the married men who would actually discuss how to complete the sentence diagram for Greek grammar without gossiping about me being forward afterward.  Somehow, I managed to carve out a group of good friends of both genders.  And I began spending time with a very dear man, who was one of my closest friends.  And I became emotionally attached to him.

When he died suddenly, my world fell apart.  While I had thought he was “the one” even though we had not made it to officially “courting” yet, it was compounded by other cultural aspects.  At his funeral, I was rebuked for mourning too much.  I was told I was wrong to grieve him so.  I was called a sinner for harboring the affection of close friendship for this dear, dear man.  And on top of all the other purity baggage, I began to feel inadequate to discern God’s will for myself, because I had mistakenly cared for someone, and was obviously wrong in my hopes and dreams for our future.  For years I carried the guilt of wishing outside the will of God with me.  Guilt for caring.  Guilt for being wrong. Guilt for having feelings and even dreams.  Guilt every time something made me remember him and mourn.  And later, guilt for wanting to have a relationship after it all; all because I had given my heart before.  So I was sinful for wanting to fall in love again.

The worst part was that I received a postcard from my friend after his death (he had sent it to me  from Ecuador while on a mission trip two days before he fell ill and was hospitalized), and I showed it to his roommate who had been there with him.  The roommate announced “I’m going to keep this” and took it from me, and I never had the courage to ask for it back (you know, being female, and not entitled to be affectionate to someone I was not officially courting).

It took me over a decade to feel like I was worthy of being in a relationship after that, especially since I was deemed unworthy to keep that last token of his affection for me.  I was shamed because the person I imagined I would marry and have children with died before there was a formal courtship or engagement.  I Kissed Dating Goodbye only reinforced doubt in myself after that point.  And for the longest time, I was scared to love again.

And yet, my husband and I married earlier this year; he is an ex-Catholic.  He often remarks about how much guilt and shame the purity culture has handed me and how it he used to think Catholic guilt was bad until he saw mine firsthand.  (Now I wish I could go back and point out to my younger self: how would one court in your late 30’s to early 40s when parents are ailing or gone?  And if it is truly spiritual, should it not apply to all ages, genders, and cultures equally?)

As a homeschooler, the only interaction I had with boys was at church, with boys I had grown up with. I never really thought anything of courtship or dating, until a new boy started going to our church when I was 15. I developed a crush, which as it turned out, he reciprocated. It was innocent. We hung out in youth group, on youth group retreats, during choir practice or the occasional friend’s basketball game at the local Christian high school. We held hands once, something I felt very guilty about. I didn’t tell my mom, I felt like I couldn’t.

About four months into it, she found out, which is when I was promptly grounded, was forced to cut off communication with him and was handed the books I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl. I have not read them since then, but the thing I remember most vividly is when Josh meets his wife. How he describes her, her past, like she is/was something dirty. Her past affected HIM in some way, and he chose to FORGIVE her.

Even despite the fact I was raised in a similar culture, I recall that not sitting right with me. What does her past have to do with him? What right does he have to offer her forgiveness? How did she wrong him? As I continued, I grew more paranoid. Is that what a future husband sees if a girl has dated before? What level do I have to get to before I am considered not clean to a future spouse? What did this mean for me, as a teenager? All these things I wondered.

I never agreed with my parent’s choice to encourage courtship. I believe I was lucky in the fact that I didn’t allow it to totally brainwash me. That said, dating was and always has been a struggle for me. It took years and years before I stopped feeling guilty for my sexual choices, my dating choices, my bodily choices.

When I was 25 I was sexually assaulted by a guy I met at Pensacola Christian College. A nice boy, a Christian boy. When it first happened, I blamed myself. I didn’t report it, I couldn’t report it. I invited him over to my house at night, what did I expect would happen? I wrestled with it for years until one day, I just said, “No. Fuck this. This IS NOT MY FAULT.” It doesn’t matter what I wore, what I said or even if I initiated that first kiss. It doesn’t matter that I am not a virgin. I am NOT dirty, I am not used up, I am not someone that deserves the forgiveness of a future spouse.

Joshua Harris, author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, is currently taking submissions from people who were affected by his book and his teachings on Christian “sexual purity.” However, in taking these submissions, he is asking for several things:

for the stories to be kept under 750 words

permission to share the stories anonymously online

volunteers to share their stories in a video format

While we think that actually taking the time to listen is a good start for Harris, many of us are deeply uncomfortable with his chosen format. By giving Harris permission to share these stories, they are being licensed to him for use in whatever way he sees fit—in whole in or in part, censored or uncensored, in service of whatever conclusions he comes to about the impact of his work.

But the reality is that the impact of his work is not his to decide.

This week, we’re inviting you to share your stories—uncut and uncensored. We want to curate these stories in the hopes of preventing more damage from being done and to provide an alternative narrative to the rigid and narrow thinking that I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Harris’ other work espouses. Here’s how you can participate:

Write your story on your own blog and link up with us anytime this week: we’ll have new posts every day on different topics relating to I Kissed Dating Goodbye and purity culture on lifeafterikdg.com.

Participate in our Twitter chat! We’ll be sharing our stories of how I Kissed Dating Goodbye affected us on Wednesday, August 3 at 7:00pm EST/6:00pm CST using the hashtag #IKDGstories!

If you’re uncomfortable using your personal information to share your story, you can submit an anonymous story at ikdgstories.tumblr.com. All submissions will be published completely anonymously and unedited (except where grammatically necessary).

If you’re willing to tell your story and you don’t have your own blog, but you don’t need to be anonymous, you can also submit through ikdgstories.tumblr.com