He leaned over me and kissed my neck, a jolt of electricity arced through my body, running down my spine…
He was the first person that I ever fell in love with and he was the first person that I was certain that I wanted to be with. Not because he was dreamy or was a talented musician or anything else but because I felt right with him, I cared about him, and I wanted to know every part of him. When he kissed me, sitting on his couch at 2:00 in the morning, I melted into it. It felt right to be with him, to let him run his hand along the curve of my leg, to feel the warmth of his chest, heart beating against my own.
And he leaned into me kissing my neck. I knew that he wanted me and I wanted him, electricity raced through my body. Then, I felt that same spark of electricity charge through my brain. I placed both hands on his chest and pushed him away saying no. That was too far.
He moved to the far end of the couch as I muttered a couple of excuses about how that was too far and I should not even be letting him kiss me because we weren’t officially dating and I had since high school obeyed a rule I had set for myself that I was not going to kiss anyone unless I was the only person they were kissing. I did not say that it was getting too difficult to say no and that if I did not say no then I wouldn’t say it at all. I needed to say no.
I also did not mention the voice screaming in my head that I was a slut. I was officially promiscuous for having that desire for someone that I genuinely cared about.
Lust is one of the seven deadly sins.
I woke up the next morning racked with guilt. It rattled inside of me, shaking down to my core. I had felt so much desire to be with him even though I was so committed to waiting for marriage and I felt like I had failed. I felt like just wanting to be with him was wrong, even though I had said no. I had not slept with him. I felt so guilty that a few days later I pulled out my phone and opened up our string of texts. I wrote out how I felt about him and how I could not be kissing someone who I was not willing to fall in love with and who was not willing to fall in love with me. I wrote about how important it was to me that something like that would be about deepening my relationship with them. A little too early to say those kinds of things.
He texted back. “We should talk in person.”
Earlier on the night that he kissed me, he and I had a conversation about his faith and mine, he commented that once a teacher at his private Christian school told him that just looking at a woman with lust was a sin. He continued with a shrug, “and I thought, I’m screwed, I’ll never be good enough.” He explained that that was a big part of why he wasn’t a Christian at all. He knew there was nothing he could do to stop himself from sinning, he could not live his life never feeling any desire for someone, so why should he try?
Neither of us thought to question what the difference between lust and sexual desire was and it two very different ways it hurt our faith.
Christians need to figure out how to talk about sex.
Christians need to figure out how to talk about sex and lust and desire because those things are part of our life on earth and they are things that are not avoidable. As Christians, as the church, we have failed each other by not discussing this. By telling our youth not to have sex, not to think about sex, and letting them believe that any sexual desire is lust we are failing them and setting them up for hurt. Hurt like I felt, feeling horrible for wanting physical intimacy with someone I was in love with. Hurt like he felt, deciding he would never be good enough so why bother trying?
I’m thirty, I am a virgin, I am waiting for marriage, and I struggle with understanding the difference between sexual desire for someone I am in love with and lust. I have been failed. I won’t perpetuate that failure.
We really need to start by defining what is lust and what is natural sexual desire. I believe that there is a difference. I also believe that God would not have implanted in us a desire that is inherently sinful. Yes, many of our desires are sinful because we are fallen and live in a fallen world AND I do not believe that God would give us a desire that is a sin to even feel in any context but marriage. Being tempted is not a sin.
Sexual desire is wanting to have sex with someone. Wanting to be together. It is being attracted to someone and understanding the fact that they are a human being with wants and desires of their own. It includes a desire for the other person as a person and not simply a body.
What I was qualifying in my mind as lust in the days after the night I kissed that particular boy was a real and true sexual desire. I did not want Tom just because I was attracted to him but because I was in love with him. I cared about who he was and I wanted all of him. If any other person had kissed me that night, I would not have struggled to say no to them, it was about being kissed by him and not simply about being kissed.
Lust disregards who the other person is. Lust is about your own pleasure. Lust doesn’t care who gets hurt in the process. Lust is about imposing what you want on someone rather than asking what someone else wants.
About a year and a half after Tom and I spoke in person I went out with a guy named Mark. I want you to understand, I liked Mark. He was interesting to talk with. He was fun to dance with. He was pretty cute. I knew that I wanted to make out with Mark. I just didn’t know if I wanted to make out with him because he was him or because I was tired of feeling sad about Tom.
The truth is, that was the reason I was interested in Mark. I was attracted to him and I wanted him to cover up the loss of intimacy that I felt. That is what lust is. I had no desire for a deeper relationship with Mark, I didn’t want to know every part of who he was or to have him truly know me. It wasn’t him that I wanted.
I never kissed Mark. Kissing Mark would have only hurt him… and me.
I do not believe, now, that it was sinful or lust to have the desire I had for Tom. God designed us in the garden to desire physical intimacy with someone we feel emotionally intimate with. But feeling the way I felt about him, having that desire for him, and coming so close to acting on that desire then losing him from my life was one of the hardest and most painful things I have ever gone through. It exposed the cracks that deep-seated insecurities left in my soul.
Maybe that is why God has asked me to wait until I am married because I cannot cover up the hurt of losing that deeper connection with someone no matter how hard I try.
I have a purity ring that my parents gave me when I was 17. I still wear it. It is a treasured item and it represents a commitment I made to God, not my parents but to God. I firmly believe that God has asked me to wait for my husband. To God that person is already my husband which means that to God sharing that deepest part of me with anyone else is wrong. God is meant to be part of our sexual relationships because our love and desire for a person as a whole person is meant to mirror God’s love for us. Sex in and of itself is not sinful or dirty or wrong and should not be taught as such but using a person, treating what should be the deepest part of our relationship with someone as something that can be thrown away is wrong; it will hurt you, it will hurt others, it has consequences.
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