My girlfriend just told me she had sex with her ex-boyfriend. What do I do?
Question:
I am 20, and I am dating a girl since I went to college. She is also 20 now.
Two days ago she confessed to me that she lost her virginity over five years ago with her ex-boyfriend. She had sex many times with him but said that she never did it for fun. It was always painful for her and she did it just to please her boyfriend so that he do not develop any frustration over her. She just now told me during exams when I am under a lot of pressure.
I cannot leave her because I truly love her, but I wanted a special girl in my life who could do her first and last sex with me only because it's for sure that I would marry the girl I would have been dating. I am normal with her but every day, every second, pictures flash in my mind in which I find my girlfriend having sex with her ex-boyfriend. It kills me. I don't know what to do. I don't want to ruin her life now but I am getting broken down every day from within. I don't know what to do. Every time I see her and her ex-boyfriend doing sex in my imagination.
Please help me with what to do. Maybe I will get mentally sick or depressed.
Answer:
And how will being mentally ill or depressed help you or resolve this quandary?
There is one small line in your note that particularly concerns me. It appears you've decided that it is all right to have sex with a girl so long as you are determined to marry her. Your personal intentions don't make something sinful into something righteous. If you are not married to a girl you are having sex with, you are still committing fornication. "Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge" (Hebrews 13:4). So my question for you is: have you been having sex with your girlfriend? If so, how are you any different from the boy who had sex with her all those years ago?
People make mistakes, sin is prevalent, and that someone has sinned sexually in their past is not surprising. The question that is better to ask is what does she think about sex outside of marriage today? If she is having sex with you, then she hasn't changed. The claim that it wasn't "real" because she didn't enjoy it is a poor excuse. All that says is that he didn't know what he was doing. It doesn't say that she understands she is in sin.
If you two had been behaving yourselves and she has changed her attitude toward premarital sex, then you need to see her for who she is and not for who she was. There are reasons why this other boy is an ex-boyfriend and why she is interested in you.
Question:
Sir,
I am going mentally weak. Every time just a mental picture of my girlfriend being nude with her ex and being busy, I am losing my mental peace. Please help me. It occupies me completely. Even now I am hate being so desperate. I don't know why my mind imagines her being involved in sex in different positions with him. They used to be always about having sex with me. I just feel horribly broken.
No, I did not have sex with her yet. But now I think I would never be able to overcome this truth. It kills me because I wanted a pure girl with whom I could maintain a sexual relationship, the best, but only after marriage, but she has already done it. I am unable to forgive her though I am faking being happy with her because I do not want to ruin her studies.
Answer:
The problem is that you had expectations that cannot be met with this girl. She made a bad mistake with her former boyfriend. But that cannot be undone. You talk of forgiving her, but there was no sin against you because she had no obligation to you. She sinned against God and herself. "Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body" (I Corinthians 6:18).
You did not answer whether she changed her attitude about pre-marital sex. I hope she has. She needs a husband who doesn't hold past mistakes against her. It is sounding like you don't have that ability. Love "keeps no record of wrongs" (I Corinthians 13:5 NIV).
Question:
Yes, sir, she has changed her attitude toward pre-marital sex. Sir, I want to be with her for my whole life. Just help me so that I will stop imagining her and her ex again and again. Sir, what if after a few months she does have sex with me; that is if she does pre-marital sex with me? Then what should be my action or thinking regarding her?
Answer:
If you have sex with this girl, then neither of you is serious about living righteously. That you desire to have sex with her without marriage says that you are not being truthful about the importance of virginity in your life. "Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things" (Romans 2:1). You want others to live by rules you are willing to break.
If you are serious about following God and you believe you want to marry this girl, then date her for a year. If she remains faithful to you and doesn't try to get your clothes off, then you know she has changed. If she does try to get you to have sex with her, you know she has not changed, so you must end the relationship and find a better woman.
If the two of you remain pure to God during that year, then you will be able to tell yourself that what happened in the past doesn't matter. She is with you. She doesn't care about the other guy who didn't treat her with respect.
