I Regret Purity Culture

Any fundamentalist Christian who grew up in the 90’s is familiar with the phrase “True Love Waits.” Born out of a culture that prizes sexual purity, the TLW movement came with modesty slogans (for females only), purity rings, and sermon after sermon at youth groups across America. Believing that God requires total abstinence from sex before marriage, Baptists built a law around the law. “Purity is a direction, not a line you suddenly cross by going too far,” taught Joshua Harris in I Kissed Dating Goodbye. But “purity” meant “not having sex.” So we went in the direction of fighting even our sexual desires, because we weren’t supposed to engage in anything that could theoretically lead up to sex. Choosing to save one’s first kiss for marriage was usually the acceptable way to go. Where this rule originally came up from or why it was so widely accepted, I have no idea.

A couple more things you would need to know if you looked into the TLW movement are that courting was more pure than dating, giving away your virginity or anything else physically was seen as giving pieces of yourself away—an act you could never take back and would always regret, and women could not be trusted to make their own courting/engagement/marriage decisions.

My dad took that last one to the extreme. When I was 16, he tried to betroth me to a co-worker at camp, someone I was not at all attracted to and who would require me to wear skirts and give up Christian rock music for the rest of my life. My dad liked this guy so much that he repeatedly begged…and offered him our car in exchange for me. To my co-worker’s credit, he was baffled and embarrassed. He said no. I heard about it later in the summer, which made life in the horse barn with him terribly awkward for the remainder of the season. I doubt Joshua Harris would have been ok with this, so I’m not saying it represents purity culture at large, but to my knowledge, nobody told my dad that he was being controlling and…just crazy. I can’t think of another word for his actions.

His behavior for the rest of my single life was more typical of a pro-purity dad. He and my mom were constantly matchmaking (to the point that, when I was 18 and being stalked by a fellow MK, my mom asked me, “Aren’t you at least a little flattered?”). When my older brother got a girlfriend at college, my parents were totally over the moon. They trusted him to pick a suitable mate, and were delighted to hear that he had his first kiss with her on their first date. But when I was instant messaging with a potential boyfriend, my dad started getting very grouchy because this young man hadn’t spoken to him about it first.

When I met my husband to be, David, I was at NTBI in Wisconsin and my parents were in South Africa. David had to ask me for my dad’s email so that he could get permission to court me. My dad responded with a list of 10 questions for David that required detailed answers. By the time David was finished typing up a response, his paper for my dad was bigger than his biggest paper he ever had to write in Bible college. My dad’s motto is, “You wouldn’t let anyone just take your car for a drive, so why are you letting people try out your daughter?” For the record, I’m much more capable of making good choices than a car, but ok…

My dad gave David and I strict courting rules. He said he didn’t see how it was acceptable for a couple to even hold hands. “Maybe….maaaaaybe, when they get engaged,” he said. Because we were so utterly brainwashed by purity culture’s concepts of not giving yourself away, running the opposite direction of pre-marital sex, and listening to a woman’s “spiritual leader” (my dad), my husband and I didn’t have any romantic touching at all until our first kiss at the altar. While we were courting, he once led me by the hand because I was blindfolded, but other than that, no physical contact was allowed.

We took this as a joke during our engagement, but
it's not at all funny to me now.

The entire TLW movement is based on not having any regrets before marriage. They scare young people with talks about how you don’t want to explain to your future spouse how you have had physical contact with other people. But I regret so much. I regret being a part of this movement at all. I regret not standing up to my dad’s ridiculous behavior and double standards. I regret the thousands of missed romantic moments that David and I longed to touch each other but held back. I regret that my first kiss was in front of everyone we knew. I regret that my concept of purity before God was entirely centered around not having sex before marriage. I regret teaching the girls at youth group that I had set some sort of Christlike example to follow. I could go on and on.

This movement is based around insecurity, plain and simple. If a man is upset that his wife had kissed other people before him, that would be insecure and degrading to her personhood (she didn’t give pieces of herself away—she’s still a whole person). If a parent is so worried that their child will fall into sexual pitfalls that they have to ban their children from even thinking sexual thoughts, that is insecure, too.

I am not insecure about my purity anymore. Not before my “father,” not before my husband, not before myself, and not before God. But I can’t get those years back now. The only thing I can do is throw this shame in the goddamned garbage can. So here it goes…