Dear Margo Advises Catholic Guy About His Dating

HEARTSICK recently wrote in to Dear Margo:

I am a 23-year-old Catholic male. The last serious relationship I was in ended when I was 17.

That wasn’t really a serious relationship. It only felt like it to you.

Even though we dated for three years, we never went "all the way."

Good for you.

Now I am intimidated by women who have more sexual history than I do.

Intimidated? Is that the right word? You should only be intimidated if they are
assaulting you.

I have always believed that one sexual partner for one's entire life is the ideal.

You mean you believe in line with your religion? Wow. Imagine that.

Here comes the fun part.

Recently, a 20-year-old woman whom I care for deeply told me in explicit detail about a sexual experience she had with a 45-year-old man she met on the Internet.

RED FLAGS! (And there’s that “met on the Internet” thing again. It is completely irrelevant. It is like saying “met in a library”. Come to think of it, he might be in the "friend" category for her anyway, making this whole thing pointless.)

She did not mean to have sex with him, she told me, and the circumstances as she explained them sounded like borderline rape.

Hmmmm. So she thought a 45-year-old man simply found her, a 20-year-old, so fascinating and insightful, that he just had to meet her in person, in private? Hey, I speak from experience - when a 45 year old you met online wants to spend time with you and you are 20, they want sex; even if the sexes are reversed. (No, I'm nowhere near 45. You figure it out.)

Okay – let’s go over the possibilities here:

1) She was naïve and showed very poor judgment and wanted to get her ego stroked so badly that she put herself in a very bad situation and was raped. I do not excuse rape, just like I do not excuse grand theft auto, but I think someone who leaves the keys in the ignition and the car door open and unattended is still an idiot.

2) She is not telling you the truth or telling it wholly or accurately. This could be because she doesn’t want to take responsibility for her own actions, so she could be recasting her fornication as rape.

3) She attracts “dangerous” men.

Do you want to be with a woman like that? At the very least, she isn’t ready to be in a healthy relationship. Actually, at 23, you probably have some more time to go before you see someone exclusively anyway. You should be out dating various women so you can be sure to develop a good idea of what kind of woman you enjoy spending time with. Wish someone would have told me that when I was 23.

Think about this – if this woman engaged willingly in fornication with this guy and then later recasts it as rape, she is more likely to do the same with you. False rape accusations are nothing to take lightly.

However, if she was raped, you can hardly call this “sexual experience”. And if she was raped, she should turn that guy in to law enforcement.

I am afraid that if I stay involved with her, the knowledge of that experience will eat away at me.

Leave now. If she was raped, she doesn’t need someone like you adding to her troubles. If she simply had sex she claims to regret, it will still bother you. Either way, it is best to move on.

Doesn’t the Roman Catholic Church have all sorts of people for this guy to turn to for advice in situations like this? It seems to me that writing in to Dear Margo is fishing for getting the exact answer he wants to hear.

Dear Margo responded:

I encourage you to move away from your instinct to "fully understand" or to find and punish this man.

Move away altogether.

It would be a shame to end the relationship because of something basically out of this woman's control.

Would it really? Should everyone volunteer to subject themselves to a relationship with someone with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? We’re not talking a married couple where one spouse gets traumatized. We’re talking about a new dating situation. If he doesn’t want to knowingly enter in to a new relationship with someone who has PTSD, that is his choice and certainly understandable.

Because you say you are intimidated by women more experienced than you are, perhaps a few sessions with a mental health professional will help you over this hurdle.

Be sure to pick a solid Catholic, or at least Biblical counselor. Otherwise, you’ll get someone who will tell you that the solution is to fornicate a lot. Or, you could stick to women who don’t have more “experience” than you. There’s nothing wrong with that. But make no mistake: If someone is raped, that does not mean something is wrong with them or they are sexually impure.