I first had sex at age 17. It was awkward and needy. My partner afterwards said, "not really a big deal is it?" I was suddenly not a virgin, life was different. We nearly got caught by her parents. I slipped out through her bedroom window and ran down a few streets to meet some friends who picked me up.
I shouldn't have done it. I had one running thought - to make it right with God I had to marry her.
I wasn't her first partner, far from it. But I was going to marry the woman I lost my virginity to, I had to. So we dated for awhile. I proposed when I was nearly 18. She hesitantly said yes. She was 19. We planned a small wedding about a month after I was 18.
My friends didn't like her, should have been a warning sign. My plan since a young teen was to have my two best friends to be both my best men. I got in a fist fight with one of my best friends over something he'd said about her. My best friend in the world. Instead I asked my boss at the time to stand in. Our wedding was short and to the point. We rented a little chapel and had maybe two dozen in attendance.
It was a mistake. We were both too young and had different wants in life at the time. I wanted to settle down right away, maybe start a family. She wanted to be young and enjoy life as a young adult. I wanted us to go to church together, get right with God. She wasn't interested. We didn't share a lot in common. Same taste in music, movies, that was about it.
We lasted almost a year, but the last half was filled with pain and we both caused our share of it. During one fight she threw a drinking glass at me, missed, and broke our balcony sliding glass door. I threw her out. I served her with divorce papers a month later. Yet another sin, divorce. I suspected she'd been unfaithful but I didn't really know for sure. Was divorce going to be forgivable? Was I piling more sin upon sin?
I had done it all to correct a sin. The sin of sex before marriage. I thought marrying her would earn me forgiveness. Would heal the wound I'd opened between us and God. Not a good foundation for a relationship. A marriage of guilt and shame.
I learned a lot about living with another person with her. We had roommates, too. I learned about betrayal and about inadequacy. I learned about failing to give another person room to grow and to be themselves. I learned you can't force something to work just because you really want it to. Or think it has to. I didn't see those lessons at the time, only failure and sin.
I felt destroyed. Age 19 and married and divorced already. Who else could possibly want someone like that? My dating future looked grim. Alone is what I deserved to be. I wondered why God would let it fall apart. Why we couldn't make it work. Why he didn't help us keep it together, help her heal the wounds she carried. Helped me with my naivety. I'd prayed and prayed. I'd begged for forgiveness for sleeping with her before we'd wed. I begged for forgiveness for everything.
I couldn't go back to my parents' church with them. I felt like such a failure and embarrassment. I couldn't face the other kids my age, some still in youth group while I was now a divorcée. Despite being married and living on our own I felt very much a child. A child who'd been now married and divorced.
What a failure I was. And now I was impure to add to it. I was an utter failure as a Christian, as a man, as a person. Failure. Sex certainly hadn't been worth the sin. So much sin. So much shame.