How dating young almost destroyed me

“I would never date a Mormon.”

A phrase I’ve heard many times, this time it punctures my heart. Perhaps because it is the first time I hear it addressed to me. My heart sinks as I sit across the table with a smile and soft laughter that conceals everything. The comment surfaces in a conversation about chastity, about waiting.

Reader, in truth, the relationship should have ended there, with me going home where my family loves me and my bedroom is warm.

However, I stayed, and began a relationship which slowly, almost imperceptibly, drove me into becoming someone I did not like and eroded my self-esteem.

I had grown adept to negotiating my boundaries around relationships, to go the extra mile, to get lost and reroute, to give an extra hug, and maybe a peck… then finally to be intimate.

I broke the law of chastity and started to pretend that it was not important to me. But the pretense was unbearable. it unsettled me, stretched me thin, and left me quietly at war with myself.

The whole experience had the quality of a vice; an emotional Russian roulette which took everything and returned nothing.

As is typical with all vices. Mine was this. Mixed with my lack of courage, my avoidance of the uncomfortable conversations and the Big Daddy of them all… my need to feel like I was being liked and included. Credit the bullying years.

The years spent in shame for having given away the most sacred part of me were so deep it was as though I were wearing a scarlet letter. I must have been.

I measure the impact by the lost self-confidence, the missed opportunities in my career, the guilt and sadness that came.

And as I sit with the pieces, sometime later still mending what feels like a blighted spirit, asking God to heal this broken part of me, I can’t help but wonder whether the wound will ever fully close.

I still watch the news and read the magazines, all insisting that intimacy offers some kind of happiness, even if only fleeting. But I can’t help but wonder: who really benefits from us thinking this way? It certainly was never me.

Maybe cause I’ve seen too many times how in townships, pregnancy silences dreams before they can take shape. Sexually transmitted infections move quietly, wrapping their victims in shame long before revealing their full cost. And beyond that lies the mental toll: depression, alcohol and drug abuse, and a quiet unraveling that often follows.

Of all the things that contribute to mental distress, this one rarely makes the headlines and is at times even frowned upon. I hope my story serves as a cautionary tale, to be aware of scars that spiritually disfigure and come to you in places you should not have been.