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Saved by positive peer pressure
Clíona Johnson (35) who’s a member of the Community of Nazareth, and married with 5 children shares her experiences of dating as a young person and how the community supported her and helped her to stay chaste as a young person.
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Things changed when I went to college at 18. That was when the first big challenge to chastity came. Being a normal human being you are bound to bump into a few people who are interested in you and you in them. My sexual unavailability in fact seemed to act as a magnet for some guys, as I suppose they found me a bit of a challenge. I had to learn from experience to deal with my own weaknesses as I wanted to be noticed and loved like anyone else. I would generally refuse to go out with guys, but from
time to time one would be very persistent, asking if they could come
to the prayer group with me! That was the kind of offer a young Christian
girl couldn’t refuse! I would agree and without realising it I
would drift into a relationship without having really decided to do
so. It was assumed then, as it is now, that if you were dating someone,
you would be sleeping with them within a short space of time. Since
this was not the kind of relationship I was interested in, things would
get very difficult. The relationship would end with broken hearts and
confused emotions all round. It was a very difficult time. I could immediately see the difference between the young people in the community and those outside. I discovered that my Christian friends were much more alive. I had lived in a society which thought it was uncool to be a Christian but I found in fact the complete opposite. My Christian friends were much more comfortable with themselves and open to all sorts of fun activities because they weren’t focussed on who fancied whom all the time. There didn’t seem to be the same peer pressure as outside with people trying to impress others all the time. Community gave me emotional and spiritual support Being in the community really helped me on two fronts. First of all it anchored me by giving me the emotional and spiritual support I needed to reject the other way of life. And secondly, the approach to dating was really wise. There wasn’t really a formal list of rules, but there were guidelines based on respect (and real love) for others. One of these was that you wouldn’t exclusively date someone unless you were in a position to really pursue the relationship. There was no point if there was no future, otherwise it just caused pain. Thus although you had lots of friends, you avoided situations where you would be in one to one situations with a person of the opposite sex for long periods of time. The second guideline was for dating couples and it was to avoid being in a situation where it is easy to give into sexual temptation. She and JP, who eventually became her husband, played in the same music group and played squash together, and were good friends. She often felt there was something special there but it was never acted on by either of them, as she had her college education and he also had other priorities. It wasn’t always easy she admits, “I would sometimes get confusing signals.” She and JP finally got together when she was in
her last year at college. She comments, “Once we started going
out, we became very serious very quickly, as we already knew so much
of each other’s character”. They married in the autumn after
she finished college. They now have 5 children. She comments, “I
had a sense through it all that God had a plan for my life. I believe
God has a big role in it and he does choose your spouse for you. This
has made me all the more secure in my marriage, as I don’t feel
I have signed my life away but that God is in it. We both know that
this is for life and the importance of laying our lives down for one
another. This means that our romance keeps growing in the safety of,
‘Till death do us part.’ ”
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I
was about 17 when our family joined the community. We were traditional
Catholics and I was a shy person by nature so during my school years,
I had quite a reserved attitude to boys and I suppose this made me a
bit different from the rest of my class. I would go to parties with
my classmates, but I was quite naive. I was never aware that couples
were going off to bedrooms to have sex, as it wasn’t happening
amongst my immediate circle of friends.