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New here!!

Do I stay celibate? Been searching for a husband and getting frustrated.

  • Yes

    Votes: 22 100.0%

  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    22
rejoicinghandmaid said:
Seeing you're entry to BF for the first time. Welcome. It's also the first time I've seen anyone post a tag for a vote. Your question intrigues me that you'd ask. Frustration has nothing to do with whether or not you keep yourself for the man you saying you're seeking to marry. However the vote turns out has absolutely no bearing on what the Word of God say is right. If you know the Lord Jesus as your personal Saviour, set your eyes on Him, quit looking around to find the "right one" and depend on the Lord to cause your path to cross the path of the one you will call husband. Shaking the bushes can produce a lot of toads, and many of them will look like knights in shining armour. With love and concern, I encourage you to hang around. Get involved on the forum. Share your thoughts. Interact with this body of believers from many different walks of life who all truly love the Lord and are seeking His guidance for their lives. Work on becoming the very best person you can be for God's honor and glory so that you'll be ready for the one He brings to you. You must become content with where you are right now if you ever hope to be content on the other side of vows and covenant. I'm looking forward to visiting with you on the forum. BTW--I'm also a single lady so I'm speaking to you from my heart. :) Blessings to you!
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I'm not a single lady, @Seeklovingfam, but I just want to second the gist of what @rejoicinghandmaid wrote. I didn't know she in particular was single, but she's not the only one who participates -- and at least one single woman who wants to find a loving family attended the national conference earlier this month. I've searched around the internet for years for an edifying place to discuss these issues, and this is without a doubt the best platform for receiving support for recognizing that polygamy is part of God's plan, support for practicing it, and -- perhaps most important of all -- a space in which it's safe and encouraged to share Biblical perspectives that are, in general out there, suppressed when not punished.

I would say, too, that, if you find that there's something none of the discussion threads seem to cover, all you have to do is just Ask, and people with answers and opinions will readily come out of the woodwork to help you on your learning journey.

I also applaud you for starting off with a poll, even if your purpose were to conduct distanced educational research. We could probably get into a big discussion here just around the whole 'frustration' dynamic (I happen to respect the compelling nature of sexual frustration), but I'll just address one of the central values in remaining celibate: if you haven't found a worthy mate or family, and out of frustration or any other reason, choose to compromise with yourself and get in some nooky while you're waiting for one of The Ones to cross your path, what you can almost bank on is that you will be trading short-term passion for long-term passion and long-term contentment and long-term satisfaction and long-term confidence that you're surrendering to God's will and the opportunity for long-term relationships you can count on and long-term protection, caring concerning and being cherished.

It's not that God sits around waiting to punish and reward us individually for making such choices. It's more that in His Divine Omnipotent Omniscience, He set up the world and human nature so those rewards and punishments would naturally occur in response to our behaviors. And the bottom line is that, while you're bonking someone you don't intend to spend the rest of your life with, you'll never know how many potentially awesome mates came and went through your immediate environments -- not just because you won't be paying sufficient attention to notice them, but more so because you'll be invisible to those great guys. Even if they don't think something along the lines of, oh, she's more concerned with immediate pleasure than she is with the rewards that come with recognizing the value of delaying gratification, they just aren't very likely to recognize you as someone who would prefer to make a long-term commitment.
 
The poll is a bit confusing to me because celibacy is abstaining from marriage, and if you are looking for a husband you are obviously wanting to NOT be celibate. So is the question should you give up on finding a hubby?
If it is I would say NEVER give up, but do try and be patient and wait to find (or be found by) a good match.
You must remember that anything you look for is ALWAYS in the last place you look. ;)
Welcome to an excellent place! I was married before Biblical Families came into being, but I intend to encourage my children to fellowship with these kind of folks....and I hope when they marry it is to the kind of people I have gotten to know here. :)
 
Celibacy meaning not being married is actually the secondary meaning. The primary definition according to Merriam-Webster, Wordnik, etc., is abstention from sexual intercourse (or interactive sexuality in general), so it's legitimate to assume that the use of the word 'celibate' in seeklovingfam's poll question is meant to refer to remaining chaste, as well as that the question assumes trying to wait until marriage to have sex.
 
I have a further hunch, and it's probably partially based on my experience running a 1200-student residence hall at a Holy-Ghost-Fathers Roman-Catholic-Church university in Pittsburgh back in the late 1980s. Besides the students, the structure also housed not only every nun associated with the university but several priests. In my capacity, I had occasion to observe a great deal and learn much I wouldn't otherwise know about the inner workings of the Catholic Church. [Coincidentally, just a few years later, I was working at Georgia's largest mental hospital on a unit to which the Bishop of the Pittsburgh Diocese transferred a number of Pittsburgh-area priest sex offenders for treatment, a way to keep them from inciting the ire of the jurisdictions where they had committed their crimes.]

So my hunch is that the use of the word celibacy to refer to not only abstinence from sex but abstinence from marriage is an example of that Church's manipulation of language to downplay the degree to which priests and nuns (both of which I have stories about stored up in my head; nuns and priests, priests and their teenage and young adult lovers) were skirting their vows of celibacy. In other words, to refer to 'celibacy' as abstinence from marriage cloaks the possibility that what is being excused is a failure to abstain from sexual intimacy period.

I am not a fan of the introduction of the paganistic, heavy-handed expectation that priests or nuns be celibate. Prior to that policy change, though, many priests were polygamists, and the insistence that they not only stop marrying but become celibate was part of a long-term agenda on the part of the Roman church to criminalize sexuality in service of scaring sufficient numbers of people to return to church membership, and cough up more money, of course. Gotta build those cathedrals, after all!

The practice of managing sex lives on such a grand scale has predictably mutated into not only hypocritical lack of transparency but some of the more distorted forms of sexual relationships engaged in by men and women who are held up as examples for the rest of their very large flock. I'm not suggesting that we demonize them any further than the media have already accomplished. They are also, in a very real sense, victims of an organization that uses them up while expecting vows that aren't realistic for any but the most rare of individuals. Stories are plentiful of young gay boys of faith being encouraged to enter the priesthood as a way to refrain from acting out their homosexual urges. As 'they' say, though, where there's a will, there's a way, but unfortunately the ways for sexual self-expression available to priests and nuns held up as the most virtuous among us tend to be limited to the kind of stuff that's restricted to that which occurs in secret, in stolen moments, and in shame.
 
Keith Martin said:
Celibacy meaning not being married is actually the secondary meaning. The primary definition according to Merriam-Webster, Wordnik, etc., is abstention from sexual intercourse (or interactive sexuality in general), so it's legitimate to assume that the use of the word 'celibate' in seeklovingfam's poll question is meant to refer to remaining chaste, as well as that the question assumes trying to wait until marriage to have sex.
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Good clarification--thanks on that!
 
Keith Martin said:
I'm not a single lady, @Seeklovingfam, but I just want to second the gist of what @rejoicinghandmaid wrote. I didn't know she in particular was single, but she's not the only one who participates -- and at least one single woman who wants to find a loving family attended the national conference earlier this month.
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Not to derail @Seeklovingfam thread, but were you are the retreat in TN at the end of July? There were actually 3 of us single ladies at that retreat.
 
Welcome! I hope you get on the chat tomorrow night. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's serious, always a good use of one's time....
 
Seeklovingfam said:
Just saying hi! Anyone near North Carolina?
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Well Hello! We have met before. ;) You have found a great place for growth, learning, and Love. If you can, try to attend one of the retreats. It is way more gooder than just the website, though this a great way to connect with like minded Believers. There are many on here from N.C. (Tennessee’s better though). :rolleyes: Even though you’re from N.C. We all here still welcome you . . . kinda. ;) Get connected on the woman’s forum. Some of the mostest classiest Ladies you will ever meet.
 
Hey yo. Me and the wife are from the mountains of NC and moved to the coast of NC. Now we live in Eastern TN not far from NC. NC is a good state except for the gas taxes. lol anyways Welcome! This is an Awesome website with awesome people.
 
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