“no contact” penance?
Hi Ladies :)
I’m in my early 30s and finally met a man of the same age last year in the church and have had a very intense connection with him, get on very well with his family who is in the church as well, and we genuinely do love each other.
All was going well until a bad slip up (on both our ends) and ended up committing sins against purity/fornication and we were both given rather severe penances by our own separate confessors. For penance we were basically made to go no-contact, in essence, for a month, other than seeing each other at mass. He has bounced back from this pretty easily and seems to be doing quite well now, and is reassuring that he loves me and has no issue going back to social spaces with shared catholic friend groups.
I’ve not felt so comfortable, on the other hand. It’s pretty clear to our mutual catholic friends that something happened between us because of how we have had to be isolated from each other and going out in groups and I feel like i’m under a level of scrutiny that he’s just…. not. The way people talk to me is over cautious, if at all, and I generally feel like I’m wearing a scarlet letter and after 6 years of chastity it feels pretty bad. It’s also affected my relationship which I feel like I don’t understand anymore. I’m afraid to be in *too* much contact with him to begin with because I’m reminded often of how xyz can be a “stumbling block” and I wonder if I’m doing something wrong by doing something that could even be seen as demonstrating interest or pressuring him asking about his job or house he’s buying or any normal life things I’d otherwise feel totally fine asking a friend about. After a month without really talking, locked up by myself in my head, I just feel like I am the problem here because I was the one who was fine with us having sex when he drew the line (arbitrarily in the eyes of the church/in terms of sin) at equally or if not more disordered sinful sex acts because of pregnancy concerns.
I know rationally that the judgement of men doesn’t matter, it’s the judgement of God that does, so long as I’ve been through the sacraments properly…. but the whole long no contact penance itself seems counter productive to me now. If anything, he seems *more* into me physically since having this limit imposed on himself by his confessor, and I definitely felt exceptionally distracted by thoughts and compulsions about him during that time that I wouldn’t ordinarily struggle with.
The problem is I don’t know where we stand now and have been generally depressed bordering on despair for weeks after the period of penance ended. The issue is maybe I should have had other social outlets other than with these people who I knew I’d be banned from interacting with in social settings if I fell into sin in a predictable way (as it’s happened before and at this point I think we both realize we need to do something about it, because we can’t keep carrying on ending up in situations like this) and now can’t get myself out of this feeling that I’ve ruined everything, including my spiritual life, as I’ve even missed mass (extremely out of character) just feeling like there was no point in my going just to be a temptation basically and hurting my own relationship to God. As I’ve told the man, I really don’t believe in dating and I don’t care about being anything near wealthy or having a huge house or anything before marrying, but he insists he needs to get his affairs in order to be the man basically. He’s been concerned when I have missed mass but I don’t know how to explain to him or to my priest what is going on as I can’t really pin down a certain sin other than sort of flirting with despair over how this has affected my relationship to the church and made me feel like I’ve prioritized something over God that makes me just want to run as far as I can from this area/parish and be done with it.
Not sure if this is a normal form of penance for sexual sin that comes up in social situations even among catholics either, but it certainly is in my area. So when 2 people suddenly disappear it’s fairly clear what’s happened to anyone who notices in your social circles.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated as I can’t shake what I’ve been feeling even after the required period of penance has ended, I haven’t drank or gone out in a month, and when I tried to meet up with friends again everything is just off and I’m still feeling extremely low 🫤