Recently I had a relationship with a really good guy, who’s now my ex-boyfriend. He was a close friend of mine who is also a Christian Scientist. I felt as though God had guided me to be in a relationship with him. 

Just a few days into the relationship, I could tell something was on his mind and I wanted him to tell me. He said he didn’t want me to think less of him, but I kept nudging him, saying no matter what it was, I wanted to hear it. So he told me he’d had sex multiple times with his last girlfriend. 

Suddenly I wasn’t sure what to think. But I wanted out of the relationship. I was crushed that my boyfriend had already had sex. 

It’s important for me to mention that I knew my boyfriend wouldn’t pressure me into having sex. I felt a genuine truth in his words that gave the relationship the security it needed to have. I’ve decided to wait until marriage to have sex. Even though some of my friends in college have had sex, I try not to make judgments about them. So I was surprised that I was judging my boyfriend and feeling very hurt. What was going on?

The next morning, after he told me this news, was a Sunday. With a broken heart and tears, I prayed. That morning, I was able to have about an hour alone praying, communing with God, before leaving for church where I’d see my boyfriend again. 

I thought about the many relationship articles I had read in the Christian Science periodicals. One thing each taught me was that when one person thinks the other needs to change, it’s usually the one who thinks so who needs the change of thought! 

This could be a turning point for me. I realized my hurt feelings weren’t from divine Love, no matter my boyfriend’s past—I needed to learn something. Feeling that God had led me to see this relationship as a right thing, I decided not to react by breaking up with my boyfriend, because that wouldn’t be trusting the spiritual direction I’d received. 

So through the gloom in my heart, I humbly prayed. I knew that I should see my boyfriend as the same unchanging perfect and pure child of God. But the hard part was that I had to be able to see only that view, and not have my thoughts be “a pendulum . . .  swinging between the real and the unreal” (Science and Health p. 360). 

As I sat outside before leaving for the morning service, a thought came to me: my boyfriend is a spiritual idea. Therefore, no action—like sex—whether before marriage or after can alter a spiritual idea. I had to see my boyfriend in the same loving way Jesus saw others, as “. . . the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals” (Science and Health p. 476–477). This “perfect man” was the true and only image of my boyfriend, who is an idea of Love.

I realized my hurt feelings weren’t from divine Love, no matter my boyfriend’s past–I needed to learn something. 

Yet, I kept thinking, “but he’s lost his virginity already, and what I wanted most was to date a guy who’s still a virgin.” But then Love responded: “What are you talking about? No idea of mine can lose anything spiritual. No idea of mine can have something spiritual taken away from them.” My tears of pain began to turn into tears of gladness. I was understanding a bit more: Material circumstances cannot take away anything from us, and matter cannot touch, affect, change, or take something away from Spirit.

These ideas helped me feel steady and hopeful. However, my boyfriend’s ex went to the same church, and I had forgotten to consider how I was viewing her. I left that Sunday’s church service upset all over again. I prayed really hard after this, wondering if I would be forever haunted by the fact that they’d had sex; that I was “different.”

I then asked for some loving support from a Christian Science practitioner I’d been in contact with earlier about the situation. He asked me, “Are you seeing people as mortals who have done something wrong and others who have not?” I saw that I was labeling my boyfriend—and myself! I realized that the way I was praying was desperately trying to solve something through human will. Science and Health states, “. . . the might of omnipotent Spirit shares not its strength with matter or with human will” (Science and Health, p. 194). I was getting in the way of seeing Spirit and Love’s all-mighty power.

The practitioner shared another thought: We’re not a bunch of separate mortal minds who look upon others as mortals. We are the ideas of Mind itself, and witnesses to unfolding perfection and grace.

So my prayer turned to the listening type. After a few days, another thought came. I realized that thinking of virginity as a concept of purity and innocence means that, in this way, it can’t ever be lost. The spiritual concept of virginity is something we will always have as reflections of Love. There are not some who do have purity and innocence until marriage and then a large group who don’t.

I was finally able to clean the slate in my thoughts of not just my boyfriend’s past, but how I perceived others in the same situation, including his ex-girlfriend. I stopped subtly looking at him or others as being less than perfect or having “lost” something I still had. 

While we’re not together anymore, my ex and I are still friends, and we broke up for reasons that had nothing to do with sex. 

I still feel good about my choice to wait until marriage to have sex and I’m glad I prayed my way through this situation. My tears, I now realize, did not come from my boyfriend’s past, but from looking to the “treasures upon earth” (Matt. 6:19) that involve material disappointments and joys. Now, I have a new treasure: a clearer view of God’s pure image of each of us.