Suppose you meet an amazing man. He’s devout, mature, your best friend, you’re crazy about each other—but he wasn’t always like this. Like many deceived young people, he wasn’t always pure. As with any guy, make sure his chaste lifestyle is the real thing. If he isn’t faithful to you with his heart, his mind, his body, or his eyes, he isn’t ready for marriage. The past should not make any difference to your relationship, but where he is today makes all the difference in the world. Only a man passionately in love with and devoted to purity is capable of being passionately in love with and devoted to you. So time proves him to be pure and his love true, but when [...]

Recently, I was asked to explain why I’d never act on my same-sex attractions. Surprisingly, I was excited to respond because it reminded me of beauty and truth of our Catholic faith and the joy I have come to know in pursuing a heart of virtue. Indeed, I was initially inspired to pursue chastity because of the beautiful example of others and joy they radiated, but since learning more about chastity, I have become only more devoted to the Catholic Church—the last place the world says someone with a story like mine should even be!! Helpful Realizations about Chastity 1. I never could have understood the joy of chastity unless I took a leap of faith and went for it myself. 2. Chastity is a virtue, [...]

Hours before we were married, my wife and I went to Confession separately, wanting to enter into marriage as free as we could be. We confessed times when we gave away our love to individuals who didn’t deserve it and times when we ourselves failed to love as we should. I knew that through years of viewing pornography, I had given myself to so many other women, but that through God’s grace my mind and memory had begun the healing process. On our wedding day, we wanted to come together without any reservation of our past and be intimately one. And that’s what Confession is all about. The word “Reconciliation” emphasizes a return to intimacy with God. The hint of spousal love is [...]

Hey, beautiful people. Let’s talk about attraction. Dating can be difficult territory to navigate, sometimes. It’s tough to find a partner who is devoted to God, intelligent, driven, and family-oriented. Throw a little something called “chemistry,” or romance, into the mix, and the whole process becomes as tricky as a chem lab experiment. I think what baffles me most is that many people I encounter, both Catholics and secular folks alike, seem to view chemistry as something optional. It is intangible, therefore it must be some type of mythical animal, like a unicorn, or an idealistic (i.e. unrealistic) standard of a relationship. I was talking to someone recently about how arduous the process is to find someone with whom you not only share many things in [...]

There was a time when I would spend hours analyzing a single text message that perhaps contained five words. Other times, I would find myself scrolling through an entire text conversation trying to decipher if this guy was interested in me or not. Why do we do this? We say that the dating world is so confusing, but I think we cause the confusion ourselves. I’ve had conversations with loved ones who expressed to me how complicating dating can be, but when they explained their specific situations, it really didn’t seem that complicated at all. Scary? Perhaps. Vulnerable? You bet. But complicating? Not so much. I think it’s easier for us to say a situation is hard to understand rather than accepting the [...]

You’re in a relationship and things are going well–so now what? Do you think about ‘taking the big plunge’ and getting married? Or do you search for basically any other option besides ​that​? Maybe we can move in together? Or get a dog? Or maybe I can close my eyes and hope everything stays the same for as long as possible and just not change anything and then I won’t mess it up? No doubt you’ve heard the divorce statistics. You’ve heard about the challenges of raising children in today’s world and seen the projected costs of college in 2040. You’ve heard about the top stressors in relationships, from finances to in-laws. You’ve heard and you’ve seen that marriage is certainly no easy, [...]

I’m saving myself for marriage—five words that have the potential to send a man running, or at least that’s what I thought. Prior to meeting my husband, I often lacked the confidence to say these words aloud. I questioned how serious a relationship needed to be in order to share this part of myself, and at the same time, wondered if he would even desire me because of it. The crazy part is that I’ve always believed that sex is meant for marriage, that it truly is special and worth waiting for. But at that time, I allowed the world and its lies to get inside my head. My advice? The sooner a person realizes how untrue these lies are, the easier the [...]

Fifteen There is a Taylor Swift song called “Fifteen” that contains a lyric that deeply resonates with me: “In your life, you’ll do things greater than dating the boy on the football team. I didn’t know it at fifteen.” Twenty-five used to feel old to me. Now, looking back, I understand that 25 isn’t old—rather, 15 is young. My teenage readers: don’t misunderstand; I am not calling you immature. However, at fifteen, or at sixteen or seventeen, hindsight doesn’t exist, making it all too easy to live in the moment and much more difficult to see the bigger picture. When I think about the person I was at 15, my mind immediately flashes to icy bleachers on late November evenings, scanning a football field for [...]