Religion Ruined My Love Life

Religion totally ruined my love life.

You have no idea.

When I was in high school, I was amped up on my Evangelical Christianity twenty-four seven. I was ragging for Christ. I was off the hook! I had lots of Christian friends. I had lots of good times. In fact, I don't regret my choice to be so active in my faith, in my mission work. But what I do regret, is how strictly I took it all.

For me, my Christian faith meant serious business.  As a good little Christian soldier, I kept rank. I wasn't going to be weak, because that meant Satan could get his hooks into me and drag me down. One of the ways I thought he'd get me is through the "temptation of flesh." Things like premarital sex, masturbation, and viewing pornography--I saw it all as just more pathways to sin.

This idea was so ingrained into me, that it made every moment of masturbation a guilt trip. I would feel horrible shame after every bout of "weakness" and I would be overly conscious of the thoughts I was having of the girls in my class.

When some of the really hot looking girls showed affection toward me, I would say or act in a way to distance myself from them. Any sense of intimacy meant another possible opening for temptation to enter into my life.

Now, I'm not saying I would have been a Rabelaisian young man, had I not had such 'guilt' constantly looming over me. I still would have been a responsible teenager, but I probably would have also been a sexually active one. Especially with my high school sweetheart  who I dated off and on for the last two years of my young adolescence. She and I are still close friends, even though we don't talk as much as we used to.

I lost her to one stupid drunken night when she went of with some other guy and got pregnant. Three divorces later, she seems to finally have found happiness. But I sometimes wonder, what if? What if I had stepped up, closed that gap of intimacy, and made a real connection with her? What if I had been the one to get her pregnant? Would I have been any less happy? Probably not. She's an amazing woman. And she wouldn't had to suffer that terrible string of divorces either.

My life would have ended up differently, sure. But it still would have been a good life.

Flash-forward four years, and I am a junior in college. That's when I came to Japan the first time. Still a good little Christian boy. And a boy is the mentality I stayed at (stunted from all the needless guilt my religion hung over me). Here's where the real regret starts to form in my mind. 

Here I was, a twenty-something-year old, fit, and in a foreign land. What's more, hot Asian women surrounded me everywhere I went. Not only this... hot, young, horny Asian women. It was a virtual paradise--for a hormone high young man--but there was that mountain of shame waiting to crush me in an avalanche of religious-bred guilt.

The first month I was a college student at a Japanese university, I had four Japanese girls and one Thai girl ask me out. I was flirty with the Chinese girls and the Koreans, but nothing ever came of it. I was still too guarded.

A couple months in, I had my first real date with a beautiful Japanese girl which, ironically enough, I bumped into at the mall the other day. She married a nice Korean man and she was eight months pregnant. Talk about surprises!

Our date (which was about eight years ago) never progressed to the next stage, due to my poor speaking ability at the time. My Japanese was atrocious. 

Another week went by, and this time I found myself at a university sponsored international camp. It basically was an English camp designed for all the Japanese majors of English, and allowed them some fun personal time to meet and talk with foreigners, perhaps make some new friends. It was a blast.

There I met an attractive Japanese girl, who on the first night, crawled into my futon with me and wanted to fool around. She was touching me, massaging me, and when I felt I couldn't take it anymore, I asked her to stop and get back over to her own bed.

Why? Because I was saving myself. Not because I wanted to, mind you. But because I felt it was my duty, as a Christian. Sure, I made that choice, but based on bad information.

So we dated for a couple of weeks. At the end of which, she wanted to fuck my brains out and, learning this, I broke up with her.

Was I a man or a sissy?

But being a blonde hair blue eyed man in a sea of Asian women, I was an exotic commodity. I received three offers the next week, and turned them all down. There was another girl I was interested in at the camp who I was really crushing on. I told her, but she had a love interest of her own. Not much came of it.

A few more days went by, and I met Sayaka, who is now my amazing wife. Strange, that when I began dating her, the girl I had been crushing on, having been rejected by the boy she liked, started sending me all the signals that she wanted to do more. Sitting on my lap. Putting her arm around mine. Asking me to meet her downtown with her friends to hang out. I went, but now being in a real relationship, I dodge all the opportunities she was giving me to... well... pick her instead. 

It seemed like a bit of a competition, because when Sayaka found out, she became furious. Not with me, but with the other girl. I found myself distancing myself more and more. Maybe I could have done the date one secretly thing, but I was still too much of a nice-boy. Too much of a Christian boy. 

One month with Sayaka though, and I couldn't take it any more. She was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen, and each make out session turned into a struggle for me not to let her give me a blow job, or more. Eventually I caved in. I gave myself to Sayaka. But wowza! It opened my eyes. 

Wide open.

It helped me mature in a real man. I wasn't a little boy any more. I was like Neo starring at the Agents down the hall in green trickling binary. My eyes were wide open. I could see the code--the way things really worked. 

It change my life for the better. Not only because Sayaka is the most wonderful woman I've ever known, but because I realized that all the guilt--was a fucking joke. Religion doesn't have anything on us. It doesn't own us. And we shouldn't let it dictate our life decisions. I was free of my religious bonds, and that one little thing set me free. The shame never came. Instead, I gained my liberation.

But the story isn't over. Fast-forward three more years.

I was sitting in my car with one of my ex-students. A girl, sixteen going on seventeen. When she was my student we had always clicked. After she graduated, she would always give me those sultry eyes. One day I was eating in an Okonomiyaki restaurant and she came in, and without saying a word, sat down across from me.

We had a good conversation, but we had finished the food. She said, "Let's take a drive."

I was probably stupid. But I was having fun. The wife was out of town, and I thought, it will just be a drive.

A few minutes in she began asking me questions about my relationship. If I was happy, if I was satisfied, etc. A few minutes later she was sharing with me the fact that she was having financial difficulties. She was in dept. There were no part time jobs available in town, and her father was thinking of shipping her off to live with her mother if she didn't get her shit together soon. Then she dropped a bomb on me. She told me she was now a prostitute.

A prostitute!

What does one say when one of their favorite ex-students reveals they are a prostitute?

I told her, in all sincerity, that I hope she stayed safe and that if she needed help she could always come to me if she ever felt she couldn't turn to anyone else.

She said she needed to pay down her debt, since it was already climbing to around a grand, and she wanted to know if I wouldn't mind some sex for... a small fee. She said she wouldn't charge me much, because she had always had a little crush on me, so it would be fun for her. She said she'd make it worth my while. 

Her hand slid onto my crotch, and I stopped the car, and got out. I took a short walk up the street and back down the street. She sat in the car and watched me.

I wasn't about to cheat on my wife. No way. No how.

I got back in the car, and drove her back to her house.

Then I thought about something which amazed me. She was taking control over he sex life. She had the choice to get a crappy part time job at a convenient store, but chose to become a prostitute instead. Not only because the money was better, but she had revealed to me during the car ride, that she loved sex. 

That is the opposite of what I was as a teenager. I was shocked by her choice, and worried, but it seems like she knows what she's doing.

She is sexually free, and I had to fight for my liberation from archaic religious ideologies, and there are many people who are suffering the same guilt trips and self shame and regret simply for being sexual. I'm here to say, don't let religion ruin your sex life. If you want to have sex, have sex.

Hell, have lots of sex.

Just be sure to stay safe and take all the necessary precautions  Otherwise, life is too short to live under the mentally retarding, morally crippling, oppressive ideologies of religion. Religions ruined my love life, don't let it ruin yours.