"Weird" fiancé? #61158

[Dragon Lady]

Ok, Marduk. You just made me laugh.

But God hath not given us the spirit of fear.
…
"And if men come unto me I will show unto them their (fears.) I give unto men (fear) that they may be humble...

(italics mine)

As to what you were actually trying to say… I'm not sure if you were agreeing or disagreeing with me. The tone I read says disagreeing. But the words seem to be agreeing. So… I'm confused.

Yes, I do believe that God doesn't give us the spirit of fear. That comes from Satan. But I do believe it's human to feel fear and that we shouldn't be ashamed of feeling fear. The key here, that both of us stated, is that we are willing to turn that fear over to God and allow him to make it a strength. My friend is 28 and is pregnant with her 4th child. I think she was able to overcome her fear and, knowing her, I'm sure that was with God's help.

I'm scared to death of missionary work. When I was 21, I started filling out my mission papers. But just the thought of talking to people I don't know about religion filled my whole body with a terrifying fear. I spent a lot of time praying, trying to overcome my fear, trying to decide if I should serve a mission or not, and towards the end, "Heavenly Father, the thought of serving a mission terrifies me. I don't want to do it. However, if it's something you want me to do, tell me and I'll do it. I'll trust you to help me overcome my fears." I ended up not serving a mission.

Now I'm Primary president in a ward with a very high inactivity rate. My focus up to this point has been on organizing the Primary. The funny part of that is that I am not an organized person. Come look at my house if you don't believe me. I want to be, but I've always struggled with it. But from the moment I was sustained, I knew that's what I was supposed to do and I have been able to organize quite effectively. In fact, both my bishop and the Stake Primary President constantly comment on how organized I am, which makes me laugh. Well, now that we're pretty much done with organization, I've realized that it's time for a new focus. And the focus that keeps coming to mind? You guessed it. Missionary work. Which, of course, terrifies me. But because of my previous experience with my Primary focus, I am now fully confident that God can give me skills, even temporarily, to accomplish what He needs me to accomplish. The thought of missionary work still scares me, but I have no fear of going forth and doing missionary work in our Primary because I know God will lead me and give me the skills and knowledge necessary to do it. He did it before; I have full confidence that He'll do it again.

God doesn't give us fear, but He does know when we have it and is willing to help us overcome it if we're willing to submit to Him.

And the whole point of this tangent is to say that just because the fiance doesn't show excitement about sex does not mean there's some underlying horror there. There could be lots of explanations.

[Marduk]

Basically what I'm saying is fear present means complete knowledge is not present.

I agree with your overarcing point that this may not be indicative of a larger problem. But then again, it just may. It is sometimes useful for someone outside of a relationship, who is close to one or both parties, to point out potential problems with that relationship, as long as that advice is taken with a grain of salt. Ideally, it might go something like this.

Sister 2:"You're fiance is kinda wierd. How come he does X? Don't you find that odd?"
Sister 1:"I'd never thought about that before. I'll ask him and we'll discuss it together."
or
Sister 1:"It is something we've talked about. I know why he does it, and it doesn't really bother me. So we're good."
Sister 2:"Ok, just wanted to bring it to your attention."

As long as everyone is willing to remain level-headed and not overstep bounds, a little "meddling" into a relationship can actually be a healthy thing.

[vorpal blade]

There's a lot wrong with both the asker and the answer, and I'll say more about this, but there is a HUGE problem in mormon culture and white culture, and even worse when both are combined, with equating all physical intimacy/affection with sexual attention.

Having just spent four weeks in India, and having watched Bollywood movies for years, I can tell you that Indians equate kissing with sex. Kissing is not shown in Indian movies, and unlike our white culture sex is considered something private. Indian couples are very restrained, in public. So, in a country of a billion people, and I believe in many other populous countries, you can't tell by what you see how strong the feelings are about sex.

While I think it is possible that the fiance isn't excited about sex, in my estimation the guy is so extremely excited about it that he doesn't know how to deal with it before marriage, so he takes somewhat extreme precautions to avoid getting carried away. I think the sister might be surprised to learn about what goes on "behind closed doors," after marriage. But she isn't likely to hear about it, considering how private and personal the subject of sex is to the fiance. I just hope the woman he is about to marry understands his high libido.

I liked Rating Pending's response.

[Katya]

The discussion here seems to have branched two different directions: 1) What might or might not actually be wrong with the fiance, and 2) What the questioner should do. Number 1 seems to have dominated the conversation, but I'd like to make a comment on the second issue.

My sister pointed out the other day a very valid concern about my, um, gentleman friend. It's an issue that I'm aware of and have analyzed and assessed from more angles than Sister could possibly have considered from outside the relationship, and have decided not to worry about for the time being. Of course I didn't like hearing her criticize him. And of course my first instinct was to be upset and a bit defensive. But she said something that makes a lot of sense: If you have a concern about someone's significant other, you should bring it up sooner rather than later. It's one thing to criticize someone's boyfriend, but something completely different to criticize someone's fiance or husband.

So my point is, the appropriate time for the Questioner to criticize the fiance would have been before he was a fiance. I guess there's a chance that she didn't know him before they were engaged ... Not really sure what to say in that situation.

I largely agree with this, but I'd say that an engagement is not too late to break off a relationship. (Of course, it is awfully late to have your family start meddling.)

The thing is, it's possible for someone in your family to be weirdly biased against one's fiancé(e) and it's also possible for there to be major problems in a relationship that are more apparent to someone outside the relationship than in it, and I don't think we have enough information in this case to know for sure which is going on here.