After College

Shortly after I graduated from college I went to a Christian conference. On the final night the speaker was Billy Graham. All week I knew he would challenge us to more fully commit to God. I knew I was not committed enough. After he spoke I stayed up several hours thinking and praying. I knew I either needed to choose God or walk away, not just sit on the fence. Finally I chose to follow God.

The Christian organization I was in had an alumnus, Duke, who worked on campus. He hung around a lot and provided friendship and counseling to young men in the organization. He had asked me to get together, but I had rebuffed him. I was afraid he'd find out about my sins, especially masturbating. After the conference the main thing I did was start visiting with Duke.

He did find out about my masturbation habit and tried to help me get over it. I had to report to him, which at least slowed me down. When that didn't work he devised stronger punishments. He made me masturbate in front of him. He pretended to take photos and generally embarrass me. Once he flicked my penis as I was about to come -- the pain stopping my orgasm. Once he had me hook myself up to some strings so that I was forced to keep my hands outstreched or have the strings yank on my scrotum.

His ideas had some success but didn't completely stop me from masturbating.

I met my future wife, Maria, at college. She was in the same Christian group. We did not date for a long time. After we both left school we were in the same church. She felt I needed a friend and suggested we jog together. I suspected and eventually knew she liked me. While we jogged I would argue in my head with God that she wasn't the one for me. I was much more physically attracted to other women. I also knew I had sexual problems and couldn't really trust my hormones and feelings. Eventually I saw that I could be comfortable around Maria unlike with most women. I decided it was right for us to date.

We dated for a few months then got engaged. We became more and more physical but never had intercourse. Neither of us knew much about oral sex. What we did know we thought was wrong and scared us so we never had oral sex either. We did kiss some and pet a lot. Sometimes Maria was topless when we hugged. One holiday when her roomates were gone we spent the night together in each others' arms -- she was topless. A few times she played with my penis and brought me to orgasm once or twice. As our marriage approached I think we were naked together sometimes. I felt guilty about a lot of this behavior, feeling like we were going too far and I was mostly the one pushing us too far.

During our engagement we both shared how we struggled with masturbation. We came up with a plan to help each other (it was probably more my plan than hers, but I don't really remember). Whoever masturbated first would have to lower their pants and the other would spank them three times. I was very competitive and viewed this as a competition. I didn't want to lose and only failed once. Maria failed a few times.

After what seemed like a long time, but really wasn't we got married.