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A father is afraid his 18-year-old is ‘choosing infatuation and sin over love of God.’ Our advice columnist responds.
Dear Abigail,
My 18-year-old daughter has been intimate with her first-ever boyfriend, during her first semester of college, despite our family’s recent conversion and catechesis in Catholic doctrine regarding sex before marriage. She’s been growing in faith for over two years, knows the reasons why waiting is important, goes to daily Mass and Reconciliation as much as possible, but threw it all out the window at the first test. She also hid that she even had a boyfriend from us and lied to our face about the sex. (Her brother confirmed it for us.) She doesn’t know that we know, so now that she is away from him for a month, my wife and I are trying to persuade her to slow down her courtship. She is not on the pill. She seems to have some understanding of the peril of this situation, but I’m afraid she will go right back to making this mistake once the semester starts again. I should add that only three years ago she thought she was gay and was dating her girlfriend, didn’t want children, was filled with anxiety and fear, going so far as to cut herself among other things. It was only through the most difficult effort that my wife and I brought her through that time. She is actually excited to be a mother one day, but I’m afraid she’s making terrible mistakes and is choosing infatuation and sin over love of God, and the chance of a truly great spouse. What should I do?
—Andrew
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Abigail Shrier is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the New York Times bestselling author of Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up.