> By your own admission, you've had two "false starts", I'm going to assume failed relationships or marriages. The first “false start” was a relationship that lasted two weeks. I refused to have sex with her, because we weren’t married. She didn’t think I actually meant it, and that she could “wear me down”, and she was pissed because no-one who claimed to “want” her could *possibly* have resisted. In the end, she broke it off, and I think she ended up telling her church family that I’m gay. Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed. My second attempt lasted six months, and was much worse. Like the first girl, she never really believed that I could *possibly* be serious about remaining celibate until marriage. She put on a really good show, but one day she calls to “invite” me to a movie date with one of her ex-boyfriends. I was pretty pissed, but in retrospect I dodged a bullet. Glad I never gave in to temptation. The woman who became my wife actually respected the fact of my chosen celibacy-until-marriage, and while we both struggled with temptation, we were serious enough about our relationship with Christ that we made it to the wedding night. The engagement was about ten months. Our wedding was fantastic, and everyone there *knew* it really meant something. To this day, people bring it up as “how they want their wedding to be”, and we didn’t even spend that much. We had a couple hundred people. Once we’d made it, together, we *immediately* realized there was something truly *magical* about what we’d accomplished. And *exceedingly few people* know what we’re talking about. Keep in mind, neither of us were *virgins* at the time, but we were *sincerely repentant*. To this day, though our marriage has been great, we both wonder what it would have been like if we were both virgins. We’d have probably taken over the world or something. Nevertheless, it’s *obviously* blessed, and it’s entirely because we both sincerely chose to honor the Lord, rather than our own base desires. And Christ gave us both because of it.