Impact of Religious Trauma Series: The Unchaperoned Life | Post 2 of 6
She was everything the church ever told me to look for.
Faithful. Devoted. A mother who clearly adored her kids. A woman whose social media feed — over six years of staying loosely in touch — told a consistent story about who she was and what she believed. No ambiguity. No performance. She wasn't playing at being a good woman. She was one.
And I knew, from the first moment we reconnected, that it was probably never going to work.
I went in anyway. Because that's what hope does. And because, if I'm being honest, a part of me wanted to prove something — to her, to myself, to the version of me that had spent twenty years believing that if I could just be enough, just patient enough, just faithful enough, the intimacy would come.
What happened instead taught me something I couldn't have learned any other way.
(The woman I'm writing about is referred to here as Lisa — not her real name, changed to protect her privacy.)
The Setup That Felt Familiar
Before I tell you about Lisa, I need to tell you about a pattern I'd already lived once before.
When my ex-wife and I were dating, she was physically affectionate in ways that felt genuinely promising. Passionate, even. We were doing what most faithful LDS couples do: staying within the rules while the chemistry quietly built. She always said the same thing: once we're married, everything will feel right. I believed her. I believed the framework. I thought the covenant was the key that would unlock everything we were both holding back.
It wasn't. What I didn't know then and couldn't have known, was that the rules weren't the only thing holding her back. The shame went deeper than the doctrine. Marriage didn't resolve the shame. It just removed the last remaining reason to try to resolve it.
I carried that history into every relationship after my divorce. And when I met Lisa, it was right there with me — a ghost in the room I couldn't quite see but could always feel.
Lisa and I met around Christmas of 2025 and became exclusive a few weeks later. What followed was one of the more tender and genuinely domestic relationships of my adult life. We essentially spent almost every minute of the day together for roughly half of the ten weeks we were together. I would make her breakfast. She'd make dinner, or I would. We took turns in the bathroom, navigated each other's routines, folded ourselves into each other's days with a naturalness that felt, in most moments, like the real thing.
At night, I slept on the couch.
Not because either of us wanted it that way. But because Lisa held a temple recommend, served very conscientiously in her church calling, and took her covenants seriously in the most literal and sincere sense. She wasn't performing virtue. She was living it. And I respected that — genuinely, not grudgingly. The ceiling of what was allowed was real, and I chose to honor it because she was worth honoring.
For weeks, I asked myself a serious question: can I feel loved, secure, and fully alive in this, without the physical closeness I need? She was affectionate in every way the framework permitted — always touching, always reaching, always present. I wanted the answer to be yes.
It wasn't. And the moment I finally knew that is where this story really begins.
The Condition Underneath the Kindness
One evening, we came very close to crossing a line she'd held for years. Not because either of us was reckless — but because the desire was real, the chemistry was real, and ten weeks of domestic tenderness had built something that wanted, naturally, to go somewhere. Afterward, she felt frustrated with herself for nearly crossing a boundary she'd kept intact through years of faithful singlehood.
A few days later, while I was at my own home for my custody week with my daughter, she texted a solution: we should avoid being alone together in the evenings. Any situation where temptation might arise should simply be removed from the equation.
I read the text and felt something go quiet inside me.
Not because the request was unreasonable — from her perspective, it made complete sense. But because I recognized the architecture of it. Manage the situation. Remove the risk. Keep everyone safe and worthy and able to hold their head high at church. I had lived inside that framework for twenty years. I knew what it cost.
There was also something harder underneath the text: Lisa had made clear, gently but directly, that before we moved forward any further, I needed to decide whether I wanted to get married. Not someday. As a condition of continuing.
I understood why she needed that. It was completely reasonable given who she is and what she's committed to. But for a man who came out of a twenty-year marriage carrying real trauma around exactly that institution — being asked to commit to marriage before being allowed to be fully intimate felt like being asked to sign a contract before reading it.
That's not a criticism of her. It's just the truth of where I was. And where I was wasn't where she needed me to be.
What came later, in a message said with genuine love, crystallized what was actually happening between us:
"I am looking for a friend and a lover — and I will find someone who values my standards enough to wait."
There are two things happening in that sentence at once. The first is completely fair: she knows what she needs, she's asking for it clearly, and she has every right to find a partner whose values align with hers. That's not manipulation. That's integrity.
The second is the one that made something tighten in my chest.
If you love me, you will wait. If you respect me, you will follow these rules. If you don't — this is over.
There's a version of that statement that is just honest incompatibility — two people, different needs, no villain required. But there's another version, tangled up specifically in purity culture, where love becomes the enforcement mechanism for a standard that originated somewhere else entirely. The standard wasn't fully hers, not originally. It belongs to a system she inherited — handed down through General Conference talks, Young Women's lessons, bishops' interviews. She claimed it as her own, and that's her absolute right.
But when "I love you" becomes the variable that determines whether you comply with the institution's standards, something has shifted. Love is no longer freely given. It is earned by agreement.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland spoke beautifully in "Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments" about physical intimacy as a symbol of total union — the most complete offering of self to another. It's a genuinely moving vision. But the same framework that elevates intimacy to the sacred also makes the withholding of it feel like a spiritual act. And when withholding becomes spiritual, it stops being a boundary and quietly becomes a gate — even when no one intends it that way.
I had stood at that gate before. For twenty years. And my body knew the difference between she's not ready and you will never be enough to open this.
The Trap I Built For Myself
I had a pattern — one I didn't fully see until I was standing in the middle of this — that worked something like this:
If a woman I was dating said no, I don't do that before marriage, my nervous system filed her immediately under my ex-wife. Not consciously. Not cruelly. But somewhere below rational thought, the category was created: this is someone for whom physical intimacy will always be conditional. I would end things respectfully, but I would end them. I wasn't going to audition for twenty more years of that.
And then, on the other side — if a woman was physically open, if she moved toward me without condition — a different kind of discomfort would quietly surface. Not judgment of her. The women I was closest to after my divorce were wonderful, and I never doubted that for a second. But I knew that a woman who moved freely outside Mormon culture would never feel fully comfortable inside it. And I still wanted to feel comfortable there. Some part of me did. The part that hadn't fully decided yet — that still wanted Sunday dinners with family, the easy shorthand of shared history, the sense of belonging the church genuinely provides to those inside it.
So the discomfort wasn't about her character. It was about mine. I was straddling two worlds and couldn't fully inhabit either one. She'd be out of place in the world I came from. And the woman who fit perfectly in that world came with the ceiling I'd already spent twenty years pressing against.
If she holds the line: she's my ex-wife, and this is never going to change.
If she doesn't hold the line: she'll never quite fit in the world I still half-belong to.
No-win. And the trap wasn't built from judgment — it was built from unfinished grief. I hadn't fully mourned the world I was leaving, so I kept one foot inside it. And one foot inside a burning building makes it very hard to build anything new.
Matthew 7:3 — "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" — lands differently every decade. In my forties I finally read it as a mirror: the confusion I felt about the women I was dating was really confusion about myself. About which world I actually wanted to live in. About whether I was ready to grieve the one I was leaving and step fully into the one I was building.
Two Wounds, Two Completely Different Shapes
A Facebook thread I came across recently — midlife LDS singles in Utah, hundreds of comments — was full of people experiencing variations of this same collision. A woman listing five consecutive dates with men who misrepresented themselves or wanted connection without commitment. A man saying simply: the women want someone who will wait; I want someone who actually wants me. Dozens of people talking past each other in the same vocabulary about standards and worthiness — and nobody quite naming the thing underneath.
Two wounds. Two completely different shapes.
His wound says: desire is shameful, and the only proof I'm not broken is someone choosing me freely, without conditions.
Her wound says: my body has been treated as a transaction before, and the only proof I'm safe is someone who will honor the boundary the Lord has set.
Neither is wrong. Both make complete sense given what this culture taught men and women about sex and their own bodies. But they are, in practice, almost perfectly incompatible — and the tragedy is that both people usually think the problem is the other person's standards, when the real problem is that nobody taught either of them what healthy intimacy is actually supposed to feel like.
Brené Brown writes in Daring Greatly that "vulnerability is not winning or losing; it's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome." Both wounded people are, in different ways, refusing to do exactly that. He leaves before he can be abandoned. She puts the institution between herself and the risk of being hurt. Both are armored. Neither can fully be seen.
What "Compatible Values" Actually Means
Lisa's values are real. Her faith is real. Her desire to honor her covenants is real, and genuinely beautiful. I mean that without qualification. The woman who made me breakfast and held my hand and loved me with everything the framework permitted her to give — that woman has integrity. Real integrity. The kind that costs something.
And we are not compatible.
Not because one of us is right and one of us is wrong. But because compatibility around intimacy isn't just a values checklist. It's about whether two people's wounds can heal in the same direction — whether what makes one person feel safe is the same thing, or at least not the opposite thing, as what makes the other person feel safe.
Her safety lives in the covenant structure. Mine lives in the freedom from it. Both are born from real experience. And both, in this pairing, make the other person feel exactly like the thing they're most afraid of.
That's not a character flaw. That's just the truth. And the kindest thing you can do — for yourself and for the other person — is tell that truth early, cleanly, and without making them wrong for who they are.
For the Lisas Reading This
If you are her — holding the line with genuine conviction, watching someone walk away from something you believe could have been beautiful — I want to say this directly:
You are not wrong. Your values are not the problem. The faith you carry is yours, and no one gets to take that from you or make you feel ashamed of it.
And I also want to gently offer this: there is a difference between a boundary that comes from your own deepest knowing and a boundary that comes from fear of what happens if you cross it.
One is freedom. The other is still a cage — just one you've chosen yourself.
Only you know which one you're standing in. But it's worth asking.
The story doesn't end with incompatibility. It ends with the question incompatibility forces:
Who am I in this, really?
Because the person most likely to be triggered by someone else's wound is the person who hasn't finished dealing with their own. And the only way through isn't finding someone with the right values checklist. It's finishing the work the wound started.
That's the next post. And it's the one that isn't about anyone else at all.
Unchaperoned Life exists for people who are done performing worthiness — and ready to find out what love actually looks like when it's built on something real.
Next: "Part 3: When Intimacy Leaves You Feeling Used — And What's Actually Going On"