I am changing my life a lot right now. I am applying to graduate programs (all of which are, by necessity of a specialized major, far from my home) one of which I have been accepted to (joy!). I will need to leave my fiance while I am at grad school because he has commitments in our hometown for a while. We have talked and I promised to come back after school, but now, I am not so sure I won't just love it out there and stay.

Second, I am recently coming back to a more devoted relationship to Christ through my mother's influence. I had lost my faith completely, my fiance brought me back to it, my mother deepened it. My fiance is a Christian, and a good man, but he is not and has never been on the same, deeper level that I am now. We have slept together and both thought it was OK because we loved each other, but now I see that is false, and he has supported me in the decision not to sleep together anymore.

Now two things are worrying me:

1) I am leaving to boundless opportunities and he is staying in a place where he will not be able to grow. I am afraid we will grow apart.

2)I am worried that he is not as deep a Christian as I have become, and I worry that his faith, though genuine, is not a central focus in his life.

On another note, I am also wondering if our sexual relationship before marriage will spoil our marriage or means we do not truly respect each other, or whether it means that we should marry directly because of our sins.

Any help would be appreciated.

Have you discussed your fears with him? Sounds to me like it's time for the two of you to grow to a deeper level in your relationship. If you can't discuss things with him, then the two of you will never be able to work through the problems you face in the future.

I have discussed my fears with him. He understands my fears and also fears that we will drift apart after I move. He and I have never felt inhibited in sharing our thoughts/feelings with one another, tempered with respect where we disagree. It's going to be a lot of work and I know that my fears are eating at him.

If the two of you have discussed your fears and both agree to move on in the same direction you are going in, then this could be a time of testing "before" a marriage occurs. Only God knows for sure, and there is only one way to find out. Make your decisions and then give it time to see. But if the two of you are truly more important to each other than anything or anyone else in the world (Dr. H says that's what it takes) then you two will find a way to make it work that will make you both happy.

I don't think you will grow apart if you commit to date night to talk on the phone, watch the same show, do whatever. My husband (then only fiance) and I spent a month apart (I know its not as long!) but it really strengthened our friendship. We talked for 4 hours at a time on the phone and about our future together.

I also went to grad school (but my husband moved with me) and it is a very very busy time and you will love to talk to him back home. I know I spent a lot of time talking to my friends back at home because I wanted to feel close to home since I was in a totally new place and I knew I wasnt staying there forever and I was coming home during the holidays and after I finished school. Everyone I met in grad school was moving away from that place after school anyways so its a very transient environment and totally unlike undergraduate school.

As for the sex, I was not that Christian before. But I always felt that my husband and I were married in our hearts before we got really married anyway. I think God knows what is in your heart and a ceremony is not what makes you married.

Seems like a non-problem to me. You did what you felt was right at the time you did it. Now you don't feel it's right, so you're not doing it. He's supporting that. Where's the problem?

There are two ways to look at that situation. One is to say you should go off and find somebody else who's Christian faith is the central focus of their life. The other is to say you have an opportunity to encourage him to make his faith the central focus of his life. The determining factor in which school of thought you should take is whether or not you love him and want to be with him.

Having had pre-marital sex isn't going to spoil your marriage, but sweating it might. I think you might be placing far too much weight on sexual sin. From a Christian theological perspective, sin is sin. There aren't degrees. You're no more a sinner for having had sex before marriage than you are for anything else you've done or said or thought. The whole point of grace and forgiveness is moving forward having been made righteous in the eyes of God. Don't let the sins of your past make you anxious in the present. You have a different outlook now, and a relationship is what you make it.