Do We "Fall Into Temptation"?

Dear Bro. Jo,

To start from the very start, this guy (which we shall call Ted) and I started dating.

I dated other guys too.

However after a while we began dating more seriously.

Both of our families are accepting of our relationship. He is a convert (baptized 3 years ago) and just turned 20.(I am 18)

About 8 months ago we fell into temptation and got involved sexually. It was the biggest mistake.

We went through what we believed to be the repentance process for this. We have felt at peace with the situation. However now he has his mission call (all the previous happened before he even decided on a mission) and he is leaving pretty soon.

Lately I have pondering back on the mistake and if we corrected it in the right way. Did we need to speak with the Bishop or Stake President?

'Ted' did confess to our doing in his interview with the stake president, of course without mentioning that the other person involved was me.

After that the bishop and him spent weeks together. Bishop would text him, check up on him and such, too make sure he was in the right thoughts I suppose. Am I just rethinking this too much? Should I Keep moving forward or did I miss something?



Dear Friend,

Ted did it right. You missed something.

You need to go talk to your Bishop. Sexual intercourse outside of marriage is a big enough "mistake" that it keeps us from being worthy to enter into the Temple, and anything that does that is something we need to talk to our Bishop about. Until we repent properly, which in this case includes talking to priesthood authority, all we're doing is ignoring what we did. That's not repentance.

Go make the appointment with your Bishop. When you've gotten this all straightened out with God, I promise you'll feel better.

Oh, and on a personal note, I wish people would stop saying that they "fell into temptation"; it’s not like you two were innocently walking through a park and you tripped into a rabbit hole; you knew what you were doing, you chose to be in tempting situations and you chose to have sex. This isn't something that "just happened", and it wasn't an "accident".

Ownership of our mistakes is part of being an adult and choosing to do the right thing.

God bless,

- Bro Jo