Because we believed that premature sexual relations led to the fall of man, discouraging sexual attraction and abstaining from relations before marriage was an essential part of our lifestyle. In contrast to the sexualized culture in which we lived, we were encouraged to think of all men as our brothers and all women as our sisters. So instead of looking at men or women as sexual objects or competitors, we saw each other as members of our own family. We even referred to each other "brothers" and "sisters" as well.
This was actually a huge relief to me. As I had mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, I was sick of the sexual looks and pressure I had always felt from men. Also, I was tired of worrying about the way I looked, always wondering if I was attractive enough, was wearing the right clothes, if I was too fat, etc. Now I could relax around guys and relate to them just as I had related to my own two physical brothers.
Another huge relief related to this was that my relationship to food began to change. From about age 12, I had been constantly worried about my weight, thinking that I was too fat. I had developed the destructive habits of secretly starving myself and binging, and cycling back and forth between the two. At that time there was not the kind of awareness that there is now about eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. I think that had I ever heard about bulimia and the method of vomiting to expel digested food from the body, I would have eagerly taken on that practice. Fortunately, I never did. Anyway, after joining the church I gradually got over my eating disorder when I stopped worrying about how I looked to others, especially to men.
Relationships between "brothers" and "sisters" were very strict in order to discourage sexual attraction and relationships from developing. We slept in separate rooms, sat on different sides of a room during meetings, and when traveling together sat in different rows in the vans. When a man needed to meet alone with a woman, the door to the meeting room was always left open. We dressed very conservatively as well with the women wearing skirts and tops, and the men wearing slacks and shirts with ties. We women kept our hairstyles short and simple and the men's hair was cut short as well.
Although we adhered to these rules, occasionally relationships would form and these couples usually ended up leaving the church. What helped the rest of us hang in there was hope for the future. We knew that if we kept our purity then eventually we would be married at the appointed time. At that time in the church, Rev. Moon personally matched all of the couples. Most of us were completely fine with this because we had faith in his spirituality and wisdom to select the right mate for us. Also, we knew about the tract record of the secular world where people chose their own mates. Half of these marriages ended up in divorce. In my own family, my mother was on her third marriage. In another blog I will talk about the matching process and the wedding, known as the "Blessing." I have now been happily married to my matched husband for 32 years.
During the period of time before getting married we were encouraged to work on our own spiritual development and relationship with God. The "Fall" took place because of immaturity, so we were told to work on ourselves first so that when we finally were together with our mate, our relationship would be based on a strong relationship with God.
Rev. Moon said that the quickest way to grow spiritually was to learn to love and to practice loving and serving others. Because God loves all humanity, our challenge was to become like Him by loving all types of people including those who were difficult to love. He said that our model was Jesus, who went to the point of even sacrificing his life for his enemies out of love. Rev. Moon said that if we learned to love others like God does, then we would be much more able to love our spouse and children unconditionally later. This made a lot of sense to me because so many people go into marriage hoping to get something from the other person instead of wanting to give. And then when the spouse doesn't fulfill their expectations, they become disillusioned and end up getting divorce. But if we all could become givers of unconditional love, there could never be any divorce.
In my next blog I will talk about our education and activities we did in order to develop that kind of unconditional love.
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