[Trapped]

As a church kid in the U.S. from the age of zero, I can echo the extreme separation of brothers/sisters in the LC. One serving one told me, "Don't even think about it until you're 25." And like a little naive sheep with an entire community of laser beam eyes on me watching and judging every interaction I had with a member of the opposite sex, I did just that. Then when I turned 26 I got comments about how I was getting dusty and old. I was so confused....how can I be dusty and old already when I'd been in a straightjacket my whole life till just the year prior? After being told "run, stay away, evil, sex, ruin your life" about any interaction with a member of the opposite sex, suddenly I found myself in my late twenties wondering when the "ok, go ahead, you can interact with them now" would be spoken. Then it hit me ..... how can you possibly get to be interested in anyone when you have been prohibited from normal casual conversational interactions with them? When eye contact/smiling/laughing (i.e. a normal conversation between two humans) is tantamount to jumping into bed? I am a rule follower by nature and having grown up in the environment where everything spoken by the "saints" is essentially passed off as being from God's lips straight to your ears, I just didn't know to doubt or question anything. I just didn't know. All I know to do is shut down around the opposite sex who are my age and act like I could "take 'em or leave 'em" because that's the coping mechanism you have to develop in order to "stay away" from them the way you are mentally beaten into doing.