Does she love me?

I have a dilemma and need advice. I wrote a story to explain my situation. Please take the time to read and respond! There may be things you wont understand .. but try look at the over all picture.

I have grown up in a church. Its most fundamental and striking belief is that people should have no sex before marriage. Before people in our church were ever to fall in love with each other, they must first be matched and approved by the parents ..

The way it is done is that one family approaches one another with a proposition. One day, this happened to me. I was approached completely out of the blue.

They had a daughter. She was kind, caring, pretty, and nice to be with. We knew each other from our two years volunteering together. I quickly fell in love with her. Though there were other complications in my life, there were no hesitations when I made my decision that I wanted to be with her. I knew that I could love this girl. She had been 'matched' previously to a boy she had never met before and it had all gone wrong. Part of me almost wanted to help her out of her horrible situation.

It was a roller coaster. I was madly in love with her. The world was pink. Yet it seemed the first kiss was a million miles away, and it seemed as if she was in no hurry either. This was the beginning of the doubt. But it was subtle. It would creep in on me without warning. One sunny afternoon, we were sitting by a lane in the country side. I threw my inhibitions out of the window, and went for it.

The kiss wasn’t great. It was clumsy and it was my first time. But it was meaningful. Then, on our way home to her parents, as if the kiss was the deciding factor, she made the choice to go to abroad for a year, because she never managed to get into uni. She had been brooding over the idea for a long time .. but this was the nail in the coffin of my doubt.

At the coach station before I returned home, we kissed again. And this time it was the most beautiful thing I had ever experienced. That was it. I had fallen into a pool that was crystal blue with the light of the sun reflecting off the surface.

But there was the lingering thoughts playing on my mind. Why does she so ardently want to be so far away from me? I had discovered something so beautiful, yet it was snatched away from me so quickly.

Those six months she was away was horrible. It was as if a part of my heart had been torn away. It would have been better to have never experienced those beautiful things in the first place.

After the six months, we met again. It was a beautiful experience. We became more and more intimate and close. But again, it was me taking the initiative. She seemed in no hurry what so ever to experience closeness. But when we were close, she would seem to give in to the pleasure and ask for more.

The doubt would creep back. Yet, I would cast it a side. I knew that expressing such doubt would merely expose weakness and girls never like that …

So when we received news of a wedding ceremony being held by our church, we decided to go immediately. I knew there would be the workshop after, and the strict orders from the leaders emphasising distance between the couples for the first 40 days. I thought it completely unreasonable for us to be asked such a thing after being together for almost a year.

She was acting strange though. It was all great when we arrived. But after the wedding ceremony, she seemed to distance herself from me. We received the inevitable tortuous lecture forbidding us from being close to each other for a good long 40 days. When I asked her how she felt about the lecture, she responded, ‘it was quite good.’

Come on! Any two individuals in love would surely think a lecture like this was anything but ‘good’. The couple of days after were strange. I had to always take initiative. I had saved my purity all of my life, suffering all the way, never being able to relate to my peers at school, just for this?

It hurt. Perhaps I was too hasty. But come on .. who could ever blame me? I was in love with this beautiful girl, and we had effectively just been ‘married’. The last thing a married couple should be doing is distancing themselves from each other!

Anyway, over all, it was a happy experience. But now the doubt that would once upon a time simply creep up on me and disappear as if it had been imagined … now came back in the form of a massive tidal wave. She didn’t really love me. If she did .. it was only because she knew she would be getting my love … after all I did give it to her … I showered her with kisses and attention …

I have never really been confident in myself .. and this fuelled the doubt. How could such a beautiful girl ever fall in love with a guy like me? It was too good to be true.

One evening we were talking out on the balcony of our hotel or wherever it was we were staying for this crazy post wedding workshop .. and she was acting all strange again. Then I began telling her how I felt about all this .. and I couldn’t contain the emotion .. I simply broke down into tears. It was at this point she embraced me deeply, out of love or pity? Who knows ..

But since that moment, things have never really changed. I am still madly in love with this girl .. it just seems that I must always take the initiative .. and its getting tiring.