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Epiphanies 2022: Victim of True Love Waits - 41 year old female virgin

Alto16Alto16 Shipmate Posts: 6
edited January 7 in Limbo
Hi everyone,

I became a Christian in the late 1990's when I was a teenager. Around the same time, I read an article on the True Love Waits movement in the USA (I'm in the UK) and I rather liked what I read. It seemed that all I needed to do was keep my legs closed and I would be rewarded with a lovely husband and a trouble free life.

Well, Mr right never showed up and now I'm a 41 year old virgin. The years of waiting, and waiting, and waiting, have proved ruinous in my life. I expended resources which I don't have on all the Christian dating sites, private introduction agencies, etc. but all to no avail. For the benefit of non - UK readers, most of the Christian women in the UK will not be getting married, because there are hardly any Christian men. But when you are young and just starting out, you believe that things will eventually work out and God has got it all sorted. But He hasn't. I'm still waiting.

The unwanted celibacy lead me to depression and alcoholism, and it is only due to antidepressants and being able to pay for counselling that I started to turn a corner. I have accepted that Mr Right isn't coming, and I won't be having any kids. I just want to ask if anyone else on here has been through something similar? Or perhaps not, nobody else would be so stupid as to stick to that stupid old rule LOL.

Admin, if this post is in any way inappropriate, please delete and accept my apologies.
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Comments

  • I'm also in the UK, I'm sorry you've had the experiences you have. I assume you were caught in a catch 22 between TLW and earnest warnings about being "unequally yoked"?

    I'm 3 years younger than you and have been married for 18 years, though my wife is not a Christian. I can't say that it wouldn't have been easier had we shared the same faith, but my wife is generous in accommodating my religious commitments so we manage. I hope that your concern about Christian women in the UK not being able to marry will be unfounded as most will not limit themselves only to Christian partners. Bear in mind, also, that a percentage of Christian women will be lesbian or bi and will find joy in married life with another woman.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Haven’t been there ( 70 year old retired RC ( from church that is) but got the same virginity till marriage shit in the 60s. Of course the inevitable happened ( deflowered and dumped) at 19 & eventually worked my way through the sexist bullshit and hung on as a believer for anothrr 40 years.

    Still enraged that the fallout from this crap lingers on and that you & so many others feel that marriage/ kids have passed you by.

    Not going to talk about me except that one has to kiss a lot of frogs, and nothing the matter with frogs.

    Best of luck; you are a whole lot more than your virginity. Give the fundies the flick. Life is full of non Xtian surprises.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Back in the days when I was Saved it was either complete chastity or a Christian marriage. I am so glad that didn't happen (not that I had any offers). Any children - and there would of course have to be children - would have needed a lifetime of therapy.

    About age 30 I crashed and burned - with the help of a Christian man whom I naively thought was on the same page - the one that said sex was a meaningful transaction indicating affection/commitment. Since his professed closeness to God didn't include any Divine Revelation on what a shit he was, I gave up on both of them.

    Got back together with the aid of Jung and an interest in the ancient goddesses of the Near East for whom the designation 'virgin' meant 'not belonging to a man'.

    I realise I never had the makings of a Lovely Christian Girl. The concept is an infantilising one. Aphrodite is a bitch (I can totally see why the impulse to mate seems supra-human). And I have the maternal instincts of a cuckoo.

    Fortunately I met someone equally uninterested in the nuclear family and we have been together going on 40 years.

    From which you may infer that to me 41 is Young, and by no means time to give up the life of the senses and emotions.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Thanks Firenze for the addendum: 41 is young yet and no time to throw in the towel.

    I don’t happen to believe in Hell but if I did there’d be a special nook there for the True Love Waits pushers.
  • If it is any comfort, Mrs RR and I didn't get married until we were both 51. Mrs RR agrees with you about the attractiveness or not of unmarried evangelical-type Christian gentlemen.
    A year before we met, she applied to a well-respected Christian dating agency in Cambridge (thinking, surely, surely ... well, worth a punt!). She filled in the extensive questionaire and character profile box-ticking exercise and sent it off, with a large fee.
    A week later she had a envelope from them, containing her cheque and a letter regretting that they couldn't help her!

    Married 24 plus years and counting ....
    I would say being single is far better than an unhappy marriage. My mother, then 81 when we got together commented, "well at your age at least you know your own mind!" A good relationship is worth waiting for.
    Sorry if this posting comes over as twee or patronising. It's not meant to be. I suppose Mrs RR never gave up hope ....
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    I am very sorry to read of your experiences but would like to endorse what @RockyRoger and others have said - 41 is young. I recently met again someone I knew 30 years ago who had married for the first time in her early 60s.
  • RooKRooK Shipmate
    Also chiming in to say that dating in my late 40's was definitely a highlight of my life. Almost wish I had been dating 40-something women all along, because of how well they know themselves.
  • CrœsosCrœsos Shipmate
    Alto16 wrote: »
    I became a Christian in the late 1990's when I was a teenager. Around the same time, I read an article on the True Love Waits movement in the USA (I'm in the UK) and I rather liked what I read.

    One of the more popular books promoted by this movement was I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Josh Harris. Harris eventually issued a half-hearted apology that demonstrated he didn't really understand the level of harm his teachings had caused, so a bunch of people submitted their own stories about how his book (or general contact with the purity movement) had really messed up their lives. The website is no longer active, but since nothing on the internet ever truly dies here's an archival link. I can't guarantee all the links will work.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    The problems with the whole True Love Waits practiforth.ce are multiple, @Alto16, as you already know to your sorrow. Just so you know, I am a former, intentionally-lapsed liberally-oriented Christian, and this wildly-skewed, utterly impractical, virginal-marriage shtick is only one of many reason why I abandoned seminary, my former church, and Christianity itself over the past couple of decades.

    First, consider what you seem to be abandoning: hope for a certain kind of future. That's hard, and it hurts. But there are other kinds of futures. Put your imagination to work: what do you really want for yourself (toss away considerations of practicality). Also toss away the blinders and constrictions which TLW have saddled you with. Who were you before TLW? Who did you want to be? That being is still there; bring her forth.







  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    As an aside, 41 is definitely not too old to have children (there are plenty of women having their first baby at 41 nowadays) and having a child as a single parent is certainly challenging, but is also an option. Having children also doesn't necessarily involve pregnancy or having biological offspring. I would maybe take some time to figure out how connected having children is to having a long-term partner for you - is the depression about not having 'The One', or feeling too late to have kids, or both? Because the kids thing can be resolved by yourself, if that's the bigger problem for you. The Metro newspaper is actually currently featuring a 40-something cishet man becoming a single dad via surrogacy.

    This often seems like a more intense problem in Christian circles, but just as many non-Christians end up in a similar position - please don't see it as a failure on your part, it happens to all kinds of people for no particular reason.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Also ISTM that the idea of The One is another aspect of ‘God has a plan for your life’ which caused me a lot of bother. It was an era when the Careers Talk for Girls (all of us taking A-levels) went Teacher, Nurse or…um…that was it. And even those were horizons beyond wife and mother which was, of course, the only real calling.

    It was another way in which you were separated from real self-knowledge - who am I? What do I want? and into a bewildered passivity waiting for a ‘leading’.
  • Firenze wrote: »
    Also ISTM that the idea of The One is another aspect of ‘God has a plan for your life’ which caused me a lot of bother.

    I think that idea still has a lot of currency in both charismatic and some evangelical circles.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Firenze wrote: »
    Also ISTM that the idea of The One is another aspect of ‘God has a plan for your life’ which caused me a lot of bother.

    I think that idea still has a lot of currency in both charismatic and some evangelical circles.

    Unsurprisingly, Reformed Evangelical circles are pretty fond of it - the extent to which you're supposed to know God's plan for your life varies, mind.
  • Pomona wrote: »
    Firenze wrote: »
    Also ISTM that the idea of The One is another aspect of ‘God has a plan for your life’ which caused me a lot of bother.

    I think that idea still has a lot of currency in both charismatic and some evangelical circles.

    Unsurprisingly, Reformed Evangelical circles are pretty fond of it - the extent to which you're supposed to know God's plan for your life varies, mind.

    Yeah, but the Reformed - to their credit - seem to put much less store on trying to work out whether a particular person is 'The One' or not.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Re children. My niece, for reasons I don't know, gave up on the idea of Mr R, and is now single mother to an adopted daughter and very happy.

  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Pomona wrote: »
    Firenze wrote: »
    Also ISTM that the idea of The One is another aspect of ‘God has a plan for your life’ which caused me a lot of bother.

    I think that idea still has a lot of currency in both charismatic and some evangelical circles.

    Unsurprisingly, Reformed Evangelical circles are pretty fond of it - the extent to which you're supposed to know God's plan for your life varies, mind.

    Yeah, but the Reformed - to their credit - seem to put much less store on trying to work out whether a particular person is 'The One' or not.

    While this may be true on paper...when it comes to the reality of being a single woman in a Reformed Evangelical church, it's a lot less true. I think part of it is due to the enormous influence that other Evangelicals have on generic Evangelical Christian culture. The Evangelical Publishing Industrial Complex is dominated by non-Reformed types, for instance.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Penny S wrote: »
    Re children. My niece, for reasons I don't know, gave up on the idea of Mr R, and is now single mother to an adopted daughter and very happy.

    In fairness, she may also just prefer to be single - it's not the same thing as 'giving up' on the idea of finding a partner if you actively enjoy singleness.
  • TubbsTubbs Admin Emeritus
    edited June 2022
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Alto16 wrote: »
    I became a Christian in the late 1990's when I was a teenager. Around the same time, I read an article on the True Love Waits movement in the USA (I'm in the UK) and I rather liked what I read.

    One of the more popular books promoted by this movement was I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Josh Harris. Harris eventually issued a half-hearted apology that demonstrated he didn't really understand the level of harm his teachings had caused, so a bunch of people submitted their own stories about how his book (or general contact with the purity movement) had really messed up their lives. The website is no longer active, but since nothing on the internet ever truly dies here's an archival link. I can't guarantee all the links will work.

    I'd believe in that sorrow a great deal more if he hadn't kept the money and those books weren't still in print.

    Anyhow ... I read all that stuff, tried to live it out and decided fairly early on it wasn't really going to work. [ETA: Bad enough if you were straight, but even worse if you weren't]
    • All those books share a common assumption that marriage is, somehow, God's best for everyone and that the perfect partner is out there somewhere. And if you haven't found them yet, you're just not praying hard enough / not very holy.
    • There was no mention of simply enjoying the life you actually had. Or an acknowledgment that not marriages were unicorns and rainbows. Because, how could you be happy when you're single and not married?! You can't. Obvs.
    • Most of them were written by people who were married and completely forgotten what it was like to date / be single. It's also easy to say stuff about not being unequally yoked or waiting for true love when it's someone else's problem. (Looking at you Joyce Huggett! Looking at you!)
    • Boys seemed to take no notice of this stuff whatsoever - and no one said anything. Most of this material seemed aimed firmly at the girls.

    Having decided that I had one life and I was going to live it to the full, I got on with it. I kept God / Christianity and threw the books away. Much of this isn't his fault - it's yet more manmade constructs and twisted scripture.

    Good luck!
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Yup, and was never an evo
  • jrwjrw Shipmate
    Tubbs wrote: »
    Crœsos wrote: »
    Alto16 wrote: »
    I became a Christian in the late 1990's when I was a teenager. Around the same time, I read an article on the True Love Waits movement in the USA (I'm in the UK) and I rather liked what I read.

    One of the more popular books promoted by this movement was I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Josh Harris. Harris eventually issued a half-hearted apology that demonstrated he didn't really understand the level of harm his teachings had caused, so a bunch of people submitted their own stories about how his book (or general contact with the purity movement) had really messed up their lives. The website is no longer active, but since nothing on the internet ever truly dies here's an archival link. I can't guarantee all the links will work.

    I'd believe in that sorrow a great deal more if he hadn't kept the money and those books weren't still in print.

    I'm pretty sure he had I Kissed Dating Goodbye unpublished. The information appears to be from 2018 and Harris has since renounced many of his former ideas and no longer identifies as a Christian.

  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    edited June 2022
    Thanks - but see host post - L
    Maybe its time to find a surrogate partner? See this article.

  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    edited June 2022
    Hi,
    I'm going to hidden text that as it comes under therapeutic advice which we don't do. The poster is asking if other people had similar experiences - so please could people stick to their experiences?
    Thanks very much!
    Louise
    Epiphanies Host
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    I remember when was 12 or 13 (about 1966) talking to my mum about sex. She told me that people shouldn't have sex before they were married. I asked if being engaged would be OK, but she said that engagements could be broken, so that wasn't enough. I remember thinking that if I wasn't married by the time I was really old - like 30 - I would do it once so I would know what it felt like. I never told her my decision.

    A few years later when the older sister of a schoolfriend became pregnant and was thrown out of the house mum made it clear that she wouldn't do that and we would find a way of keeping any such child.

    As it happened I didn't wait that long, but never had a child or got married either,

  • Huia wrote: »
    I remember when was 12 or 13 (about 1966) talking to my mum about sex. She told me that people shouldn't have sex before they were married. I asked if being engaged would be OK, but she said that engagements could be broken, so that wasn't enough.

    That was the line taken by my Godfather with his daughters, and roundly seen off by the youngest with the unanswerable Would you buy a car, the only one you'd ever have, without giving it a test drive? It still seems to me a very reasonable line to take.

    Of course what all of the TLW nonsense ignores is that some of us really enjoy sex 😈
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Also, surely Huia's mum wasn't old enough to have been older than divorce? Divorce was perhaps difficult in the Victorian era, but definitely still around. Annulment is even older.
  • Pomona wrote: »
    Also, surely Huia's mum wasn't old enough to have been older than divorce? Divorce was perhaps difficult in the Victorian era, but definitely still around. Annulment is even older.

    Divorce was around but notoriously difficult to obtain. You had to have specific "grounds for divorce" which were few and difficult to prove, at least for the woman.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    mousethief wrote: »
    Pomona wrote: »
    Also, surely Huia's mum wasn't old enough to have been older than divorce? Divorce was perhaps difficult in the Victorian era, but definitely still around. Annulment is even older.

    Divorce was around but notoriously difficult to obtain. You had to have specific "grounds for divorce" which were few and difficult to prove, at least for the woman.

    This may not have been applicable to their location, but in the UK at least divorce was further liberalised in the 1920s.
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    Rules for divorce on paper may have been one thing, but when women's wages were lower than those paid to men, landlords were reluctant to rent to single women / mothers, there was a social stigma, and for lots of other reasons, theory was one thing, but practice was another.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    Oh sure, but also logically people must have known that marriages were in fact dissolveable even if it was less common. Divorces and annulments after the world wars were not *that* uncommon for instance.
  • My own mother's generation in the evangelical subculture I grew up in in 60s and 70s had a very similar attitude - yes engagements could be broken and we were aware of a few cases of broken engagements among 'people like us', but divorce was so far off the radar that it didn't even occur to people as an possibility. My own generation of course put an end to that thinking ... and two of the three of us (myself and siblings) are now divorced. I did listen to the 'true love waits' message though (maybe turning out to be a lesbian in later life made it easier for me though) and was still a virgin when I married at 25, for what its worth.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    Pomona wrote: »
    This may not have been applicable to their location, but in the UK at least divorce was further liberalised in the 1920s.
    Not quite @Pomona. There was, by modern standards, a minor change in 1937. However, divorce law in England and Wales wasn't liberalised until the Divorce Reform Act 1969 which came into force on 1st January 1971. It was strictly still the case until then that if one party had committed adultery, the victim could get a divorce but if both had, neither could.

    Until then, outside raffish circles divorce was still regarded as scandalous, viz Mrs Simpson and the Duke of Windsor.

  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    Pomona wrote: »
    Oh sure, but also logically people must have known that marriages were in fact dissolveable even if it was less common. Divorces and annulments after the world wars were not *that* uncommon for instance.

    I think that's a bit like saying that logically, children from socially deprived areas must have known that if they worked hard and passed all their exams they could go to university.
  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    edited July 2022
    I think it also might be about the stigma against unwed motherhood and birth out of marriage which was still very very much a thing in the 1960s and even decades later. A pregnancy from a broken engagement was birth out of marriage and was seen as a moral failing and disaster - a later divorce would be bad but a child would not be illegitimate and the mother wouldn't be in danger of a mother and baby home.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Okay, I was in my late twenties when I met the woman I eventually married. She was not a Christian at the time. We had some pretty difficult discussions on things she objected to, original sin, the church's stance against abortion at the time, interpretations of the Bible, etc. I finally just asked her to take adult instructions and we will see where it goes. After 12 weeks of instruction with a very nice minister, she consented to be baptized. Her sister and brother in law got very upset. They felt she was betraying the family. I finally told them she had made her decision. They just needed to accept it.

    45 years later I have to say she is even more of a practicing Christian than I am.

    Maybe there aren't any Christian men out there, but there might be men who will allow for you to pursue your spiritual life. Don't give up.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    Huia wrote: »
    I remember when was 12 or 13 (about 1966) talking to my mum about sex. She told me that people shouldn't have sex before they were married. I asked if being engaged would be OK, but she said that engagements could be broken, so that wasn't enough. I remember thinking that if I wasn't married by the time I was really old - like 30 - I would do it once so I would know what it felt like. I never told her my decision.

    A few years later when the older sister of a schoolfriend became pregnant and was thrown out of the house mum made it clear that she wouldn't do that and we would find a way of keeping any such child.

    As it happened I didn't wait that long, but never had a child or got married either,
    I like your mom.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Pomona wrote: »
    Oh sure, but also logically people must have known that marriages were in fact dissolveable even if it was less common. Divorces and annulments after the world wars were not *that* uncommon for instance.

    I think the word you're after is dissoluble.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    Can I withdraw that - dissolveable is quite possibly correct in the US, although it shows up with a red dotted underline on my screen.
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Can I withdraw that - dissolveable is quite possibly correct in the US, . . . .
    I’ve never heard it that I can recall.

  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited July 2022
    Thanks. Certainly not in use here either.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Pomona, I think your point about my niece was included in "for reasons I don't know".
    I've been single/celibate all my life. Bits have been happy, bits have been lonely and there have been bits about which I want words with God about his plan. It's do-able.
    I blame the Kaiser in my case. WWI reduced the supply of men for that generation, and also for the generation that would have followed. It also gassed my friend's grandfather, which interfered with his mother's various healths, and so with his. WWII ensured that there was a shortage of boys born between '39 and '45, the cohort I would have looked among - it wasn't there. TLW just replaces that sort of demographic thing.
    We just have to get on with it. We aren't like those monkeys brought up without either bodily contact or anything better than chicken wire to hug. We've got brains to engage with stuff.
    And as for the book on the single life, aimed at women, I spotted at Durham Cathedral bookshop, which suggested that a) such people should volunteer to run the Sunday School to allow parents to take a full part in worship, and b) as women need male headship, they should look for a family where the husband would take that function......if you find anything like that, know it isn't written by anyone who knows what it's like, and ignore it.
    Pity evangelical Christianity doesn't have room for nuns or Beguines or such like.
  • I was a Good Little Evangelical about eight lustra ago (or more), and duly married another Good Little Evangelical a few years younger than I. We were both heavily involved with church life - PCC, Sunday School groups, Youth Group etc. etc.

    Alas! We committed the cardinal sin of Separating after about 10 years, and were instantly ostracised by the church, a few good friends excepted. Oddly, the same thing happened to a couple of about the same age as us, but based at the other (likewise evangelical) C of E church in town. I hasten to add that there was no connection between the two cases, neither (in the case of Mrs BF and I) was a third party involved!

    I left off going to any church regularly for some 25 years, having, as I was informed, transgressed against God's Laws. I really didn't want anything to do with such a *God*.

  • Pomona wrote: »
    Oh sure, but also logically people must have known that marriages were in fact dissolveable even if it was less common. Divorces and annulments after the world wars were not *that* uncommon for instance.

    Divorce being theoretically possible and divorce being socially acceptable aren't the same thing.
  • The striking thing about all the "no sex outside marriage" preachers is how joyless, censorial and unloving they are.
  • The striking thing about all the "no sex outside marriage" preachers is how joyless, censorial and unloving they are.

    Yes, and how often some of them seem to get caught out in sexual misdemeanours...

    TLW was very much the theme at the church I attended all those lustra ago, but IIRC the clergy were all Happily Married to Lovely Wives (one each, that is).
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Purgatory Host
    edited July 2022
    The striking thing about all the "no sex outside marriage" preachers is how joyless, censorial and unloving they are.

    The worst ones are the ones who had a wild time of wine, women and more women themselves, then repented, and are urging young people not to make the same mistakes they did.

    Win-win for them - lots of youthful sex AND a good testimony to trot out.

    Not such a win-win for anyone who listens to them and ends up with neither sex nor a juicy "Jesus Saved Me from My Life of Sin and Debauchery" story and all the Good Christian Brownie points that accrue from their testimony.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    @Penny S there is an Evangelical religious community in the C of E - I think they're in or near Liverpool - but you are right. It must however be said that other parts of the C of E aren't necessarily more supportive of people actually becoming monks or nuns, aside from the Trad A-Cs. Being single may be thought of as more normal, actually joining a religious community rather less so. People are still very disturbed by the idea of 'locking yourself away like that'.

    I think amongst Evangelicalism a lot of it is down to very rigid gender roles and also an absolute terror of single people being secretly gay. Certainly there are plenty of churches that would never even contemplate a single man as clergy or a senior member of staff for that reason.
  • Pomona wrote: »

    I think amongst Evangelicalism a lot of it is down to very rigid gender roles and also an absolute terror of single people being secretly gay. Certainly there are plenty of churches that would never even contemplate a single man as clergy or a senior member of staff for that reason.

    'Cause there's no history of evangelical gay men entering opposite sex marriages and then getting caught in flagrante with the pool boy [other young hunky men are available].
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    In the secular world there was a transition from mixed parties to couples having dinner parties to mothers getting together with children, and at some point from the single being a numerical problem to single women being seen as a threat. I still remember being dragged away from an interesting discussion with a group of medical students on the different effects of methanol and ethanol* because one of the students was the fiance of the party giver, and being dumped with someone with no interests, not even in picking up a random female.
    Religious groups can find it difficult to have social activities which draw in the unattached. Until they are much older.
    Which reminds me I have to go and pay some bills, see if I can get the dashcam to work, and set up the dishwasher.
    *It was a party. There was a drink in a bowl. Someone had been somewhere where it wasn't monitored properly!.
  • PomonaPomona Shipmate
    I think in many Christian circles, the middle stage of mixed parties outside of the boundaries of 'students' or '18-30yos' is just not a thing, which causes problems when the 'next step' is then parents or much older people (partly I guess due to a tendency to marry young, so a 35yo is seen as 'old' in a way they aren't in the normal world). It doesn't help that often non-Evangelical churches really lack social gatherings that aren't aimed at older people.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    edited July 2022
    My parents attended a Congregational Church in Brighton. along with Bible Study, they had a G&S society, a photo of which appeared in the BBC History mag, sadly not one in which Dad played the Executioner in "The Yeomen of the Guard." You need a certain size of community for that sort of thing! They had a church, a massive hall, and nests of other rooms for activities. Our church in Dover had a hall with a stage (with a trapdoor to the basement) and plays were produced. Some members were also in the local Op and Dram society.
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