Amen! I implore you one more piece of advice. Fall in Love with one with a Beautiful, Loving, Forgiving, Merciful, Kind Spirit. Fall in Love with one for her Heart (Soul). That beauty never fades. I mean this with all of my heart!
Of course, it should be stressed that the New Testament makes it clear that virginity and Holy Celibacy are not only acceptable ways of living, but highly desirable, and if someone voluntarily decides to pursue holy celibacy, no one is forbidding them to marry.
In the Orthodox Church, the majority of our priests are married, as are a small minority of our bishops (mostly chorepiscopi, or choir bishops), but those who want to pursue a life of celibacy, who are called to it, are able to do so. I myself have been contemplating a monastic vocation, although increasingly I am leaning away from it simply because too many of my loved ones have died, and within the monastic environment while normally one’s brethren within the monastery are extremely loving, one cannot always count on that, depending on where one elects to serve, and marriage seems to offer a way of obtaining new ones. Additionally there is the fact that none of my cousins has had children, so it would seem that if I don’t marry, my entire maternal family line could die off, and additionally, the last name of my paternal family line would die off.
However, I do love monasticism and make monastic retreats as often as possible. However, if you go to a typical Orthodox monastery, like St. Anthony’s, the monks who have chosen to be there have families, not just of their own relatives, but of spiritual children, that is to say, people who come to the monastery to visit with them, and its very beautiful. They have sublimated their sexual desire and instead provide love to everyone in a selfless manner, and it is entirely voluntary.
Now, in the Middle Ages through the early 20th century, the Roman Catholic church operated convents in which the unwanted daughters, and in some cases the mentally ill daughters, of various middle and upper class families were placed, often against their will - and Martin Luther did quite a good thing in liberating some nuns from such a convent. It is imperative that anyone who is in a monastery or convent be there willingly. Another disturbing thing for me has been the association of some Roman Catholic religous orders with flagellation. This is strictly prohibited in the Orthodox Church. If a clergyman, even with a rank as low as doorkeeper, strikes someone in order to attempt to bring about repentance, they are automatically deposed according to ancient canon law. Orthodox clergy are not allowed to do a few things, such as engage in extramarital affairs, engage in financial advice, have themselves castrated without medical necessity, and hit people, and also kill someone, obviously. These events disqualify someone from ordination and also disqualify ordained clergy from further service or cause them to be deposed (laicized).
Now, it should also be noted what Scripture was referring to when it spoke of groups that forbade people to marry, since the Roman church at the time had not yet developed into what it would later become under the influence of Scholastic theology, especially after the Great Schism in 1054 when the Roman Catholics excommunicated the Eastern Orthodox for refusing to accept Papal Supremacy.
There were, at the time Scripture was written, heretical sects that mandated celibacy or, in one case, a particularly unpleasant Gnostic sect that probably appeared after the Bible was written, did not mandate celibacy but did forbid having children, and one can see where that was going. Among the Jews, the Essenes were such a sect, that is quite well known. But similar sects quickly sprang up within Christianity, mostly derivatives of the initial Gnostic sect founded by Simon Magus. A prevailing theme in these dualist religions was Docetism, that Christ only appeared to be human, and also dualism insofar as the flesh and the material world was evil, and therefore having children in the material world was akin to trapping them in a prison, which is quite absurd. Additionally these religions commonly regarded God in the Old Testament as being different from the God of the New Testament, which is also absurd based on the content of scripture, so rather than deal with that, they either modified the New Testament to suit their doctrines (Marcion did this), or else they wrote their own scriptures, such as the Tripartite Tractate, the Pistis Sophia, the “Gospel of Judas” and other heretical texts, which are as bad as they sound.
So we should absolutely not forbid anyone to marry - the marriage bed is undefiled - but at the same time we should also not forbid anyone to engage in celibacy. in Pharisaical and Rabinnical Judaism, Holy Celibacy is not recognized, rather, one is obliged to get married, whereas this is not the case in Christianity and never has been. So for those people who discern a monastic vocation, they should be free to pursue it.
