Teshuva

So I actually was eating lunch, peacefully, when a rabbi got up to give a dvar Torah. I confess my first reaction was to roll me eyes, but then I decided to listen, out of politeness.

The rabbi said that according tp Rabbi J. Soliveitchik, there are two types of teshuva: In the Talmud it says there is teshuva out of love, and teshuva out of fear. In one, your willful misdeeds are transformed into positives; in the other, they are merely neutralized. So there is teshuva where one basically erases a part of one's past, and teshuva where one learns from the past experiences until they become enriching parts of one's personality.

I was thinking about this in terms of romantic pasts: Is it possible that some of our mistakes we can erase completely, and others we can use to learn from and make us more positive people in future relationships?

I was also thinking about this in terms of sexual numbers: A lot of women are re-virginized, and I think its an unhealthy way of giving into our sexist society's desire to control women's sexuality. I do think however, choosing who is your first metaphorically, can be healthy. I read of one woman who was raped while a virgin; she does not count the rape as her first - she explained that this guy didn't deserve to be the one who took her virginity. She did not have any of these virginizing operations that are unhealthy for women's bodies (seriously ladies, stay away from vaginal plastic surgery - 90% of the time its really bad for you and can interfere with your sexual activity. If you want I can dig up verified research when I have more time) - she just made an empowering mental decision.

I think that this type of erasure is healthy; numbers and past histories shouldn't matter. I advocate complete honesty in all relationships, but while I've never done this, I do actually think its ok to lie about your number - maybe that's the only thing its ok to lie about.