Premarital Sex

The following letter is shared at the writer's request:

Dear Dr Hartley,
I am writing to thank you for you re-printed article on the current* issue of the Australian Singles Magazine which has helped me immensely.
I am also writing to share an experience I went through last year (when I was 19 years old) and I hope you will choose to share it with others that they too may learn as I did - sin has devastating consequences that can affect everyone around you.
One of my closest friends met the "man she was going to marry" a couple of years ago and really fell hard for this guy. He also told her that he loved her and she thought it was the "real thing".
Thinking she was going to marry him anyway, she gave in to him and sleep with him even though she was a Christian and knew it was wrong.
Her boyfriend was also a Christian. This relationship continued for several months, until he broke it off, and refused to even speak to her, saying, "You're no longer the girl I fell in love with, losing all respect for her because she'd slept with him.
She was understandably devastated and went into deep depression, crying for hours each night. She had given herself to this guy, thinking she was going to marry her, and now she felt used, betrayed and worthless,
She also knew she was out of fellowship with God and she was too ashamed to go back to Him. She felt she was too low for even God's forgiveness.
Several months later my friend was dead. She'd swallowed 80 sleeping tablets after hearing that her ex-boyfriend had gotten a girl pregnant. Realising he was having sex with someone else now and that what she'd given him wasn't precious to him obviously pushed her over the edge. She left me a letter and in it she states, "to die will resolve me from the hold (he) has on me".
I cannot put into words what I went through after her suicide, and I was not alone. I'm sure her mother suffered deeply and her other close friends hit the skids as I did. I jumped into many of the "mudholes" of life trying to fill the void she'd left, and escape my feelings. These included alcohol addiction, bulimia, anger at God, deep depression and even thoughts of suicide itself. After reading your article, finally I realised it was her decision and I shouldn't be ruining my life because she couldn't cope with hers. So I turned back to God and both me and her closest friend are trying to put our lives back together. I don't know how her ex-boyfriend reacted. I just hope he woke up to the dangers of premarital sex. This sin that seemed so private at the beginning ended up devastating many lives. I would never under any circumstances give up my virginity before marriage now, and I have seen first hand what it can do. God gave us these rules to protect ourselves - no only physically from disease, but also emotionally.
I hope that something good can come from her death by being a warning to others, to keep their pants on, and in the words of Christian group "DC Talk", "The innocence that's spent is gonna hurt you".
Thank you once again, Dr. Hartley and your reference to Dr. Dobson's book which I have read (I am writing to him too.) Your article and the book have been a big help to me in making right decisions how to get my life back on track, and set my goals in the right places.
Yours sincerely,
(Name withheld)

*(Aug 1986 Issue)