Girlfriend saw her first ever R rated movie tonight after leaving her religious upbringing

My girlfriend (25f) came from an insanely religious home that allowed nothing secular in their house. She made the very brave decision to leave the religion (and thus her family too) two years ago, and she had literally only seen two or three movies when we started dating six months ago. I’m a huge movie buff and have been showing them to her and she’s found she also really enjoys movies too. So we started with some very tame stuff, and we’re moving into superhero territory which she seems to really enjoy.

Today she wanted to go to the movies and I told her Kraven the Hunter was in theaters, and she got excited when she found out there was a superhero movie playing (to address the elephant in the room, yeah the movie is not very good. However, that doesn’t really matter to me right now). Then I told her it was rated R, and I was expecting her to say nevermind because she’s still trying to de-program herself from her upbringing, where she was taught that R rated movies are completely sinful and ungodly garbage that only sinners consume. But she told me she might as well make an attempt since she would have to face this part of herself sooner or later.

We got the tickets and went to the movie, and as we were sitting in the theater during the pre-show ads, I could see she looked a little antsy. She asked if I would be upset if she needed to leave at any point and I of course said no and we sat down and chowed on our popcorn in anticipation. I could sense she was fighting something inside, but I just let her take the wheel for that one and sat in support.

The movie came on and guess what…she made it through the whole thing. There were one or two parts where she looked away because it was a little violent, but she said she liked the movie and was really glad we went to see it. She told me as silly as it sounds (which isn’t silly at all imo), my support and presence had a huge hand in her being able to sit through the movie instead of giving into her programmed instincts of leaving.

I’m genuinely so fucking proud of her that she made that decision to face that struggle and I’m touched she saw me as a safe space to help her with it. Personally, I thought the movie was pretty bad, but she said it was a “very good 7/10” so I guess there’s your review.

Thanks for reading!

tl;dr: girlfriend has religious trauma and was insanely sheltered to the point where she wasn’t allowed to consume anything that wasn’t Christian, and she decided to face that part of her deprogramming and see an R rated movie tonight

EDIT: thank you for the movie suggestions! Some good ones!