Virginity "mistake"

Hey, it's me, back on my soapbox.  My OPINIONS are LEGION.

I just came across this article on the Facebook and it bugged me.  Cliff's Notes: it's about a woman who took a purity pledge as a teenager, stayed true to that pledge, and feels that her sexual inexperience eventually led to her divorce.  She says that she was never into sex in her first marriage but now knows that she loves sex, whether with randos or within the bounds of marriage.

All I can say to her premarital abstinence - divorce correlation is "balls."  Just "balls."

When I was 15 or 16, I decided that I was going to wait until I was married to have sex.  Neither of my parents were at all religious; I wasn't raised with religious beliefs outside of standard 'Merican Christmas trees and Easter baskets.  My parents had both had children outside of marriage.  My mom kept an open dialogue with me about sex but always said "it's better with someone you love" and "use protection, always."  My stepmom gave me condoms when I was 12 and also kept a very open dialogue with me.  My dad's running narrative was "ggrrrrmmmmbbbbllllrubbersgrmbl."

Watching my parents' respective baby mama/daddy dramas my entire life and watching my friends go through sheer icy terror waiting for pregnancy tests to come back negative as a teenager convinced me that sex without a committed partner and health insurance wasn't going to happen, period.

I would fast forward through my sexually active single years but I don't want y'all to think I was ABSTINENT, for heaven's sake.  I went to college in New Orleans, use your imagination.  I was always up front with the guys I was sexually active with BEFORE sexual activity that they were not sticking their ding-dings in my lady cave.  Most of them thought they could change my mind and were quite frustrated when they couldn't.  There was one time that I came very close to having unprotected sex and that could have been the worst mistake of my life because he was definitely, definitely not marriage material.  But it didn't happen and I'm glad.

I became a Christian at 19 and the fervor of the converted kicked in.  I mean, I REALLY became a Christian.  Some sort of rebellion for my agnostic upbringing.  That obviously contributed to my self-imposed purity pledge, but when before it was something secret it became a flag I waved.  I WAS A VIRGIN, Y'ALL.  WHERE WAS MY DAMN RING.

Drew and I started dating when I was 20 - January 3rd, 2001, several months AFTER we had moved in together as roommates.  His sexual past is his story and private but we were both of a united mind that we would wait until our wedding night to have sex and remained dutifully in our respective rooms every night.  After roughly 2 weeks of brutal temptation, we decided that I either needed to move out or we needed to, in my pastor at the time's words, "get married and get on it."  Since we were living in Los Angeles and I had nowhere to go, we decided on the latter and were married March 15th.

Obviously, my wedding night wasn't the Ginuwine "Pony" video my horny young adult mind had envisioned, but we were desperately in love and desperate to please and learn each other.  We had a freakin' BLAST.  The things we didn't like, we told each other.  The things we wanted to try, we told each other.  I knew my body and what made me, uh, tick and I shared all those things with him and showed him and he's... well, a great learner.  We grew together.  That open communication continues to this day, as does our overall chemistry and mutual attraction.  We could both very well objectively suck at sex and we'll never medal in the Pornlympics but we sure do have a good time with each other.  (High fives to Drew if you're reading this.)

If you read the article, you see that something changed for the author before her wedding day.  She didn't want to marry that guy.  You don't have to have sex with a person to know you're physically attracted to them, or furthermore, that you want to have sex with them.  Drew went on the "Would List" the first time I met him - combination of beautiful eyes, a gorgeous mouth, and an amazing sense of humor.  You don't become shut off to sex with someone you were once attracted to with the recitation of vows - something changed in their relationship before she walked down the aisle.  Obviously her wedding night sucked.  Obviously sex throughout their entire marriage sucked.  She didn't want to be with him - why would she want to improve her sex life with him?  Her virginity wasn't the death blow, it was the fact that she didn't want to be with him.

I'm not sorry I waited until my wedding night to have sex, and I defy anyone to tell me that it wasn't the right decision for me.  I don't care if other people do - have sex with whomever, wherever, whenever you want as long as you're not hurting yourself or anyone else.  I think it's wrong to raise kids to believe that sexual desire is in any way inherently sinful or dirty, because that kind of thing doesn't go away when you sign a marriage certificate.  But the whole "test drive the car before you buy it" analogy is nauseating.  Judging people for their sexual choices needs to be a thing of the past for EVERYONE, not just religious people.  I'll be me and you be you, boo, kay?