A One Night Stand CAN Make a Relationship

Elise says:
Fri, 18th Jul 20082:00 pm 

This is where you’ve touched on one of the crucial flaws in the True Love Waits movement. And this is gonna sound kinda weird coming from me, since I waited through TWO engagements and dated my husband for one and a half years before marrying (and finally sleeping with) him.

Waiting *can* work. If your religious or cultural beliefs decree it, or if you’re uncomfortable with the thought of sex before marriage for some other reason, you can indeed make a relationship work really, really well without premarital sex.

But you gotta do better than this, abstainers. ‘Waiting’ is not the same as teasing, and it’s not a call for total asexuality either. A relationship in which you don’t kiss, caress, and enjoy each others’ bodies– even if you don’t go to third base, which I sure did once we were engaged– is just a friendship, and a sure-fire way to marry someone you don’t have that crucial chemistry with.

And a relationship in which you use your body as leverage to get the ring is just *wrong*. I really hate the idea that guys, even good guys, are only in it for the sex and will leave you the moment they get it unless they’re tied down by marriage– what the hell’s keeping them married once they get it, then? What keeps them from sleeping around on you if you were just playing a keep-away game to get a bad boy down the aisle? UUUUUGH.

Personally, when my first engagement ended in a messy, cheating, EXTREMELY public explosion, I was *really* glad that I could pick up my virginity with a straight face and walk out on his sorry ass. I’m sure I could have coped otherwise, but man, that felt really, really good.

But if I’d just been keeping my V-card as a bargaining chip… well, instead of being able to return the ring as if it were a trinket from Claire’s, I’d have felt like my body had failed to achieve its ‘purpose’ (yay objectification), and probably wondered for years why I wasn’t ‘good enough’ to get him to marry me. Not so much different from plenty of girls who actually *did* give it all up, only to be rejected for a newer, hotter version later on.

If you’re gonna hold onto your virginity, you gotta do it right, or you’re in exactly the same emotional boat as if you hadn’t. No snooty superiority, no fear of your own sexuality, no bargaining for marriage, and no crushing guilt if you don’t manage it.

And for the record, you *can* have mind-blowing, screaming, all-over-the-house sex with just one person, if you like. I speak from experience.