An important point, don't yell at me. Raspberry or others, I never slept with anyone that I didn't believe I was going to marry. My hopes sometimes were totally delusional, and caused a lot of suffering for both parties.
And yes, I had some sex partners, not in actual coitus, who I didn't think there was much of a chance for a future together.
So the end of the story. Well who know?
In the meantime, I am married to the most fantastic, feisty, tough, beautiful, Italian babe in the world.
She was able to take care of me when I had cancer and bring our second son into the world. She's amazing, as I imagine you are, and will be for someone!
Don't worry, God loves you. As silly as that sounds.
Oh well, I wish my dad had told me things like this, and I offer it to you (all) for what it's worth.
so i noticed that no one commented back to him. and you may be thinking to yourselves that his opinion is so far away from the sundae philosophy of decadence and debauchery that i'm going to a)ignore it or b)blast away a rebuttal.
funny thing is that i agree with him.
to an extent.
see, my dad is a very old fashioned irish catholic gentleman. he's never sworn in front of my mother or my sister and i. you don't talk that way in front of ladies. he raised us to be good catholic girls who respected themselves and their parents, and he taught us that sex before marriage was something that good girls didn't do. unfortunately for my poor father, he was blessed (ahem) with an eldest daughter who had an unnaturally inquiring mind, a deep spirit of sensuality and a burning desire to experience all of life to its fullest.
and, for me, this includes sex.
my sister has often told me that she's almost jealous of the way that i am. i'm a sexual person - i've been told that you can sense it bubbling just below my surface. i love it. to me the way that two bodies come together is a path to transendence that i've only ever experienced in one other way - blasted out of my mind on e in the middle of a heaving dancefloor riding the beat of dark dark electronic music.
when i bake bread, i put my hands in the bowl. i need to feel the miracle of chemistry take place as the yeast melds with the sugar combines with the water joins with the flour to become a living breathing organism growing and rising to the touch of your skin, warming with the heat of your fingers.
when i am with a man, i need to feel him in me. i need to feel our bodies join together to become one living breathing organism rising to the touch of my skin, warming to the heat of my fingers. to me that is life - it is as integral as breath.
now, my new friend the ox may be scratching his head as he reads this, wondering how it is that i'm agreeing with him.
the thing is that i know this way of life isn't for everyone. i know that, for some people, not being sexually active until you find the person you are going to (hopefully) spend the rest of your life with is very important. and i respect that and even understand it.
i just know that it's not who i am.
up until five years ago i wasn't going to get married. i was never the girl who fantasized about the princess wedding and the frothy white gown. for as long as my parents can remember i swore up and down that i wasn't going to marry, wasn't going to have kids. i was going to go to school, get a career, live on my own. seriously - we're talking raspberry at 6 years old declaring to her mom's coffee friends that babies weren't the way.
then, while sitting at a cousin's wedding, surrounded by the aunties and uncles, i realized that maybe, just maybe, this was, in fact, something that was important to me. i don't have a biological clock. i won't be having more kids. period. but someday, maybe, i'd like to find a kindred spirit out there, somewhere - a man who is as deeply sensual as i am. a man who has a sense of humour that can bring me up out of my blackest moods. a man who wants to spend the rest of his life going on adventures with me. a man who believes that you should strive, every day of your life, to do something that you've never done before, even if it is something as minor as drive a new way home from work, or only use your left hand.
do i believe that man is out there? honestly, i don't know. but i'm not the kind of person who can give up having her own adventures, give up experiencing all of my senses to their fullest, while i wait for him to come along.
i believe that you are responsible to live your life each day in a way that is true to who you are. for some people that means waiting for marriage to fully celebrate the beauty that is a sexual relationship. for some people, like my friends in victoria, that is respecting their partner's right to have multiple sexual relationships within the sacred space of a "marriage". for some people, it's finding solace and peace and fire and heat and passion in the arms of a person who is sweet to them, who respects them, and who is seeking the same thing as they are - be it a few months, a few years, or a few hours.
should i someday get married, i hope that it will be forever. i believe in 'till death do you part'. i also think that sometimes people get married for the wrong reasons, or marry too young, or marry the wrong people, or just grow apart, so i don't know how reasonable that is.
i do know that my parents have weathered some unbelievably rough times together. my dad's illness over the last decade has worn on us all - but my mother most especially. but she has stuck by him, unfalteringly, unquestionably. and i'm that kind of woman as well.
so there, ox, is my answer to your comment. i agree with you - waiting to have 'coitus' until you were with someone you believed you would marry was exactly the right thing to do, for you.
but if i'd followed that path, i wouldn't have had the kiddo. and if i'd not had the kiddo, the chances of me living beyond my 21st birthday are slim to none. having the kiddo saved my relationship with my dad, and my dad's my hero. having the kiddo in my life has brought me joy in moments where i honestly never thought i'd see sunshine again.
so maybe, just maybe, i'm following the path that's exactly right, for me.
home sick. dunno if i've got the flu or if it's just the meds but i've been sleeping for the better part of the last 36 hours and am really nauseous. see that guy in the classmates add? the one there on the bottom? i'm pretty sure he was my elementary school crush in grades six and seven. like, if i dug through some boxes, i could probably find that very picture. how funny is that? i guarantee you he didn't marry that chick in the photo above. she may, however, have been our grade seven teacher in an earlier life. 
dumped his gear in the car and sat down beside me. we had another beer, then headed back to his place and he showed me in, then tucked me up on the couch with a blanket while he put his gear away. after a few minutes, he came down, popped in the dvd and crawled under the blanket with me, scooping my legs up over his lap so that i was half on the couch, half on top of him. he reached down, picked up my hand in his, and started kissing my knuckles, sort of absent-mindedly, almost unconciously. i snuggled down on the couch, enjoying the warmth of the blanket and of his mouth. "do you want to lie down?" i asked. he didn't answer, just slid me forward a bit on the couch and curled in behind me, never letting go of my hand.