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1. If you are like that in college, it would be naive to think that it does not screw up your ideas about intimacy and will not lead to any problems down the line in a committed relationship or marriage.
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<p>At 18-22, a young person has one definition of intimacy, which may be all jumbled up with sex, fidelity, morality, etc. Then life hits you head-on. All the "absolutes" seem to be on a less firm foundation. </p>
<p>Intimacy becomes dealing with and sharing what you have been dealt, and finding joy. Breast cancer, strokes, death of a child, death of a spouse, divorce, institutionalization for mental or criminal reasons, bankruptcy, post traumatic stress syndrome from abuse or battle. You don't get a pass--you will have pain in your life.</p>
<p>If you have a mate with whom you can share the moment and who can deal with all these life experiences of you and that person, you will not give a D*MN about who and how many people he or she slept with in college.</p>
<p>The requirement actually reads: "b. (...)plan and carry out a family meeting to include the following subjects:</p>
<pre><code>1. Avoiding substance abuse
2. Understanding the growing-up process and how the body changes, and making responsible decisions dealing with sex
3. Personal and family finances
4. A crisis situation within your family
5. The effect of technology on your family "
</code></pre>
<p>I don't have the MB pamphlet handy, but while I'm sure it would include text in favor of making smart decisions regarding sex, I'm also pretty sure it isn't prescriptive.</p>
<p>"If you have a mate with whom you can share the moment and who can deal with all these life experiences of you and that person, you will not give a D*MN about who and how many people he or she slept with in college."</p>
<p>That is definitely the person you want, but I don't see why you can't be that person and not sleep around or find a person like that who doesn't sleep around. In fact, I believe that a person who is serious about all aspects of their life and doesn't just do what's most pleasing in the moment but they may regret in a year would make a much better partner. </p>
<p>On a personal note, maybe you don't care, but I do, and I am know others do to. I think it's a good way to judge someone's character, which we all do before entering a relationship/marriage.</p>
<p>"Painful yes, but not destructive. She learned, she grew, she had felt loved, she knew she was lovable. She suffered. She got experience." (mythmom, post #66).</p>
<p>I'm just anxious for D to get to the "other side" and realize this. And hoping that as she searches for her next true love, she doesn't feel compelled to hook-up (far more pressure in college than in hs, when she met first bf).</p>
<p>"If you are like that in college, it would be naive to think that it does not screw up your ideas about intimacy and will not lead to any problems down the line in a committed relationship or marriage."</p>
<p>I disagree. I had some ... moments, shall we say ... in college. I have been married for 25 years, and our marriage is extremely strong. I haven't experienced any problems as a result of my youthful indiscretions. If your personal moral code is such that you would be affected for the rest of your life, then perhaps you would be. For me, though, the past is the past.</p>
<p>I will say that my own experiences colored how I raised my kids. I have never pretended that sex only exists within marriage. Even at a young age, my kids were aware that there were parents who had never married. I used every opportunity to explain in age appropriate ways about sex, feelings/hormones, emotions, intimacy, respect, consequences, etc. No one ever told me anything but "Don't do it." As a result, all I wanted WAS to do it!!! So with my own kids I made sure there was no mystery. I discussed everything, and I made sure to add in my own (and my religion's) moral views. I figured they'd take the info & make their own decisions ... which has to be better than having NO info & making my own decision. I am pleased that they have a lot of respect for themselves and the opposite sex. As for what they choose to do ... it is their business, not mine.</p>
<p>I think a lot depends on what you're really thinking of when you think "hookup". Would anyone want their daughter to be passed around a fraternity or a sports team, even if it's her choice? Didn't think so. I'm sure most people here are thinking of hookup in terms of someone they know and trust, even if it's not a significant relationship. That's not really what people are talking about in hooking up, though. They're talking about meeting strangers at 10 and having sex at 12. If you don't want to spend the rest of your life self-loathing, I'd advise against pulling the train, so to speak.</p>
<p>Yes, unsurprisingly I, too, strongly disagree with acollegestudent's position.</p>
<p>In my experience, personal and observed, it is not true that youthful hooking-up type behavior "screw[s] up your ideas about intimacy and [leads] to any problems down the line in a committed relationship or marriage". Quite the opposite. While I don't think there is ANY argument that hooking-up is necessary, in the case of almost everyone I know some behavior like that was the path by which they learned what intimacy and commitment meant to them. Very few of my friends have ever been divorced, by the way, and the one who was has been remarried for 15 years (and was emphatically not the driving party in the divorce). So I can say confidently that I really don't know anyone whose ideas of intimacy or commitment were adversely affected at all by some number of sexual experiences that lacked either to some extent.</p>
<ol>
<li> Worrying a great deal about your partner's past is an attribute of youth, not adulthood. Sorry. For, say, the past 25 years, any hurt my pre-relationship past or my wife's could cause to the other has been completely eclipsed by the various things hurtful things we have occasionally done directly to each other. Our relationship depends on the ability to forgive the other his or her trespasses, and to be forgiven. (I'm not talking about sexual infidelity, just to be clear.) I shudder to think how a person who was so judgmental about someone else's past would react to failings yet to occur in the future. And, when you take the long view, someone's poor behavior at 20 is really not what you will care about at 30, 40, or 50.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>(Want an object lesson? Look at Prince Charles and Diana Spencer. It should have occurred to someone that reaching 21 with one's virginity intact -- probably -- was not actually a very good criterion for deciding who would make a good Queen. And when one judges Diana's life, that hardly figures among her many good and many bad qualities.)</p>
<p>JHS: My favorite cautionary tale (Diana), especially telling to combat the Cinderella myth and the happily ever after myth.</p>
<p>And who wouldn't say the Queen was cuckoo for preventing Charles from marrying Camilla because she wasn't, ahem, a virgin. How'd that work out for her?</p>
<p>If sex did not related to reproduction, would it have such a valence? And with birth control readily available need it?</p>
<p>As I've said on another thread, disapproval of female sexuality did not arise until the advent of agriculture and the awareness of paternity. Want to leave your fields and kine to your own son? Better make sure his mother is sexually pure and sexually faithful. Voila! Add the Church and we have a good recipe for "disgust" at unregulated sexuality.</p>
<p>"And who wouldn't say the Queen was cuckoo for preventing Charles from marrying Camilla because she wasn't, ahem, a virgin. How'd that work out for her?"</p>
<p>I'm not following this example- you mean "her" as in Diana, Camilla, or the Queen? Because as I see, the only person that it didn't work out for was Diana. The rest of them are still in pretty good shape. The kids were hurt too. Dad screwing around with another woman isn't really good for marriage or family.</p>
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In fact, I believe that a person who is serious about all aspects of their life and doesn't just do what's most pleasing in the moment but they may regret in a year would make a much better partner.
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<p>Oh, my gosh! "Serious" about all aspects of their life!!!!! DISASTER ALERT. Life does not work that way. Laugh or cry, but PLEASE don't take life seriously. It will make you crazy.</p>
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I shudder to think how a person who was so judgmental about someone else's past would react to failings yet to occur in the future.
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<p>Not only is a sense of humor a must, COMPASSION is a virtue.</p>
<p>"Self loathing" for pulling a train????</p>
<p>A nurse I knew had seen what came back as "wounded" from Viet Nam. She was also around the 18 year old draftees just prior to them shipping out for Viet Nam. She told me it broke her heart to see how scared they were. I guess what she did might be called pulling a train. I'm going to see her at our HS 40th reunion next month. To me, she was a saint. </p>
<p>I told my Mother about this (without revealing names) right after she told me what she did. My Mother said that in WWII she was around groups of Australian pilots who had a near certain death sentence once they finished training and shipped out. She said my friend was merely doing what some women had always done. She smiled and said males can be so silly, they'd look death in the eye, but if asked what they wanted before they left, it was a little loving.</p>
<p>I'd rather have a daughter who pulled a train than kill her children because they didn't behave in the way she thought pleasing to God, which happened around here a few years ago.</p>
<p>Wow. You learn something new about people everyday.</p>
<p>Don't equate what I said to saving pilots and killing children.
I was talking about fraternity and sports team gang bangs. How can those possibly be compared?</p>
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[quote]
I'd rather have a daughter who pulled a train than kill her children because they didn't behave in the way she thought pleasing to God, which happened around here a few years ago.
<p>Wow. 07DAD, I think you need to have a beer or something. Yes, they can save pilots, BUT! STDs are still around, and the most important thing is protection, protection, protection. Do you know someone who lost a relative to HIV or hepatitis? I do.</p>
<p>Perhaps I wasn't clear: I meant that the Queen's ridiculous values about virginity screwed up (sorry about the pun) all their lives. Yes, Diana's most obviously, but Camilla married a man she didn't love and had children with him, Charles married a woman he barely liked and had children with her; two boys lost their mother; another family was broken up and the Queen roundly humiliated.</p>
<p>Charles should have been allowed to marry Camilla. Diana would have found someone else.</p>
<p>We can't second guess fate, I guess, because these children do exist, but that was my thinking.</p>
<p>Forced virginity is a ludicrous criterion for marriage.</p>
<p>And I'm standing up for my pal, even though his post was a bit overwrought. I get overwrought at times If I interpret him correctly, 07DAD is protesting the moralizing over sex instead of where it belongs, over more significant issues. He is not equating the two to my mind.</p>