In Continuum.

Like most parents out there, my parents skipped the sex education and went on to the kindergarten education. I started from there, went through primary school, not knowing where babies come from. I knew mothers give birth to them, and I know fathers usually contribute to them, but I didn't know how, and didn't find out why. I knew boys and girls had different genital structures, but back then I didn't use big words like "genitals" to describe the organ in between our legs. We had crude names like "wee-wee" or "bird" to describe our own, though I don't remember anything ever used to mention the girls'. It was a social taboo amongst the primary school children, we didn't talk about it. It was weird, and talking about it would make us sound perverted, and perverted wasn't who you'd want to be in a co-ed school. So the boys restrained their curiosity, I never asked any questions, nobody told me. Then again, that's kind of how Asian cultures work, we don't talk about it at home. Not a lot of people I know learned about sex from their parents, nobody from home ever told them about the bird and the bee. Someone in a movie makes out and makes love, we think that they just like to roll about in bed naked. They don't show what happens afterwards, and we assume that nothing happens afterwards. No sex, no babies, no nothing. 

So must of us had to find our own ways to find out about sex, and some of us were more informed than the rest of us. The Internet was just starting up to look like something fun, and already my friend Timothy was planning on building his own porn website at fourteen years old. He had a little booklet with Disney characters printed on the cover hanging on his bag, when he really had little photographs of people having sex inside them. It was the perfect cover for things, but it didn't fool the English teacher when he found out. I remember the first time I learned about sex in high school, it was a strange experience. It was from a porn website that my friends were surfing in school, and back then the idea of surfing porn in the classroom was the coolest thing to do - lame, I know. All the boys gathered around the computer screen to see a man put his genital into the genital of a woman, and I was deeply disturbed at the sight of that. Then, an interesting thing happened. The "what!?" became the "oh", and suddenly the science classes made sense. We all learned it from somewhere, and I suppose it is more fun to learn by yourself. Having your parents sit down with you and talk you through the process is just, quite frankly, disgusting. It's weird, to know that you are the by-product of what they did one fateful night. At any rate, that is how I learned about sex - how about you? 

I think humans are programmed to have sex, that is how we pro-create anyway. You take two human beings, a man and a woman, you take off their clothes and they have sex to make babies. That is the natural process, and animals go at it all the time. Animals work upon instincts though, they don't wake up and think about sex before having sex. They are probably thinking about reproduction, carrying on their genes, surviving out in the wild. Humans aren't really that simple though, we know the pleasure involved. So, it gets a little complicated when you want to have the fun but not the consequences that it could entail. That is why humans invented condoms, or pills, or spread rumors about how pineapple juice prevents pregnancy. Sometimes, humans just want to have fun, like certain species of monkeys and dolphins. It just seems like the smarter you are, the less you are controlled by the original animal instinct programmed inside our DNA. So it gets a little complicated sometimes, humans get the urge to want to do things. It doesn't matter if you are with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, or with a random strange you met ten minutes ago in a bar. Some people just want it at times, and that is when the complications arise. 

I was reading an article in the papers yesterday, a letter from the teenager talking about keeping her purity for her future husband. And, by purity, we are talking about her virginity, as if sex is some kind of pollutant that stains the oceans, or something. She divided the population into three camps: the first camp thinks that it is OK to have sex, just go out and see how the world is like, because you really only live once. The second camp is the more caution camp, they think that protection is important and you really should be careful, though they are still liberal enough to say "just go ahead, but don't get caught". The last camp is where the writer of the letter is from, the really conservative camp. She believes in keeping herself "clean" for her future husband, that the husband in the future would somehow appreciate that she is a virgin, that he is the first one to enter her, so to speak. I am not exactly the most conservative person around, but at the same time I suppose I thread my path rather carefully. Having said that, I think deliberately saving up for your future husband is just a little off, in my books. It just seems like marriage is just some sort of license for you to have sex, and that it could only happen after marriage. 

I suppose I should respect that, some people see it as being very important. It is a big deal after all, and more so if you are a girl definitely. I remember a random conversation I had with a few friends in a McDonald's once, and we talked about how girls just seem to think of sex as being a bigger deal than boys. I suppose it is because of the things at stake, and all the things that they stand to lose as a result. They just get more emotionally involved, generally speaking, which is also why you hear about more girls trying to keep themselves "pure" as compared to the boys. I agree with that, though, it just sounds like a great emotional undertaking when you are getting yourself involved to that level. When sex is involved, a lot of things become really complicated, and more so when you are already in a complicated relationship. I know of a couple of people who are actually active in bed, but not necessarily sexually active. Like, they would do everything and anything that leads up to an intercourse, and then stop there because they want to "save it for someone special". They just feel like they want to "lose it" to someone who is really committed, and not just some guy off the streets because your hormones got the better of you. That, I understand. 

But then on the other hand, if you feel completely committed to a partner in a relationship, and you feel like you are mature enough to handle the issue of sex, then is "keeping pure" really all that necessary? Picture yourself at twenty nine years of age, in a relationship that has been going on for the past seven years. It has been a nice relationship, the usual ups and downs, but that is what you get in the package anyway, like bubble wraps around a fragile product off eBay. You are committed to this guy, but you guys aren't married just yet. He wants to be a little bit more financially successful, and you still want a bit of time to yourself before being bound to marriage. You guys are living together, happy, and has the life of a married couple, only without the papers to prove it. Do you really have to be husbands and wives before you guys get down to it? I don't know, if this is the case for you then I think you really shouldn't wait any longer, because it is better than never. I just don't think that you should purposely keep yourself clean this way, you know? When it comes to love (and lust), there are times when you simply cannot control things. By that, I mean that you could potentially meet someone you love, someone you wholeheartedly love without a question. Circumstances could change, and I don't think anybody should put it down in pen and paper that you are not going to have sex until you get married. 

If it happens, then it happens, you know? I feel that physical intimacy is important in any relationships, even when it is not between a boy and a girl. It is just nicer to have your family physically there, or have friends who don't just exist as nicknames on your contact list. There is something about physical intimacy that is just so important to human beings, and sex is just another form of it, that's all. Should we shun away from it just because we feel like we want to "save up" for the future love-of-my-life? It is a personal choice, of course, I am not calling anybody stupid for choosing to go down this path. I am just saying that if it happens, let it happen. There really isn't a point in saying "no" all the time until you are officially married and has a ring on your finger. Virginity really isn't a big deal to a lot of men, and it shouldn't be an issue at all if you really love somebody. If you are going to love someone less just because she had sex with somebody else before you came into the picture, you have issues. Really, you do. Get your head checked, and everything else while you are at it. 

So, lets put yourself in the shoes of that writer. You save up on everything and you keep yourself pure until marriage. You are with this guy who is now your husband, and you love him a lot. The problem is that you have never seen him naked, except for the time at the beach when you guys played beach volleyball with some friends, and he was merely half naked. He has a great body to boot, swore to not have sex with you before you guys got married, and you guys are back home after the ceremony and excited about the idea of having sex for the very first time. You go through the rituals, take each others' clothes off, get into bed with the lights dimmed, and everything seemed perfect until he started asking you to do things for him, and he never seems to return the favor. He never seems to hit the right spots, never seems to know where to go. He's always there but not quite, and you are the one doing all the work for him while he lies there on his back and enjoys everything. You think to yourself, maybe it is because this is his first time in a long time, all the pent up frustrations and urges, it's OK if he isn't that great in bed this time, maybe he will improve overtime. So you give him a few chances, but it happens every single time. Then you start to realize, eventually, that he sucks in bed. 

Oh, the horrors. No matter how conservative you are, you'd want your partner to be pretty good in bed. It's natural, if we like sex so much, we kind of want it to be good, right? You don't really want to be having sex with a log that just lies there motionless, nor do you want somebody to go at it for half an hour and not give you an orgasm. I think we all love good sex, but not everybody is good at it. There are some states in America whereby you can divorce someone on the basis of bad sex - truth. I am not saying that everybody should divorce their husbands or their wives just because they are not good in bed. I am saying communication is really important, and that you need to be clear on what you want. You don't tell him that he is good when he isn't, because he is only going to continue making the same mistakes over and over. That is also why "test runs" are so important, because you never know what he is good or not so good at. It doesn't have to be unprotected, it doesn't even have to have consequences. Some people are just more open minded about it, some people are way too open minded about it. Then there are people who are conservative about it (I'm fine with that), and people who are just way too conservative about it. They might as well have chastity belts around their waists. 

There was a study done last year with a few couples, whose marriages are admittedly in jeopardy. The study was to test on how sex actually improves a marriage, and these couples were asked to have sex everyday for the next year. They were asked to record down their experiences, communicate with each other on how to improve, and that is what they did for the next year. One year later, they were brought back and were asked if their marriages improved - all of them did significantly. I am not saying that you should grab the nearest bachelor right now and make out with him, that'd be weird if you are in a library reading this. It's just that I believe in the importance of physical intimacy, and at the same time understand the reasons behind why somebody would want to remain "pure", so to speak. But when it happens, it happens. You don't have to deliberately push something away just because you have made a promise to yourself a few years ago. It's natural, your parents did it to have you, their parents did it to have them. It really is, so stop making a big deal out of people who are not waiting till their marriages to be involved in this activity. It really is a personal choice, and it shouldn't be up to you to judge.