Good Morning. I am writing at Starbucks with a friend and my laptop has no available plug to siphon power from, so I can’t write for more than an hour or so. Hah. I just remembered that I need to purchase a new journal and maybe a hat for my husband. My friend is a professional writer, and I have a series of books I am writing, so we were meeting together to help each other write. Thanks to my friend, I finished my book that I have been working on for the last three years but mainly during my 28th year. I got about 85 percent of it done between August of 2008 and August of 2009. I finished the rough draft the day I turned 29.5, namely February 4th. And I submitted it to a gentleman that I know who is a published author of a book that has some similarity to mine. He said he wants to help me get published. I am hoping it works out. I am holding off on submitting it elsewhere until I hear back from him. I am curious as to whether or not it will work out. His book is a non-fiction work on sexual purity. His publisher is a Christian firm. I am a Christian, but I have a specific target audience: young women of all religious backgrounds. I get really frustrated when women sleep around. I feel that wasting time with guys who aren’t that serious about them perpetuates the lie that they don’t deserve the very, very best man. I believe that when a good man finds the one that he wants, he will do what it takes to be with her. If a man isn’t crazy about a woman, he is often willing to use her body for his own gratification, but will not love her the way she wants to be loved. Many women these days seem to not care whether or not they are loved. If I really believed that deep down that was what they wanted, I wouldn’t bother. I have a fundamental belief that women want love more than just about anything out there, and that something or someone has hurt them into denying their desires if they say otherwise. Women who sleep around are often throwing themselves into the arms of a man who does not value her as she deserves. I know there are good men out there who love women and who sleep with their girlfriends who they love. But the way I figure, better safe than sorry. Breakups happen all the time. People lie. My husband and I are extremely well matched. We fight fair, love well, have similar personalities and dreams. We are very close, and when people are that close, it can be easy to hurt each other. With all the difficulties of our marriage, I am very grateful that past lovers is not an issue we have to address. We were both virgins when we married. I will admit learning how to make love has been a learning process, occasionally challenging, but I have never had to deal with either of us having a sexual past. Being physically intimate is a very emotional thing. Our hearts are so open and raw, making us extremely sensitive and vulnerable. My husband is kinder to me than any other man on the earth. I hate the thought of what sex would be like with someone who loved me less, especially during the initial learning process. Although for many it is a sacrifice, I think waiting till marriage is a very smart thing to do. I also feel that the key to waiting is a change of mind. To a person who believes waiting and enduring unfulfilled sexual desire is unreasonable and pointless, the task of saving virginity for a wedding night is near impossible. To a person who considers it important and effective and priceless, while challenging, reserving sexual intimacy for one life-long, specially chosen, committed relationship is very achievable.
My personal choice to remain a virgin began with the instruction of my childhood. I was informed that saving myself for marriage was the right choice and was told stories of heartache, deceit and regret to reinforce the merits of waiting. I was lucky. My interest in having sex was relatively low, and I never looked for opportunities. It was very rare that one came knocking on my door. I had decided at age sixteen that I wanted a picture of my first kiss to show my children. Most of the people my age I knew had already kissed. I realized that if I waited till my wedding day to kiss, a picture was guaranteed. People told me I was crazy to wait and that no man would want me. Though I needed time to get ready for marriage, the right man presented himself at the right time. He was the ideal choice for me in just about every way possible, and as an added bonus, he had also not kissed anyone. He was both picky and a tad bit shy with girls. He knew he wanted someone special and had waited until he had found her — me. While I did not marry my husband because he was a virgin, I felt especially glad that I had stayed true to my personal values and desires when I discovered that he had done the same and was the only cute guy I knew who was over twenty-five and had not kissed a girl.
Even with all my steadfast deciding to wait, there were moments where I questioned my reasoning. Watching television and movies, reading books, and most effectively, reading blogs written by sexually active people caused me to wonder if waiting was really that important and necessary like I thought. I spent time processing my thoughts. I noticed that as I would clear my head and think about whether or not there was merit in saving sex for marriage, I would feel as if a mental veil was removed from my mind. It was as if I had been wrapped in a shroud of propaganda. The thought that sex was not really that important would cling to me like a jellyfish after watching or reading certain material. Once identified, the sticky ideas were easy to peel off. Left unquestioned, they seemed the apex of reason. Realizing the deceptive powers of these ideologies caused me to dig deeper than the lessons of my upbringing to find a reason to continue to believe in the value of sexual purity outside of marriage. I seriously questioned what I thought and why. Eventually, I tapped into a deep emotional well of passion to see women incredibly happy. I concluded that I deeply believed that a woman would be happiest when she was being loved deeply and profoundly for the whole of who she was. I decided that too many women were settling for cheap, loveless sex and for relationships with men who did not love them the way they deserved. I decided a rich, meaningful and fulfilling sex life was impossible for a woman without great love, and that committing to marriage was easy for a man who was crazy in love with a woman.
The goal of my book is to change the minds of young women about sex before they become sexually active. My target audience is aged ten and up. I avoided the subject of religion as much as possible, realizing that it is synonymous with narrow minded rules, control and stupidity in the minds of many Americans. I avoided non-fiction with the thought that most young people prefer stories to lectures. I created interesting characters for readers to identify with and shared my message through dialog. Instead of choosing purity or abstinence because it was moral, likable characters espouse the virtues of the choice through common sense and cause and effect reasoning. I am hoping that this book has what it takes to make kids want to avoid cheap sex and its multiple consequences.
If more people were comfortable and content with reserving sex for a loving, committed marriage, then abortion, prostitution, child prostitution, pornography, child pornography, the sex-slave trade, sexually transmitted diseases, devaluation of women, broken hearts, dysfunctional relationships, need for therapy, broken homes, abandoned children, single parent homes and regrets would be significantly diminished.
I hope it gets published. I hope it makes a difference. I’d like to make the world a better place.
Oh, and a plug became available. :)
