Sex? Before Affection. Worse Yet. Sex Before Honor and Respect

Sex began as something beautiful, a way to put love into physical form. Gentle. Patient. No rush, no nagging worries hanging over it.

The one night stand throws all of that away. It gives nothing to the person and takes what ought to be an act of love and empties it out. You shouldn't be doing it with someone whose name you never learned, or whose name slips away by morning.

Clean sheets, a little privacy, and more than a passing acquaintance with soap aren't extras you can skip. They belong to the thing itself.

Safety belongs there too, along with trust and honesty and some basic honor. These get expected, or they get ignored, and too often they get ignored. A pregnancy is a gift, not the accidental wreckage of acting on impulse. And the person who gambles just this one time can end up infertile for good.

Do you actually know who your partner for the night has been with? What they might be carrying and passing along? Plenty of people can't answer that truthfully, because they don't know themselves.

We all come wired for affection, and touch is its own language, a real form of communication. So why cut it out of the whole thing? Think about how uneasy most people feel when a stranger touches them, even by accident in a packed subway car.

"Why don't you show me you love me" gets trotted out a lot when someone is angling for a good time. The other person may not be ready to go that deep with someone they genuinely like and fear losing, so they hand over something they weren't prepared to give. It costs a great deal. Given and returned at the right moment, it can be wonderful.

Putting the cart before the horse rarely makes sense and rarely feels good, and women tend to bear the worst of it. There are other ways to show someone you love them, built from how you treat them: a meal cooked at home, a door held open with some grace, the quick brush of a kiss, a hand reached for and held lightly, an arm resting across the shoulders, a compliment that happens to be true.

How many times do we want the reward without doing the work for it? Can a car engine jump from first straight to fourth or fifth gear, skipping second and third along the way?

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