Authors-choice: Hope & Revival

My boyfriend and I did not wait until marriage before sex. Then came our wedding day and I suddenly wished that we had.  Yeah, I got a little emotional because I did not want our wedding night to be just one more night; I wanted it to be special.

I tried cutting off sex a few months before the wedding, so we can “wait” until the big day and then start having sex again but when I overhead my boyfriend gripping to his guys, “She’s making me wait now! She says no more sex until the wedding. Ugh.” I had to give in to stop the whining.

If you asked me to explain, I can tell that it just feels right that the crowing of the beginning of our life-long- commitment with each other should be marked by a unique act, an act of self-giving performed for the first time as a symbol, a memorial. It should have been our first time of having sex. All the overwhelming emotions, passions and crushing tenderness we poured into our first sex was “stolen” from our wedding night. I remember with tenderness our first sex, but I dread the memories of our wedding night, it fills me with pain.

We should have waited for that night to have sex for the first time

Because we’ve already been having sex, and living together for years, our wedding night was nothing new. It was just a night of disappointment, an anti climax. It could have been any of the many nights we had sex after a night out with the boys. My boyfriend turned husband was unusually drunk and the quick jerky entanglement we had just before he passed out was one of the worst memories in my life.

Thus, though our wedding day is beautiful, the food was good; yet we had no sense of mystery or of expectation. There was no magic in air for us. We had no sense of anticipation or of discovery.  Rather, we felt our wedding was just mere legalities. It didn’t change anything. It did not mark the end of one era and beginning of new. It was just a fancy public celebration of the lifestyle that was already living. Our wedding night—-we did not start a new life — we simply went back to the exact same life.

My best friend Lisa waited her whole life without having sex until her wedding night and she would forever talk about it. It was spectacularly more special and meaningful than mine — with totally off-the-charts specialness.

I tell my  daughter to wait, “Your wedding day and night will be everything every Hallmark card, every romance novel, every poem, every religious text, and every little girl’s fantasy as a wedding should be.” I tell her.

“All of the symbolism — turning from two lives into one, owning each other in every way, making a commitment with body and soul — will be physically real to you and present throughout your wedding day and night.”

“Others will reach their wedding day and find themselves thinking “Sigh…I kind of wish we had waited”. You will reach your wedding day and think “I’m so glad we waited!”

I hope she learns from her poor mother’s sad experience.