I was going to post on the very same topic, Xander. I was going to say just about exactly what you said, although in a more wordy fashion no doubt.
"Sex is the most intimate experience you can have with another person" will sound great tucked into the hour talk outline "A godly view of sex and marriage". The elder/friend who gave that talk back when I was 18, would say, "Sex is the ultimate expression of love between a man and a woman".
It touched all the right romantic notions in my head and in my heart. It was also unmitigated bullshit. As an aside: A few years later, same elder was found to have a different woman in each of the small towns he sold auto parts in.
Trusting another person enough to let them see the real you, that is the most intimate thing two people can experience.
You have a point Xander, and I know I'm not able to get across what I mean. I would want to have that sense of love and trust BEFORE I would share myself physically with someone. Some people are very private and cannot have casual sex, it would be soul destroying for them. They need the relationship before they are comfortable with the physical. So that is what I taught my kids.
You are allowed to handle yourself however feels right to you.
It is, I suppose, a matter of perspective. Giving my heart is more significant to me than having sex, so I'd probably warn in that direction.
Discussion kind of reminds me of perhaps the most beautiful poem I've ever heard:
Never give all the Heart W.B. Yeats
Never give all the heart, for love Will hardly seem worth thinking of To passionate women if it seem Certain, and they never dream That it fades out from kiss to kiss; For everything that's lovely is But a brief, dreamy, kind delight. O never give the heart outright, For they, for all smooth lips can say, Have given their hearts up to the play. And who could play it well enough If deaf and dumb and blind with love? He that made this knows all the cost, For he gave all his heart and lost.
(Incidently, I mean that in a beautiful poetic way - few poems I've read convey emotion so directly)
Xander F (Unseen Apostate Directorate of North America - Ohio order)
A fanatic is one who, upon losing sight of his goals, redoubles his efforts. --George Santayana
