ARE YOU REALLY IN LOVE?
The first thing many counselors like to find out when people come to them about the possibility of marrying is to find out whether they are actually in love. Here are some questions which quickly disclose whether a person is afflicted with the real thing or is just infatuated by good looks and sex appeal. Answer each question truthfully regardless of what you think the correct answer should be.
If you have a perfect score you answered every third question (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24) with No and all the others with Yes. Did you have twenty or more “correct” answers? If so, we would judge you to be solidly in love. If you did not, you should be skeptical until you receive further proof.
Chapter V
Growing Up Sexually
Your ability to undertake marriage successfully has already been determined in large part before you even start. It has been determined by experiences you have had with sex generally and with the opposite sex particularly. Possibly you are already seriously handicapped by repressions and fears on the subject.
To ignore or fear sex is no more sensible than to ignore any of the other emotions you possess. Sexual desire is a natural desire. Without it your personality would become impoverished. Without it there would be few marriages. Without it there would be few children and few homes. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of or be whispered about.
You can have love without sex and sex without love but neither alone is very satisfying or enriching. For example many men are capable of sexual activity with women for whom they could find no pleasure in social associations. Were it not for this fact there would be no prostitution. Likewise it is true there are many wives who love their husbands and engage in sexual activity with them, but without feeling any sexual urge whatsoever and without feeling any physical satisfaction.
The ideal arrangement, however, is that in which the two people have genuine love and affection for each other and at the same time have strong sex desire for each other and find sexual satisfaction in each other.
A very large proportion of the fears, repressions and anxieties that people suffer from involve sex one way or another. Many of these repressions are revealed in such things as frigidity and impotence. The individual who is ashamed and afraid of sex will be repressed in married life unless the attitude is corrected, and will find it difficult to adjust to marriage. When such persons are married the feelings of shame or guilt about sex may prevent sexual satisfaction. This lack of satisfaction, and the tension that goes with it, may produce nervousness, aches and pains and even nervous breakdowns.
Many married people, particularly wives, suffer from repression. While sexual maladjustment is not the only cause of unhappiness in marriage it does play a significant part. It is estimated that one-fifth of all married people turn to masturbation as one of the ways to reduce the sexual tensions not satisfied through intimate relationships with the mate.
How do these so-called repressions develop? Where do we learn about sex?
Our sex experiences—whether good or bad—started when we were babies. We reacted in a very favorable way to the fondling, caressing and other skin stimulation of our mothers. Love and affection came to be associated in our minds with fondling and stroking. Sometimes as the baby grows older the parent lavishes too much affection on the child because the mother is hungry for affection which is not forthcoming from her husband. This excessive love-conditioning may cause the child to become intensely attached to the mother and makes it difficult for the child to break away as it grows up. Not only this, but in addition the excessive fondling and favorable attention may cause the child to have an excessive desire for sympathy and social approval. Ergo, we have a “spoiled child.” This spoiled child grows up feeling very sorry for himself and insecure when he is not receiving sympathy. In marriage, he or she becomes quite possessive because he or she wants to be the constant center of attention.
But to get back to when you were a growing child. Many of the feelings of guilt, shame or fear that people suffer from concerning sex begin then.
Perhaps the child is detected in the act of exploring his sex organs. It is probably normal curiosity but the parents punish him so severely that the child feels exceedingly guilty about it.
Perhaps the child hears a four-letter Anglo-Saxon word. Proud of this new acquisition he comes home and uses it with his parents. The parents are dumfounded, show their intense disapproval, and may wash the child’s mouth out with soap.
Or perhaps the child asks how babies are made and the parent may rebuff the child or act so mysterious that the child concludes he has done something for which he should be ashamed.
On the other hand, if as a child you had a confidential relationship with your parents and found that when you took such problems to them they would try to give you answers you could comprehend you developed a normal, healthy attitude toward sex. Repression usually occurs only when something happens to us for which we feel ashamed or guilty or fearful.
It would seem to us that no child should be permitted to reach the age of five or six without knowing where babies come from. It furthermore seems to us that no child should reach the age of ten without knowing what produces or causes babies.
Now we come to the period that affected you most profoundly in your sexual development, puberty. Can you remember how your life and body were changed from the time you were twelve to fourteen?—that is, when you were first endowed with sexual capacity. Whether you were a boy or girl, your sex glands (gonads) began pouring their hormones into the blood stream in great quantities. Perhaps you did not realize it at the time but you began feeling more tense, more energetic, and began exhibiting what might be called “animal spirits.” Farmers shake their heads sadly at their youngsters during this period and resign themselves to the fact that the youths won’t be over “Fool’s Hill” until they are sixteen.
It probably was during your early teens that you had your first great “love” affair, if you were normal. Puppy love is one of the sweetest loves that one ever has. It usually makes its appearance at about the time the girl begins to menstruate and the boy becomes capable of having sexual emissions.
This first love of yours was romantic and idealistic. Probably you “fell in love” with a girl in the next aisle, passed notes to her and picked flowers on the way to school for her. You walked home together after school and if you did manage to conquer your embarrassment and kiss, it is a kiss you will never forget.
You did not realize that those hormones pulsing through your body were responsible for this “crush” and did not realize why you were more tense and energetic. To reduce the tension, though, you looked at each other and something about your past conditioning made each of you find something appealing in the other. Sometimes these first “loves” endure but more likely you are soon both in “love” with new “flames” that suddenly appeared more appealing. Puppy love, you see, is an early version of infatuation.
As a child your sexual feelings were diffused over the body surface but with puberty those feelings came more and more to be localized in certain sensitive areas of the body, called “erogenous zones,” if you had normal contacts with the other sex. In the case of girls whose contact with sex is carefully guarded, however, it is quite possible that sex desire may remain diffused until marriage and the loss of virginity.
The appearance of the menstrual discharge can be a profoundly frightening event for a girl unless she has been prepared to expect it. Often it marks the beginning of fears that carry over even into marriage.
Take the case of Alice, a school superintendent’s daughter, who was reared in a stern atmosphere of morality. When she asked where babies came from her mother first rebuked her and when she persisted in inquiring the mother said they were brought in the medical bags of physicians. When she reached the age of menstruation, for which her mother had not prepared her, she thought a terrible calamity had befallen her. She naïvely believed for several months that she was having a baby. Later the only information she ever acquired on sex was through bull sessions with other girls at college, and there the information was misleading. She was fearful of sex and when, during her freshman year, a boy tried to kiss her she reacted very strongly. She felt that she must not be a nice girl or a boy would not think of trying to kiss her. Her mother had told her that nice girls did not kiss boys.
Today Alice is twenty-nine and still not married. Furthermore she seems like a very poor prospect. She has reacted frigidly to all overtures of grown men to kiss her even though she feels she should marry. To her “sex” is animal passion and its only rightful function is reproduction. She has so many repressions about sex that she cannot act normally in the presence of someone of the opposite sex.
Here is how the repressions operate with Alice. She does her best not to think about sex. She avoids situations or circumstances that would involve sex by staying away from people of the opposite sex, by not going to dances and by refraining from doing things that would in any way bring sex to mind. Her life is a desperate hide-and-seek with sex. Furthermore her repression is so effective that she won’t even admit that a sexual problem exists for her.
Sometimes direct fear conditioning may occur. In one girl who was referred to the Penn State clinic there was an intense fear of being with well-educated people. When all the facts were learned, it was discovered that in her early teens the girl had been detected masturbating by her mother. To frighten her out of the habit the mother told her that such a practice would change her facial appearance so much that any educated person looking at her would know she was a masturbator. The girl, already ashamed of her habit, felt so much guilt that she started avoiding anyone who had a college education because she believed such people could see her secret in her face. It took many months of treatment to get her to the place where she could associate with college people with ease.
It is our opinion that much of the sexual maladjustment of the world is brought about by parents giving their children the impression that sex is shameful, disgusting, fearful or nasty.
One young man came into the psychological clinic complaining of severe indigestion, heartburn and excruciating stomach pains. When asked what he thought the trouble was he said it probably was caused by his habit of drinking a couple of beers three or four times a week. He had made many efforts to stop drinking the beer, but in vain. The companionship of the other young men with whom he drank, the feeling of tension reduction that he felt while drinking, the partial release of some of his inhibitions under alcohol all prevented him from breaking the habit. He had never been drunk yet he was sure that the half-dozen glasses of beer a week were causing his stomach trouble and would ultimately lead to ulcers or cancer.
In working with this young man it was found that he had begun masturbating in adolescence. His father had discovered this and had severely denounced him for the practice. The boy could not, or did not, give up masturbation and was in constant fear that he would go insane because his father told him that continued masturbation always led to insanity. In reading an old-fashioned book on sex which his father gave him, the boy ran across a statement to the effect that alcohol weakened the sex drive. He was so anxious to reduce his own drive, for fear of insanity, that he began drinking beer habitually. He was so sure the alcohol was reducing his sex drive that he stopped masturbating. Actually, of course, the sex drive was still present and his repression and anxiety were transferred from masturbating to beer drinking, with the physical symptoms already described. By helping the young man understand how he had become unfavorably conditioned to masturbation (which, while an inferior or substitute adjustment, is a natural act) he lost all of his stomach symptoms and gained a wholesome attitude about sex.
How can sexual inhibitions and repressions be “unlearned?” The best thing to do of course is consult a good clinical psychologist or competent psychiatrist. Extensive psychotherapy may be needed. But here are some things that an individual can do that may help:
—Develop a friendly confidential relationship with some other person who can be trusted and bit by bit unburden yourself of your fears, anxieties, problems and frustrations. Simply getting things out of one’s system brings tension release. Not only that but as one talks about his problems and feelings toward them, he begins to define the problem and see possibilities of attacking and solving the problem himself. And the friend may have some helpful suggestions.
—Deliberately associate with people of the opposite sex as much as possible if repression is present. Gradually this will help reduce tensions as you become used to them and if the conditioning is favorable you may achieve wholesome and normal reactions to the opposite sex.
—Acquire adequate information about sexual behavior. Good books are available today in the field of sex (note [bibliography] in the back of this book).
—Even bull sessions can be helpful though much of the information you will hear may be erroneous or inadequate. The freedom of expression in the sessions and the opportunity to talk help one feel less repressed and more natural when sexual matters come up.
All young unmarried people should realize that the sexual emotion is just as much a hunger as a hunger for food and that in marriage their personality is enriched when the sexual hunger is satisfied.
While all this association with the opposite sex is going on, the girl or young man is learning what kind of a mate he wants in marriage. It is only through these experiences (starting with puppy love) that they begin to set standards and qualifications of the persons they would like to marry. The typical boy or girl needs to date a good many persons before they know the kind they would like to have as a mate, to decide upon the minimum standards they wish.
In going with one girl the boy learns to appreciate music and decides he wants a wife who can play the piano. In going with another girl he finds he wants a girl who is brunette, who is reasonably tall, who is relatively slim. In going with a third girl he discovers he wants a person who has as much education as he does and who is interested at least politely with mechanical things, which happen to be his passion. In going with still another girl he discovers that it is important to him for her to have control of her temper, to be friendly to people, to be gracious in manner, to be kind and considerate. And so it goes. It is only through such experiences that a man gradually learns what he wants in a wife and what is important to him.
In contrast, it is ignorance of what one wants that may prevent you from ever achieving a happy marriage. Not knowing what you want or need, you may marry the first person with whom you become infatuated.
Today there are nearly twenty-five thousand different occupations in the country. More people are completing high school—and college—than ever before in history. The radio and automobile have broadened man’s horizon. Thus for the man today a selection of a wife from among a half-dozen girls whom he has known would be a hazardous selection. As we have said before, he would need to know at least twenty-five eligible single girls—and date at least a dozen of them—before he could be fairly sure of finding one that would meet his wants and needs.
Chapter VI
Sex Adventuring
In the course of looking over the field for mates a large part of our young people become involved in bodily petting and complete intimacy. How widespread are such premarital sex relations? All the factual studies would indicate that there has been a steady increase. Dr. L. M. Terman, whose book Psychological Factors in Marital Happiness, published in 1938, reports a study he made of 792 couples, concludes:
“The trend toward premarital sex experience is proceeding with extraordinary rapidity.”
Of older couples who married around 1910, he found fifty per cent of the men and eighty-seven per cent of the women had been virgins at the time of marriage. In contrast, of those who married about ten years ago only fourteen per cent of the men and thirty-two per cent of the women were virgins at marriage. Dr. Terman predicted:
“If the drop should continue at the average rate shown ... virginity at marriage will be close to the vanishing point” for males marrying after 1955 and for girls marrying after 1960.
It’s a rare high school nowadays that doesn’t have an occasional pregnant girl, unmarried, in its midst. In one city more than two hundred such pregnancies occurred last year. Most of the sexual experiences today—especially for girls—are with people they eventually marry. But even in this respect the trend indicates that more and more young people are having intercourse with persons they do not marry than has ever been true before in our history. The trend is more pronounced for men than it is for girls. This can be understood in view of the fact that it is the woman who gets pregnant, and not the man.
Of couples marrying today, a relatively high percentage have complete physical intimacy before the wedding night. The rate seems to be higher among the lower economic classes than in the higher levels.
This does not mean the morals of the upper classes are higher but probably is due to the fact that girls in the upper group—who have lived at women’s or other colleges—have more inhibitions. After marriage they often have greater trouble having climactic sexual experience than girls who only went to high school, because of these inhibitions. Probably less than one-third of such wives regularly experience orgasm.
Why has premarital intimacy become more widespread in recent years? There appear to be several major explanations:
—The tensions of two wars and a major depression which led to postponement of marriage but not necessarily to postponement of gratification. Also during the war many girls threw their ideals to the wind in an attempt to find or give happiness on a friend’s last furlough.
—Religion is not as much concerned with sexual taboos today as it was a generation ago.
—We have removed chaperonage and parents generally are more tolerant of their children’s behavior and build in them fewer repressions than in past years.
—The widespread dissemination of birth-control information and the improved techniques in preventing venereal disease have reduced the penalties of indulgence.
—Our people are more mobile today so that it is possible for a young couple to experiment sexually with less likelihood that their parents will find out about them. Boys have access to automobiles in which they can take girls to secluded spots. Hotels have relaxed their restrictions about verifying the “Mr. and Mrs.” of couples who register. Tourist camps rarely had any restrictions to start with. Finally the war took millions of our young people away from their home communities.
In short, the old controls of society have relaxed or are in the process of breaking down. The same is true in Great Britain where studies during the war indicated that one out of every three births was conceived prior to marriage.
While young men engage in intimacies because of the hormones pulsing through their bodies and because it makes them feel more “grown up,” girls engage for somewhat different reasons, though thrill is a factor. Girls in their teens do not have nearly as high a sex drive as boys of the same age. Whereas a man reaches the height of his sexual vigor at around eighteen, a girl does not reach hers until around twenty-eight. This is largely because of the different conditioning boys and girls get. Girls lead more sheltered, guarded lives and thus develop many more repressions and inhibitions about sex than men.
Most girls who start to pet in their teens do so because they are afraid they won’t be asked for dates if they don’t pet. They give kisses as rewards to the boy for taking them to the dance. It is believed that at least one-half of female sex delinquents get little or no pleasure from the sex activity. They indulge primarily to get something else they want: the prestige and pleasure of having dates. This behavior puts sex on a very low plane. The prostitute herself is rarely motivated by excessive sex feeling. Rather she does it to obtain certain other things she considers important, such as spending money, gowns, cosmetics, etc.
Some girls think that because of the surplus of women over men they must be aggressive if they are to get dates, and consider bold petting one of the most effective techniques of aggression. Actually aggression of any kind usually has an adverse effect on a man, and the emotions generated in the girl by petting may lead to a sense of insecurity and a feeling of frustration.
It would be pointless to advise that young people should never neck or pet, because the facts show that the vast majority of young people engage in necking and petting to some extent. But what can be said for and against unmarried couples practicing complete physical intimacy before marriage? What arguments have been advanced in favor of it?
First we have heard it said that premarital sexual relations assist in the wise choice of a mate. You know what you are getting. You will know better whether you and the mate would be compatible sexually. One religious sect in this country takes a unique view on premarital experience. Couples do not marry until a child is conceived. In this way the groom-to-be can rest assured his bride-to-be can bear him children. The trouble here is that many premarital sex experiences of the modern couple are engaged in under circumstances that are hardly favorable to the flowering of sexual desires and their satisfaction. When intimacy is accompanied by feelings of fear or guilt or shame—as is frequently the case in premarital affairs—permanent scars are left on the participants. Usually a person can get just as accurate a clue of what married love would be with a specific individual by petting and conversation rather than by complete intimacy with its usual aftermath of shame and guilt.
Another argument often mentioned in favor of premarital sex relations is that it is dangerous to one’s health to wait. This argument is based on the well-known fact that most young people are mature enough physically to marry several years before economic factors make marriage advisable. So why wither away while waiting? They point to the spinsters who shrivel up for lack of love. This is only a half truth because, as you will see later in this chapter, there are other outlets for sexual feeling available in addition to coitus. These may not be as pleasurable but they are virtually as effective. The withered spinsters are that way because they employ no outlets whatsoever.
On the other side—the reasons why complete intimacy is ill-advised before marriage—we have first of all the fact that society frowns on such intimacy. Even though the practice is widespread it is still illicit love, with all the psychological problems it involves. The idea that the bride and groom be virgins at the start of their marriage is the product of the experience of most civilized peoples. That in itself should mean something. Undisciplined sexual expression has always been found to be destructive to the social group that permits it to take place.
Next, while it can be seriously debated whether complete intimacy hurts or helps an engaged couple planning early marriage, there is no question how it affects persons indulging on a casual basis. We have authoritative information on this point. In one carefully conducted research, the records of twenty-five girls were picked at random—girls who, according to their test scorings, were unconventional and generally unstable emotionally. These girls were carefully interviewed. Of the twenty-five, twenty-one admitted to the counselors that they had been intimate with one or more men during the preceding two years! That is persuasive proof that promiscuous persons are usually also unstable emotionally. And being unstable emotionally they are very poor prospects for marriage.
Finally here are some specific dangers that every person considering complete intimacy before marriage should be aware of:
—Possible pregnancy, and a forced and hasty marriage.
—If the child is aborted the possibility of permanent sterility or other injury must not be forgotten.
—The probability that the illicit relationship may become known to members of your social group, if not to your parents.
—Probability that even though temporary relief from sexual tension is achieved you may suffer from feelings of shame, guilt, or remorse.
—Possibility that your future spouse may discover that you have had sexual relations with another person. It may prey on his or her mind despite the fact that he goes through with the marriage.
—The possibility that the intimacy is practiced under conditions so nerve-racking and undesirable that they cheapen the meaning of the act.
—The risk of venereal disease.
—The possibility—if you are a girl—that the relationship is exploitive. Perhaps the man is seeking his own satisfaction with little regard for the girl or her feelings.
After those warnings regarding complete intimacy are given we would like to make it clear that premarital kissing and petting do have a legitimate function. Recently a nurse trainee came to the Penn State clinic; she was overwrought. She said her current boy friend had laid his hand across her breast. Had she been prudish in becoming upset? She was assured that she hadn’t been. But she was urged not to let the incident drive her to aloofness. Frigidness can wreck one’s chances for a happy marriage just as surely as promiscuity.
It is entirely natural for a mutually attracted young couple to desire to caress each other. It is one of nature’s techniques for encouraging mating. Without it we would have fewer marriages—and children. It is harmful only when the attachment between the two people is completely sexual and they rush into an early marriage, or into intercourse without marriage.
Take for example Dorothy and Bob, who wanted some last-minute advice before marrying. Obviously they were crazy about each other. To them a kiss or embrace was a way to convey their adoration. Everything pointed to their being truly in love and the tests showed them to be well-matched. To deny them such expression of affection when together would not only frustrate their love but might even impair their adjustment in marriage.
Their kind of innocent petting however should not be confused with the “exploitive” kind practiced by a student we’ll call Hale. He said quite casually that he “loves ’em and leaves ’em.” Investigation showed that was precisely what he did. And while he was apparently not as irresistible as he implied, he did find some girls to join him in his sex adventuring. Some naïvely fell for his line. Others joined in quite frankly for the thrill involved in exploring each other. Both Hale and two of the promiscuous girls involved showed in their tests strong traces of emotional instability which would make them poor marriage prospects. Before a girl becomes involved in any petting she should make sure in her own mind that it is not the “exploitive” kind.
Caressing or petting becomes definitely dangerous when physical contact and stimulation become ends in themselves. In the case of an engaged couple in love the intimacy is not just an end in itself but an expression of affection. The important thing is that sexual feeling should develop and grow out of the friendship and courtship of two people, it should not be the initial basis for it. There is likely to be exploitation involved if a couple feel impelled to engage in petting during the first few dates. Petting is progressive and can carry a couple much further than they intend to go. That is the big danger.
Ideally a couple should marry when their friendship and courtship have developed in them such strong sexual feelings toward each other that there is a physical and psychological need for satisfaction. This is why society is more tolerant of petting after a couple become engaged. It is nature’s preparation for marriage. The trouble of course is in the serious lag involved between the time a couple may be ripe physically for marriage and the time they are prepared vocationally and emotionally to marry. We still have our child brides in backwoods areas but most modern Americans do not consider it feasible to marry until they are well in their twenties. And in our civilization that is proper. But it does impose serious temptations on the people who have to wait.
From the time they pass out of adolescence young people—especially men—need outlets for the sexual tensions building up within them. There seems little doubt to us that refraining from any sort of sexual expression does impair one’s psychological balance and mental health. Personality can be damaged and physical health may be damaged. But if we rule out climactic sexual relations with another person what alternatives are left? There are three major forms this can take.
—Climaxes in the dream world. This is most common with men and produces their nocturnal emissions.
—Substitution. This usually means masturbation. Many people think that masturbation is a sin, that it will produce insanity, that it leads to skin blemishes or pimples, that it is something disgusting or filthy, that it stunts your growth. All the evidence indicates that none of these is true. A noted psychiatrist, O. Spurgeon English, recently said: “Most all psychiatrists, psychologists, and educators today regard masturbation as a normal phenomenon ... indulged in to some degree by all human beings during the course of their development.” As we see it, masturbation is a relatively harmless method of reducing tension providing feelings of guilt and shame are not connected with it and providing of course that it is not done excessively.
—Sublimation. You “sublimate” a sexual hunger, or handle it on a “high” socially approved plane by such things as dancing and associating a great deal with persons of the other sex. A young person is greatly helped in this if he is permitted to date at an early age (fifteen is not too young) and encouraged to bring his date to his home. Sublimation cannot reduce sexual hunger but it helps to take your mind off it.
If there is no outlet for these feelings through normal and natural associations with the opposite sex and if parental instruction on sex has been inadequate, really abnormal sex behavior may result.
The most common form of maldevelopment probably is homosexuality. It was once believed that homosexuals were “born that way.” But now it is known that the great majority of them, male and female, are normal in a bodily sense. Their abnormal behavior is clearly the result of unfortunate conditioning. Perhaps a boy was pampered too much as a child and has had little chance to mingle with the other sex, and then is rebuffed when he attempts to make dates because he seems namby-pamby or effeminate. While being forced away from associating with girls the hormones are being poured into his blood stream. The boy becomes tense without realizing why and without any outlet to reduce the tension. Bit by bit he may turn to persons of his own sex for sexual satisfaction, first perhaps through mutual masturbation and finally through homosexuality.
It is known that there is much more homosexuality in girls’ or boys’ schools than there is at co-educational institutions. One study showed that one-third of married women have had at some time in their unmarried days intense emotional relations with other women, even though some did not recognize the behavior as sexual in character. There is every reason to believe that more women engage in homosexual behavior than is true of men. This is understandable in view of the fact that expressions of affection between women are much more acceptable than is true of expressions of affection between men. Nobody thinks anything of two women greeting each other with a kiss, walking hand in hand or with arms clasped about each other. Men would be looked upon suspiciously if they engaged in any such behavior.
Still other abnormal outlets sexual feeling will take if it is not provided with normal or acceptable forms of expression are:
—Voyeurism, or “Peeping Tom” behavior, brought about by curiosity about sexual behavior of other individuals because the person is repressed and lacks sexual information himself.
—Fetishism, which produces an unnatural sex attachment to objects rather than persons. The objects may be shoes, hair curls, wearing apparel. The possession and fondling of such articles create arousal and satisfaction of sex feelings.
—Pedophilia, or unnatural attachment for children, perhaps because it offers them a “safe” way to inspect and caress human anatomy.
—Sadism and masochism. The first feeling comes from inflicting pain on another, the second from having pain inflicted on one’s self. This involves the sensual feeling of pleasure-after-pain which we have already mentioned.
But to get back to the problem of finding socially approved outlets for sexual feeling before marriage. We would advise couples rigorously to refrain from direct sexual stimulation and other below-the-shoulder petting until marriage is fairly imminent if they hope to abstain from intercourse before marriage. The excitation of such petting is apt to swirl a couple into complete intimacy despite their best intentions not to go that far.
We would not undertake to advise young people how far they should go in their petting, but feel that every young person—as a part of his or her personal philosophy of life—should decide just what his limits should be. When the limit is set here are some hints on how to make it stick.
—Reserve even your good-night kisses for people you are genuinely fond of. A girl should not cheapen them by letting a casual date lead her to the davenport to collect a reward for taking her out. And don’t fall into the error of thinking that free-and-easy petting will increase your popularity. It won’t except with people who would make unstable mates anyway.
—Limit carefully the time you are alone with a person of the other sex under romantic conditions. It is almost a “rule of love” that the longer a couple are alone with nothing much to do, the greater the likelihood they will pet. Several college girls tell us they never agree finally to a date until they are sure there will be something definite to do—go to the movies, dance or play gin rummy. If parents or school authorities set a time limit for you to be home they are really doing you a favor.
—Learn to sense when either is becoming physically aroused and stop. Again college girls tell us that when they recognize the danger signals they suggest to the man that they dance, go for a soda or take a walk.
—Learn that alcoholic beverages may relax your inhibitions to the point where you will go much further than you intended. That is why some people wisely refrain from drinking or limit themselves severely while on a date.