It seems to me that a young person needs to first decide how long they expect to live! Now, that seems like an odd subject to bring up, because we all want to believe that we will "live forever!"
I see the two logical choices as: (a) roughly the average 75 years or so; or (b) maybe one year. We will discuss each separately. Each person must make his or her own decision on this, as no one else's opinion actually matters.
But whichever choice a person makes should cause certain OTHER decisions which are compatible with it.
For a moment, think forward to some day when you are married. "Happily" married, you say? Well, that's a main point here. At that time, you will want to truly please your spouse, in every way, to demonstrate your love for that unique person. You will also want to be pleased in many ways yourself. This would then include many sensual and sexual behaviors and activities, right?
This would result in an unintentional situation where you would essentially be always having to "compete" against those "perfect" experiences. No matter how sensitive, sensual, sexual and attractive you are, this seems like an almost certain situation where some times, you will fail to match those nearly impossibly high intensity memories.
Worse, the way our human nature works, we tend to most remember the most unusual, meaning in this case, pleasurable, experiences from each of those previous relationships. The person you will actually be competing against is then not really even a real person! It would be an imaginary person who had the best of all those earlier experiences! It is about as close to "perfection" as anyone could possibly imagine. And the more partners and experiences your spouse had previously had probably means even more competition, which you will have great difficulty overcoming.
In other words, your spouse would unknowingly be always "competing" against the very best memories you have of all the earlier people you dated. Like before, the collection of those best memories, from however many people you had previously dated, combines to represent a virtually "perfect" (but imaginary) person that your spouse will often or always have to be competing with, and often unfortunately losing in that comparison.
Young people today seem to attach no real importance to sexual activity at all. It is just "something to do", which happens to cause some nerve cells to create intense sensations! Not much more than that!
It is truly sad that so many people today will never be able to experience those feelings related to intimacy! But today, many people seem to consider sexual activities about as emotionally significant as in going bowling! Yes, the first few times they do it, they experience wonderful feelings. Girls especially seem to conclude that they are in love, IF they received a lot of attention from a boy or man! They don't seem to realize that boys and men have learned to act certain ways to CAUSE that reaction, as it then tends to get the girl to be agreeable to nearly anything they want to do! But without strong emotional feelings for the other person, those sensations and feelings tend to quickly disappear. Very quickly, it simply becomes a mechanical activity, where the other person is often nearly irrelevant! Or interchangeable!
It turns out that all those experiences of sexual activities have what I consider a HUNDRED TIMES THE INTENSITY when actual intimacy is central between the two people. For BOTH of them! In other words, the two need to have a broad knowledge and respect for each other. This essentially means that the two need to have been around each other for a good deal of time, where they REALLY know each other very well, in a thousand ways. Today, people, especially young people, are always in such a hurry, that they are not willing to wait to learn all those things. And lust and passion often soon takes over.
Yes, when an unbelievably beautiful or handsome person appears and shows great interest, hormones get working and cloud the judgment, and that can result in a BRIEF experience which may or may not be wonderful! Interestingly, many such super-attractive people have found it so easy to get the attention they want and need that they often have NEVER made any attempts to learn anything other than some very basic actions. They don't seem to even know that they are very ignorant about all those things! I have known some adult men who ONLY knew a single approach, which they would ALWAYS follow, like kiss on the cheek; kiss on the neck; kiss on the mouth; etc. No creativity, no emotional feelings for the girl, not much of anything except in going through a check-list of things that need to be done! Some of those men were extremely attractive, and that approach often worked to enable them to "score another one" without necessarily even ever learning her name!
Such things may provide a few minutes of sensual excitement for such men, and apparently the girls they work it on seem to actually believe that they "truly care". But even five minutes afterward, such men would often ask whether we friends wanted to get a burger. In other words, THEY HAVE NO LASTING MEMORIES of such experiences, often not remembering the girl's name the next day!
Can you imagine what later married life would be like for such a super-attractive man? No matter how beautiful or sensuous or attentive his wife would be, could she always satisfy and please him? Not a chance! Would he constantly "be looking" for any other women that he might bed down? Almost certainly! The result is that neither he nor his wife would likely be very happy in that marriage.
But it seems that the majority of people today seem to have a rush, rush attitude about everything in life, including these things! It is as though one might say "I know how to do this, let's get it done!". If even a very beautiful woman throws off her clothes and flops on a bed in certain positions, I suppose she is showing interest and willingness to participate. I have always seen that very differently. It gives the impression that there is no interest in actual sensual experiences, or maybe an ignorance that there even ARE any such experiences! Just by showing such instant knowledge of some specific position, it seems to me to confirm that this woman is "nearly acting like a professional, a prostitute" in demonstrating such knowledge and skills.
It is as though they either have no interest or no knowledge of the countless wonderful experiences that are available BEFORE the part that they show knowledge of! I wonder if they have ever even heard of the word "foreplay"! (It is a VERY good word!)
Such extremely beautiful women have become very angry with me because I instantly lost all interest in proceeding. They then considered it an insult, that I did not find them physically attractive. That was not true at all. I have just always felt that there was value in at least SEEMING like being naive about many things, and so NOT giving the appearance of massive experience prior to me!
It is hard to even think about spending time in exploring a woman's forearm for a while, when she clearly has no interest or intention regarding such things. But they really never knew what they were missing! The intensity of the whole experience is beyond imagination, when there is interest and willingness to "explore" before actually doing anything more obviously sexual.
But, of course, such things take far more time! I have always wanted to take at least half an hour, and up to three hours, in "playing". The majority of women only get emotionally aroused after a substantial time like that, while men get physically aroused almost instantly! Since very few people today seem to even realize this difference, and the men/boys are generally "in charge" of the activities, they tend to "satisfy themselves" far before the woman/girl ever got even close to really getting aroused! And so, in an informal survey, I have been amazed at how few women seem to even realize the sensations that are possible for them! Some women (eventually) become so aroused that they eventually are like the "animals" that popular conversation often mentions. Sadly, I suspect that many of the "animals" being discussed had not really ever gotten that aroused at all, but they merely had learned the way that they were EXPECTED to behave and perform. In other words, much of their participation is simply a theatrical act!
Now, we are in an "informational age". We all want to know everything about everyone and everything! In this particular subject area, we normally see two reasons for that, and they are both good reasons! One is so that we make a "best" choice for a lifelong mate. The other is so that, once in that marriage, and knowing that the spouse has likely had relatively extensive experience, we don't want to seem "inferior" as to talents and skills. The reasoning of "practice makes perfect" is somewhat applied.
The problem is that these two sets of guidelines are contradictory! In one case, there seems like solid cause for everyone being chaste, and even dating relatively few people. Many young people would read that "BORING!" (now!). The other choice, of experiencing EVERYTHING now, seems to suggest that you might spend large portions of your married live either bored or disappointed, or both! And your spouse has the same situation! Is there any wonder as to why such a huge number of people cheat on their spouses? Or that the divorce rate is so terribly high?
It is NOT because the institution of marriage has anything wrong with it. Instead, it is a side-result of the pre-marriage experiences of one or both of the spouses!
Take it to an extreme: If a young woman shared intimacy with Brad Pitt or a young man with Britney Spears, even if those famous individuals were not particularly passionate or talented, how could such memories NOT later be remembered during less-than-intimate encounters with one's spouse? Even though such an "opportunity" or experience might seem irresistable in-the-moment, how could it NOT later damage married life, and probably many times, and in some cases constantly and permanently? When the basketball star Magic Johnson used to have his daily "rainbow" (a white blonde, a white brunette and a white redhead), it seems unlikely that he even learned (or remembered) any of their names. But all those beautiful women who he "used" in that way must have all had pretty screwed up marriages later on, wouldn't they? How could their many husbands ever "compete" with an exaggerated memory of a world-famous basketball player? There is no way to document that, but I have to believe that thousands of marriages were damaged or destroyed as a direct result of that sort of extreme version of "casual sex".
Well, there are local people who can seem just as incredibly attractive to nearly anyone, whether it is an extremely muscular boy who might be on a sports team or an extremely pretty girl who might be a cheerleader. The long term effect is the same.
So there are really two separate levels of those Problems mentioned above. First, there is the fact that either or both would likely spend their lives "competing" against some ACTUAL past experiences, with previous dates. Second, there is a tendency for us to embellish nice memories into super-human experiences. So even if you treat your spouse to the most intimate Anniversary you could imagine, there are likely to be embellished previous experiences that your very best effort probably could never match.
As a long-term result, if a spouse eventually concludes that even the most creative, most sensuous encounter, still does not please the mate, and that daily interactions similarly are not seen to be effective, then the person can start wondering just what could possibly show love and affection to the other. If this change of attitude occurs, then there can start to be an attitude of no longer even trying, because "What's the point?"
The point of this discussion is to suggest that there are long-term consequences in your life, either way. If you really think that short-term intense experiences are so desirable, as many do, you are quite likely to go for it, if you do not realize there are these long-term consequences. People today seem to insist on "living in the moment" where they do not even think about tomorrow or the day after, much less anything years from now. This discussion is not meant to FORCE you to make any specific decisions! It is merely to inform you of some things that you may not already have known about or thought about.
Even though your parents never actually explained WHY they always tried to teach you good behaviors, this is actually much of what they had in mind in trying to do that. But even they always knew that when the time came, only you could make decisions that might be considered as good or bad.
Of course, you have also heard that Churches tell everyone that if they don't behave perfectly right, they will go to hell! You can probably see by this text that I actually AGREE with their goal, but totally disagree with how they usually try to accomplish it! I think they do that because they assume that young people are too stupid to actually think, and they therefore think they need to try to scare the daylights out of everyone. They don't seem to realize that that approach RARELY works! Yes, it scares some people, but by scaring them, they often cause the people to NEVER enjoy what intimacy actually can provide. I suspect that Churches have really screwed a lot of people up by constantly referring to the threat of hell, where the rest of their (married) lives still carry baggage from such threats and scare tactics. I have a suspicion that is because the Church leadership have never experienced the amazing value in "simply taking plenty of time, first, to get to know the other person, to then receive a lifetime of amazing experiences!" So most Church leaders wouldn't know how to present anything other than outright threats of God!
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C Johnson