Why it's important to save yourself: protecting your real interests

When you see tv shows glorifying uninhibited sex, or hear stuff on the radio making it sound so natural and cool to just jump in bed with someone you may or may not like, you might be led to believe it's all so non-issue. But sex, at least the uncommitted kind, can really hurt you inside and out.

When you've given up your right to share your deepest and most intimate longings with the absolutely most perfect person you've ever gotten to know, and instead give yourself away indiscriminately to someone you hardly know at all, you have set yourself up for a major heartbreak.

Heartbreak ... yes. Don't say it won't matter; it will. Maybe not right away ... but it will matter. When you find yourself somewhere down the road, alone with a bottle of beer, or alone on the Internet, or alone even when you're with other people, and your craving for an embrace of total, unconditional acceptance is pounding its way to the surface of your mind, and you still find yourself alone, all alone ... that's when it'll hit you ... it mattered.

Having a sexual relationship, whether we want it to be or not, is a bonding experience. The deepest intimacies of sexual expression are joined together by two hungry people in a mutual longing. But when something goes wrong and the relationship goes south, the separation hurts because a bond had been created. Even if you barely knew your "partner", a spiritual and emotional bonding took place. Subsequent separation quite naturally causes emotional distress and sense of loss. But unless we look at it honestly, we may not even be able to identify why we feel the way we do "the morning after." We're really not supposed to be having sexual relationships with anybody other than the person to whom we've made a lifetime commitment, our wife, or husband. This is why divorce is so painful even when the marriage partners have burnt themselves out trying to make it work. They're bonded together because they've experienced the deepest intimacies of sexual expression, and usually much more, due to the nature of their evolving relationship which led them to and past the marriage altar.

The good news is, coming out of the pain and facing it honestly will bring healing. We all have the power to learn from our mistakes.

So, if you've already physically shared your sexual secrets with someone without having a lifetime commitment with him or her, or you've even been sexually active with a number of persons, and they're no longer in relationship with you, it's still going to be all right. Talk to someone who can help you put the painful choices in perspective, someone who can help you resolve to live like today really is the first day of the rest of your life.

We all have the power to learn from our mistakes. Today really is the first day of the rest of your life.