Points for a thorough and cool-headed response to someone who was obviously bating you.

Dan's response wins ALL the internets. Cheezus, I nearly spit my water all over my keyboard.

Dan, I have to be honest, if you won the lottery, like it seems this woman did, and the first time you had sex was serious wowza, it might very well be impossible to image incompatible sex. I knew it was a rather mythical beast to me until I it happened.

Seems kind of unfair to assume the aren't both into scat. I realize the odds, but it does explain a lot, doesn't it?

You have atheist friends, LW? Yeah, for some reason I'm finding it hard to have much faith in that assertion.

Fake! Google couldn't answer this one? Hey HMW, try searching for "Savage Love" and then let us know.

I think her point was that neither of them had "weird" ideas or fantasies, because they were innocent virgins. That's what we teach our kids when party favors are being given out: "you get what you get and you don't make a fuss" -- they were happy with what they got and didn't worry about what else might be out there.

But. What happens to some fraction of wives in her situation, is that their husbands turn out to be gay. And husbands often find out their wives have low libidos. Maybe they could tell, from their flirtation, that they were safe on both counts. But I think Jesus would be with Dan, in telling her not to be smug and self-righteous in the face of other people's unhappiness.

Yeah, smugness us always annoying, but she has reason to gloat:

The most comprehensive study of American sexual behavior ever undertaken (published by the University of Chicago and marketed under the notably non-arousing title The Social Organization of Sexuality) found that, in fact, “having a religious affiliation was associated with higher rates of orgasm for women.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20…

Five years? big fucking deal. Seven years is the test for any marriage. Talk to me when you get past twenty years and you both still find the sex satisfying. Oh the arrogance of the young and inexperienced.

Hey lady: Dan makes a pretty fucking good living off of peoples' sexual incompatibilities. Obviously, there are just a few unhappy couples out there. If you're so fucking smart, you figure it out.

She obviously hasn't a fucking clue what great sex is..she has nothing to compare it to.

She's deluding herself into thinking she's happy because that's what she thinks her cloud being wants her to be.

Beautifully done, Dan.

There are, of course, other advantages to fucking before marriage. Two that come to mind:
1) MORE FUCKING
2) less pressure to rush into marriage, which leaves more time to assess emotional/philosophical/life compatibility.

I'd love to hear back from this woman in 7-10 years.

Send her to John Shore, Dan. He has a correspondence going with individuals who kept the whole "purity" ritual and now can't bear any form of sexual expression, even hand holding.

To the LW, congratulations on being well matched. I'm truly happy for you. I do feel dismayed that you think that your experience speaks for every one. Maybe it is this blasted fever, so I'll extend you grace. I will say that I hope you still consider yourself fortunate and you will show grace to those who make different choices then you have or find themselves not as blessed in the sexual compatibility department.

Thank you, Cato dear. I was just about to say the same thing.

It's sort of like If all you've ever had is Kraft macaroni & cheese, and you like Kraft macaroni & cheese, you have no idea how wonderful Velveeta Macaroni & cheese is.

I have one question, and one question only for this person: How old are you? Because it sounds like she's 22. Sex at 22 is just generally great. Call me back when you're 35.

I don't know...I'm not religious, but why can't we just accept that there are some benefits to having a faith?

Here's more:

The 1993 Janus Survey on Sexuality found that a key ingredient in religious people’s more satisfying sex lives was that they did associate these spiritual and emotional components with sex far more than other respondents did.

Those spiritual and emotional components are: "the more profound possibilities sex offers to express love, commitment, and even a mystical union".

I don't have a problem believing that. Just because I don't have faith doesn't mean it isn't a powerful force for those who do.

And I'm amazed that evangelical christians are stereotyped as sanctimonious.

dan needs to email back in 5 more years. a couple of virgins banging the hell out of each other has a pretty long half-life, but it won't power a whole marriage.

@5 Someone at work who doesn't wear a cross necklace once joking said she wished her husband made her lunch, bought her flowers, had hair, or some other minor nicety and it became her atheists friends who are super jealous. Kind of like all those 'black friends' used to make slightly racists statements seem not that way.

@17 anyone who was raised catholic knows a legion of married religious people who very obviously did not benefit from faith in their sex lives the way you are describing.

Statements like this, just like "Well, when I have kids they will NEVER act like that!", paint a big red target on your back that Karma just can't resist shooting at.

You're 22, you've been married for 5 years (five WHOLE years? Golly gee whillikers!), and as far as YOU know, the sex is as blissful as blissful can be even though you admit you have nothing to compare it to. That's great for you - but do give it some time and see what else life has in store.

More importantly, there's stuff you might have learned about him 4 months later, after a great wedding night, that needed addressing. You got lucky.

@21, I'm not completely without suspicion. I'm kind of playing devil's advocate because I'd like to get to the bottom of this Christian sex question. I've heard of these studies that support them, but I've always wondered. The Daily Mail reports on a study that contradicts it, but they don't cite it. Still, it's pretty funny:

Worryingly, children raised in strongly religious homes were more likely to get their sex education from pornography, as they were not confident enough to talk with their parents.

However, there was some good news for religious groups. People who had lost their belief and became atheists reported a significant improvement in sexual satisfaction.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/a…

Or Jesus, how about even something as simple as wanting the same amount of sex for the first few month and then having one partner wanting to drop to once or twice a month from then on?

My folks were virgins when they were married, though I'm pretty sure they kissed before the wedding. They're still married, still reasonably happy, raised several children, etc. So all seems well for them.

But.

There are times when my mother is depressed or frustrated or whatever, in which she'll confide in me about their sex life (despite my persistent objections). And they are not sexually compatible. While they're apparently both fairly vanilla, one has a significantly higher sex drive than the other. And so my mom has told all her children that they must, must start a sexual relationship with a prospective spouse before getting married. The rest of your life is a loooooong time to be sexually frustrated.

So congratulations on having "great sex several times a week despite having two kids under age two," HMW. And thank God or fate or luck or whatever that you didn't end up married to a man who only wants sex several times a month... or several times per year.

@15: but won't having Velveeta Macaroni & cheese or even just thinking about having it, be all kinky and weirdly depraved?

way beyond what any priest, or pastor could ever get behind....

@25 imo, the real question is who did the study? if it was done by a religiously affiliated organization, then there is absolutely no reason to trust it, and every reason to suspect it is (carefully crafted) bullshit. dunno the answer myself. just know i was raised in a catholic environment & there is simply no way in hell that the majority of the adults i grew up around had satisfying sex lives. they openly demonized sex at any & all opportunities, and were the angriest most repressed motherfuckers you could imagine. slightly separate topic, but it still boggles my mind that people would go to priests for advice about their marriage. what could the priest possibly have to offer?

Dear Dan, I'm a sanctimonious asshole whose every word drips sarcasm and snottiness in a country where sanctimonious assholes get to be physicians (I second the hope that she is not an OB/Gyn or in any sort of position to counsel adolescents in this vein). How pious can you be?

I'm an atheist, married for 21 years to the only man I've ever slept with. I think I have fantastic sex, several times per week. As Cato pointed out, I have nothing to compare it to. And I sure would like to have something to compare it to, because as much as I enjoy it, I wonder if it could be better. It's kind of like when a child gets glasses for the first time--you don't know what you might be missing. I'm going to guess the HMW is happy in her ignorance.

@29 Especially if it was via a survey. People who think they are supposed to be happy with something tend to say they are.

Well, to be fair, if he was a virgin, he might not know he wants her to shit on his chest until their second wedded night. ;-)

A better, more common example might have been very different sex drives, where one partner feels constantly pressured for sex and the other constantly rejected and both end up miserable and resentful.

Her decision is not offensive -- whatever works for her is no business of mine -- but her tone is. Her gently condescending way of scolding, "What do you think is so important about sex that it's worth making Jesus cry?" Of course, the answer is right there in her question. She's sexually satisfied in her marriage, which leads her to believe, for some reason, that mutual sexual satisfaction is not all that important. Or else it's automatic when you're with someone you're in love with. Or worse, maybe she thinks sexual satisfaction is God's reward for waiting until marriage. Either way, she's generalizing her experience to apply to all, which is the kind of myopia that makes some people -- including many people of faith -- assume that if it's good for them, it should be applied to everyone else.

Maybe it isn't a Christian question, Irena. Maybe it is human one? We're amazing creatures, and one of our 'gifts' is the ability to retain beliefs dear to us in the face of contravening facts. If the LW and her husband believe that they are pleasing to God, and that their choices have delighted God so that he has blessed them with divinly appointed compatibility right out of the poetic passages found in the book of Song of Songs of the Old Testament, then that is what she believes. Beliefs aren't truth and they aren't facts, they come from the part of us that allows for self-delusion. But for those that hold them they become a reality none-the-less. Whatever her definition of great sex, she believes that they have found it and I hope it remains so.

@34 So sweet :-) Hope you feel better soon, kim!

I had a life long friend who around the age of forty finally learned that there was good sex and bad sex. He learned this by divorcing his high school sweetheart and getting some of the former.

Prior to that he had expressed derision for my references to either "good" or "bad" sex (sex was just sex) but after a woman finally showed him how it could be he kind of lit up inside; it was cute.

call me a cynic. - a christian cynic so me and mrs. smuggy mc smuggerson missionary lady are in the same neighborhood. - but what i wouldn't give to hear her husband's side of the story.
' atheists want what we have.. '.. uh huh.. yep..

She sounds like she's trying to convince herself. I can't think of any other reason that writing this letter would seem like a good idea.

And by the way, lady, "We're better than you" is always a political statement.

@29, the Janus Survey I mentioned @17 was endorsed by the APA, and the Social Organization of Sexuality one is a scholarly publication. The one that contradicts them is called Sex and Secularism (linked below), however he only interviewed people who had left their religion. So people of faith report better sex lives, but those who leave the faith say their sex lives improved... kinda makes you wonder if those great Christian sex lives are more about faith than sex.

http://freethinker.co.uk/2011/05/20/us-s…

Sanctimonious and smug, typical Christian.

Just as bad, what would have happened if your husband was a complete virgin and *didn't know* he was a raging poo fetishist, who could only get to orgasm if you shat on him?

I think that you'd spend *years* trying to figure that one out. And for the entire duration, you'd blame yourself for not being good enough for him. And *he* would blame you, or blame himself, or feel terribly ashamed of this sick perversity, and very likely NEVER tell you, possibly until the day you were divorced, if ever.

If you want to know what ends marriages at such an insanely high rate, it's this. This, and money and kids. Live with a guy for a while, fuck him for a while, and manage your money together for a while, and you'll actually get two out of three of these figured out *before* you're married and have children. That means you improve your chances of a successful actual marriage by 66%.

Kim, I agree with you. And don't we all benefit from some delusion in some area of our lives? In short, whatever works for you is great, but it doesn't mean other people are doing it wrong.

@39 great point w/ the ~'are people happy about their faith or sex lives' comment. a naturally biasing question.

Not stupid and yet you are trying to generalize your single experience to all of humanity, studies and research data be damned. This is typical idiocy for both a fundamentalist and for the majority of physicians when confronted by actual science.

And five years ain't that long, lady; my marriage imploded after nearly 25 years...

@9
1) You're really linking a Tucker Carlson article here?
2)It's not a study, it's a *survey*. Big difference. In surveys, North Koreans are the happiest people on Earth too.
But then evangelicals are used to pull things out of their ass. Among other things.

Bullshit.

Sweetie, sometimes different people like different kinds of sex. Some guys like anal and some women don't want anything in their butts, for example. Does that makes sense? Okay, now that we've cleared that up, you can go back to being a doctor.

I didn't think it possible to dislike Christians more than I already do. Boy, was I wrong.

100 bucks says this lady's husband has also written to Dan, but his letter started like this:

"Dear Dan, I'm an evangelical christian, married man with two kids, but I've always wanted to have sex with other men. Last week my buddies Steve and Tom were over and the wife was at the park with the kids, and one thing led to another..."

as (shockingly) often, here's the Prudie companion piece:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_…

@52

Yeah, that was pretty shocking. I saw that today and wondered how long it would take to show up on slog. Of course, the commenters over there are ripping Prudie and this guy a new one--how DARE they suggest that a person deserves a happy sex life! Commitment means misery at all costs!

I knew someone in college whose mom didn't have sex with her dad -- not sure if either of them was a virgin -- until their wedding night. Then she found out he was a choker.

Shockingly, mom was all in favor of her daughter trying out the sex thing before marriage.

We have great sex several times a week despite having two kids under age two.

Oh, I so dearly want to yell FAKE (huh, I'd never done that before, so that must mean I was a virgin in that department, lol).

If she's also a practising physician, where is she finding the extra hours she needs to work, look after the kids and have all that sexual energy? Unless they're so well-off that they can afford a housekeeper and nanny.

Listen, lady. You're reading from the same playbook that also counsels abstinence sex education (aka none) to teenagers; so, when you get married, you don't know how anything works let alone how it's going to work together. Even better if your faith has told you that you are not allowed to masturbate, because it is unholy, selfish or disordered.

So, let us imagine that you got married under no-prior-touch circumstances until the wedding night. Even though Dan was being outrageous for a reason, let us suppose that, when you kiss your husband again in the privacy of your bedroom (honeymoon suite ... whatever) that there is NO spark. Yes, you obviously do love each other. But, if you find out there is no sexual connection other than the superficial stuff (or desperation for religion-sanctioned sex) that led to your getting married, then you might have just remained good friends whose love is platonic.

If the two of you are fortunately sexually compatible, then hooray for you. But so many people aren't. Have you heard about selfish lovers, people who are sexually satisfied but don't care whether their partners experience pleasure? If you were the dissatisfied partner and belonged to a faith that will not permit divorce, you'd be counselled to stay in the marriage and pray. Imagine the terror and helplessness because you've just signed away your sexual health and happiness for the rest of your life. Now isn't that a lovely gift from your God.

Or what if you have differing sexual desires for the frequency of sex. If your desire is less, then obviously you'll lie back and think of [fill in the blank] while your husband is fulfilled. But if his desire is less, how happy and fulfilled will you be? Then again, I must be misinterpreting things, because your God has given you perfectly matched libidos as a reward for waiting until marriage. Yup, that must be the only reason.

But I really am compelled to call FAKE. I can't imagine you're much fun to be around, especially as you were compelled to describe the evangelical nature of your faith to Dan. Wow! Even atheists want what you have, so you must really be doing some outstanding missionary work, right? I'd be curious to know where you live, "in a country where that is not a political statement".

Bah. FAKE or else just saccharine-sweet veneer over a deliberaly manipulated, smug and sanctimonious core.

I believe I said " Whatever her definition of great sex, she believes that they have found it and I hope it remains so", @ 55.

Hence, others may not agree, but it does not matter, does it? What matters is how they both feel about it. If they both believe they are having great sex, then it is great sex according to their definition. I hope they continue in their felicity and have a long happy life.

I'm disinclined to agree that recognizing that everyone of us capable of deluding ourselves to protect our idea of what happiness is or minimize our capacity for cruelty is arrogant. I think it is a part of what it means to be human. It is neither good nor bad. It is my $0.02 and you are free to disagree.

HMW is the wife of the guy getting blown by his personal trainer, right?

@45,

"Not stupid and yet you are trying to generalize your single experience to all of humanity"

This is the problem with evangelical *anything*.

This letter boils down to "My husband and I have put on blinders and I just can't imagine that the world has anything in it which we can't see." HMW needs a dose of science: go fuck some people until you find one you aren't compatible with. It will be easy to understand, then.

Ta for that, Erica. And, I think so, Irena.

Take care, ladies.

And this--Dan's ability to refrain from using the phrase "condescending cunt"--is why I'm not an advice columnist.

All I can take away from that letter is that Evangelical Christians are WAY more stupid/ignorant than I had previously thought. So sad..

People that use supernaturalism and faith to guide their lives have something to prove. Not only are they at odds with the secular world, they have to compete with other religions for bragging rights for owning the one pure unprovable truth. In lieu of proof, happiness is the next most persuasive argument. That's where you get the motivation to lie or exaggerate their sexual fulfillment. That's why religious people seem to have better sex lives, and why people that leave their religions say their sex lives get better. It's about convincing themselves and others that whatever choice they made is the right one. You're only going to get honest answers from people that have worked through all the supernatural bullshit, and embraced the fact that reality isn't contingent on how you feel about yourself.

I agree with everyone, but come on guys: If she's a physician, she's not 22.

Pray tell, in which countries is it not a political statement to declare yourself an evangelical christian?

Smart up, lady.

Resolved, Let's call her Douchey Houser...

I know someone who was part of an arranged marriage.. and you know what? They learned how to love one another. They learned how to be together in a compatible way. It's weird, but it sounds similar to HMW's situation. You accept, and learn.

I dunno.. Humanity is weird. There are many possibilities for love.

@66 - Yeah, you have a point, but you know, if you hear an inner voice that indicates you ought to do something, and you do that thing on faith, and that something turns out to be 100% accurate,... you know, perhaps you might wanna follow that "esoteric" and non-secular inner voice. The world is weird... and non-logical intuition is real. Is that supernatural? Is that bullshit? Ok, ego is a pain in the perception, so if you can strip away the layers of yourself that you've built up over time, and actually respond to that still small spring/fountain of your "self" that continually burbles up within you... then yea, rock on, follow it, it will lead you right. Whatever your outward belief structure. Just be a cool human to other humans.

@59 I agree so long as it is a sincere belief and not just self delusion. The letter makes me inclined to think it is the latter. Kind of like the person at the party who is always bragging about how many people they have sex with.

@67 Cute that maturity is defined as agreeing with you. Many of Dan's letter come from people you describe, married monogamous couples, many don't. Lots of different ways to be happy and unhappy.

Fuck me, this is a "sex question"? Nothing but moralistic passive-aggressive gainsaying that evangelicals have perfected, to bring "light" to a "secular" and "deceived" culture, a mission ordained not by Jesus who hung around prossies but by pastors arming them with a false sense of rationality, using bad logic and convenient omissions in their sermons and chasing it down with an enthusiastic chorus of "Amen"!

There is no evangelical Christianity that is not a political statement. The whole enterprise rests on discourses of the Culture War as applied to different polities. That's the contemporary definition of "evangelism". The LW was practising dominionism in a small way.

I shuddered at reading this LW, because I recognised myself. I worked so hard at cultivating this same smugness during my misguided varsity days in church, training to "speak truth" to darkness and be a "history maker" and change society. Am still trying to shake the residual smugness off, it's such an insidious poison. Ugh.

@46
1) I neither know nor care who Tucker Carlson is
2) Please see my post @39

I get that the letter writer seems smug. But I think it's entirely possible for someone raised in a sheltered, evangelical household in a non-western country to be quite clueless about sex. I've met some of these people.

I once had a conversation about marriage and sexual matters with a psychologist who worked among Christians in India. He said that there was a pervasive -- and unhealthy -- idea that went something like this: because we are Christian, we shouldn't have any problems. Therefore, if there are any problems, we will not talk about this to anyone else, and do our best to convince ourselves that we don't really have a problem.

treacle @71: Yes. This.

I have to admit I find it a little dismissive and arrogant to just throw the scat reference at this woman like that. People who date, court, fell in love, marry as virgins, yet don't ever confide an interest like that, but then just blurt it out the first night as a deal-breaker ("Let me shit on you or else no fucking") have issues having nothing to do with sexual compatibility. So if she made relatively certain, through verbal communication, that he had no kinks or interests or curiosities she found objectionable, I think they had a good a chance as any.
I think the answer to her question is simple. Some people rank sex higher as a priority than others. I know couples who've dated for years and then broken up after 2 months of living together because of different decorating styles. If you're unwilling to compromise on something, it becomes a "compatibility" issue. If you are willing to compromise, it's barely an issue at all. The letter writer and her husband appear to be able to compromise, and I wish them luck with it in the future. But they very well could have discovered this all by speaking to each other, not just by sexually auditioning everyone they ever dated.

LW, try this as an experiment: tell your husband that you want to play a game with him. For the next three months, he's not allowed to try and get you off. At all. Ever. You are allowed to ask, but every time you do, instruct him that he is to act squicked out, condescending, offended or confused. Give him a couple phrases to use to imply that it's your fault you're not getting off. If you ask for a vibrator, he's instructed to act emasculated and threatened. If you ask for oral sex, he's instructed to act completely grossed out. If you display any sort of arousal or desire for him (even something like talking dirty to him), he's instructed to treat you like a dirty slut. If you're menstruating, no PiV sex - but he's instructed to act entitled to blowjobs. If you ask for lube (and of course you're going to need lube with this kind of treatment), he's instructed to bitch and moan about the feel/smell of lube; or imply that if you were a real woman you'd already be wet for him.

After you've asked for an orgasm twelve times on twelve separate occassions, he's allowed to give you *one*, but he has to act like he's doing you a giant favor and that this is really hard for him. No oral, no vibrator, no toys, just some grudging clit-rubbing. Then he complains about the smell or his sticky fingers or the wet spot on the bed - something to make you very, very sure that you've put him at a terrible inconvenience.

Keep this up for three months, and see how it makes you feel.

Now imagine that this wasn't a game, and that your husband really did have that kind of contempt for your sexuality. Because, I promise you, there are more than few men who have a grudging, selfish attitude towards sex. And because evangelical Christianity teems with sex-negativity, there are more than a few men who see any expression of desire by a woman to be tantamount to her being the next incarnation of the Whore of Babylon. I am assuming that your husband values you as a person, and celebrates your sexual desire as being of equal worth to his own. That's so fucking awesome. But many, many men fully believe that women just don't enjoy sex or that they don't have to take a woman's desires seriously. And lots of them say they're Christian.

That's sexual incompatibility right there. Most men who start as self-centered lovers manage to get over it because they have girlfriends who dump them for being inconsiderate assholes, and so they either wise up or live the rest of their lives sad and alone. People who save sex until marriage, though, don't get that valuable education.

Imagine your husband wanted to hurt you during sex. Imagine he got off by seeing bruises on your butt and thighs. Or maybe the only way for him to really enjoy it was to have sex outdoors. Or that he was 'meh' on PiV sex, but thought he should get blowjobs on demand. Or he wanted you to dress up like a twelve year old girl and talk about getting your first period as foreplay.

Though maybe he is all those things, but those are your kinks, too; so you guys match up anyway. In that case, imagine a sexual boundary of yours. You read Dan Savage, so I'm sure you can come up with a few. Now imagine that sexual boundary is what your husband *needs* to get off.

Dan's right - you got lucky. And I'm happy for you. Really, I am. It gives me joy to know that there are people who take joy in their own sex lives. But if *I* had married the first guy I ever fucked, or married the first guy who asked me, I would be M I S E R A B L E. Not sexually compatible. At all. And thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster all I had to do was break up instead of having to file for divorce. I learned a lot about myself, and what I wanted, and now I am with a guy who is a pretty awesome match for me.

I don't doubt that there are sexually satisfied people, perhaps even many, who married as inexperienced virgins but who cares? The point is that each of us has the right to determine our own path.

Let's take one: suppose your new husband announced when you got to your honeymoon suite that he wouldn't be able to climax unless you took a massive shit on his chest before vaginal intercourse commenced.

Hmm. In my experience, people don't leap straight from virginity to scat. Check out what the closeted married and bi guys are looking for on Craigslist, and it's overwhelmingly mutual masturbation and oral, not fisting and watersports.

So two things: first, kinky stuff is kinky because not a lot of people get into it. Which would seem to indicate that HMW's odds of finding someone who had the same basic sexual interests as her (assuming she didn't end up with a closet case, as sometimes happens with evangelicals) are pretty good. Second, kink seems to be something you grow into as you gain experience sexually (either directly or vicariously, via porn). Assuming that HMW and her husband are starting from the same place, there's no reason to assume things won't be great, and, assuming they're both willing to be GGG as things progress, there's no reason to think things won't continue to be fine.

The other thing that kind of bugs me about this post is the importance to a relationship that is attached to sexual compatibility. Not to downplay the importance of sex (although it is the kind of thing that becomes less important with age), but compatibility in other areas, like religious or moral beliefs, seems at least equally important and perhaps more so, again, as you age, raise kids, etc. On that basis, my guess is HMW and her husband explored that side of their personalities far more than most couples do.

I've known marriages that have worked very well indeed that had very little in the way of "sexual compatibility." (Indeed, in one case, intercourse was physically painful for the wife). When you have it, it's great. But it's not the be-all-and-end-all of relationships, and in a few cases, it may not even be necessary.

The poor troll is just beside himself with moral outrage and marital advice.

Don't worry troll dear - you'll have sex someday, and I'm sure it will be everything you ever dreamed of. The poor unfortunate woman will, if nothing else, be relieved that it was so blessedly quick. Really, a win/ win for everyone, and probably the best fifty bucks you'll ever spend.

And if you really like it, maybe you cam get yourself one of those Latvian mail order brides.

Catalina, Velveeta macaroni and cheese is an abomination before the Lord and you know it.

Velveeta's purpose in life is to be melted together with a can of Ro-Tel and poured over tortilla chips. The macaroni and cheese arena belongs to Kraft, but only if you add a can of tuna and two handfuls of frozen peas (crushed potato chips on top optional, in Freethinker households).

What kind of depraved nonsense did they teach you in Council Bluffs, dear?

And as for the "she's a doctor and should know better," here's what a slogger wrote about doctors:

I have worked with young doctors for many years in a research setting. I continuously amazed at how sexually naive and inexperienced physicians usually are. This results from the combination of being academic grinds, straight arrows and totally career focused from adolescence on. Add in a healthy dose of arrogance and conformism and you get a picture of the average young docs mental framework about sex.

Link

It's the first line which gets me. WTF is she talking about? Evangelical Christians are political by definition. And is she implying that the country she's in censors the internet? So she's in China, or Arabia, or Kyrgyzstan, or someplace where Christians are in the vast minority. Which leads me to think that she's there because her big, fat, rich church is paying her & her hubby to be there, so they can spread their beliefs as missionaries. Maybe she's working for the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. And since missionaries have a long robust history of murder, torture & destruction, I couldn't give a flying rat's ass what happens to her.

Besides, she's probably wearing a garment made w/ more than one kind of thing, so she'll rot in hell.

@82: big assumption that people can start their sexual lives from the same place, as if a blank slate. That is one of the fallacies of the evangelicals' war, that porn or media or progressive laws introduce ideas to young people's mind that weren't already there. Sure, you can discover new kinks, you become aware of ways to express desire in ways you hadn't thought of before, but some of us can trace the perv in us at 5 or 8 years old. And I grew up in a non-western, more conservative culture.

@60 FTW.

And @84 -- sorry, but Velveeta beats Kraft like a Sunday morning woody.

You took this troll's "question" better than I would have, Dan.

Oh yeah, about that: What was her question again? Was it "Why is the sex I'm having (without any prior point of reference whatsover) so great?" Being that I'm still in school, and in my mid 20's, I know lots of younger kids (straight out of high school), and I've watched a few as they sexually matured. (read: fucked more people.) What always makes me roll my eyes before telling them "I'm so glad for you!" is when they tell me how much better sex is with this new person, after dumping their first, or prior partner. So, I wonder what the LW will say about her current sex life when she's gotten an affair or two, or a divorce or two, under her belt...

"What kind of depraved nonsense did they teach you in Council Bluffs, dear?,

Oh Fnarf darling, you wouldn't believe me if I told you. Suffice to say that Steve King's congressional district is teeming with perversion. Like a later-day Peyton Place.

As for the Velveeta, I was just trying to relate. Don't Christians love to eat it?

And as for doctors, I only know from the med school at the University of Iowa, but there were all manner of peculiar sexual activities going on there back when I was was friendly with some of the med students. In fact, my first co-Ed erotic group activity occured with two med students, myself and a cocktail waitress. Delicacy forbids me from elaborating on a family site like Slog, but I will say we all still exchange Christmas cards and are Facebook friends.

My question for HMW is this: What exactly do you think you gained by waiting?

On general principles: what is the point of delaying the commencement of sexual unity by a few months, if you fully intend to be sexually united with this person 'til death do you part thereafter?

In your case in particular: was your sexual compatibility enhanced in any material way by holding out until after the ceremony? Is there any way in which your sexual compatibility would have been damaged by not waiting?

Seriously, what is the point?

A few notes:

Ug. The scat-on-chest thing was unnecessary fan service, Dan. However, everything above it was FTW.

HMW - Please take the time to review your good book: Proverbs 16:18. Be careful you're not sharing the plunder of the proud:
Luck is a great thing, especially in love. Please, HMW, respect that the universe worked hard to bring you that luck. Prodding the bear trap that is Dan Savage invites karma to bite your ass and then disembowel you too. Trust the Rev: Conceit/Vanity/Pride's a sin, dear.

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall - - i.e : Some reader's are saying to themselves; 'Wait 'til she finds her 'christian' husband's porn collection and can't wrap her head around the supposed paradox...... The churchie boys are always the worst.'

I do hope the "until one of us dies" oath is 100% hyperbole.

You might wanna check Prov. 19:2 as well:
"Also it is not good for a person to be without knowledge, And he who hurries his footsteps errs."

The ability to have frequent sex is not necessarily the mark of a "compatible" sexual relationship. I imagine that if you two were (although I doubt it) as beholden to Jesus as you would like to portray yourselves, that means that you never looked at porn or masturbated either. Meaning that neither of you had any clue before your wedding night WHAT you found sexually arousing: What kind of people, what kind of activities. Surely, as good Christians, you immediately clamped down on any sexual thoughts or feelings that you had as soon as they arose, knowing that even thoughts represented the sins of lust and possibly- depending on your doctrine's beliefs- adultery.

Naturally, the first time you ever allowed yourselves to feel and accept your own arousal was on your wedding night, and of course that would have been an amazing experience... provided all the mental scolding you've been giving your nasty libido since you were a pre-teen hasn't permanently given you a complex about sex (unbelievably unlikely).

However, if you haven't done that mental censorship on your sexual thoughts and feelings, you just might not be as pure as the Judeo-Christian God demands- meaning that your input here is hypocritical and invalid.

How many times does the Bible mention pride as the greatest sin...? Probably should have taken that plank out of your own eye first. Then again, had you done that, you wouldn't have written in.

@64:

Still in College, eh? Because I can think of practically no jobs where uttering the words "condescending cunt" as a description of either the people who are your paying customers or really, anyone else in the general vicinity (ie, coworkers, anyone asking you for help) wouldn't get your punk ass canned in 20 seconds flat.

We all have to put up with crap like that at our real jobs. We all have to smile and nod when really we just want to rip out the throat of the moron who just pulled shit like this. This is the reason that the people who made the movie "The Yes Men" could get away with what they did, and the only time anyone ever called them on their bullshit was on a college campus.

In fact, Dan has infinitely more leeway than the rest of us. So you'd better get used to shutting the fuck up and smiling real nice like if you couldn't take Dan's job, because if you don't, you've got a real rude awakening coming real soon now.

Hate to be a bucket of cold water, but when someone goes around saying "how great their marriage is" then sure enough, the other person is probably cheating or looking to get out and the whole thing falls apart in a year or two.

People who are truly happy, aren't public about it. They are the most private people of all. That's why there are so many Internet users.

@12: Well, when you talk to these people, they'll tell you that that's the point. If one person has a previous sexual history (and with it, some idea of what they do and do not like) and another doesn't, that's one thing. But if neither of them has ever had sex with anybody else, then they have no idea what it is they do and don't like so - they hope - they'll just be happy with what their spouse gives them. Because they don't know what they're missing. And that's probably how she'd respond to Dan Savage's suggestion about the poop. Her husband wouldn't have any idea that he likes that because he would never have had sex with anyone before the honeymoon bed.

And when you think about that, isn't that sad? That they actually WANT to miss out on awesome things? I have a sister who is really into her conservative church and believes in abstinence-until-marriage and now she's at a fundamentalist Christian college (my mom and stepdad tried to stop her, but she lives mostly with her bio dad so they didn't have much control over it). We're all hoping it's a phase, because the abstinence thing just does not sound like a way to really LIVE your life. It's like they're actually telling her to limit herself in the name of "purity."

And more importantly, it doesn't work. You don't have to have a rich sexual history to know when your needs are not being met; everyone knows how sex is SUPPOSED to feel (good). People can put two and two together and figure out that their needs are being met even if they don't know what exactly those "needs" are.

last sentence should read "needs are NOT being met"

I'm with @78 above. I think it's perfectly possible that they have a good sex life. I think having sex before marriage is a weak insurance against later incompatibility. Having had sex with a couple of different people is probably better, but no insurance there, either: Sex can get worse, libidos increase/decrease, kinks can be kept secret etc.
While the LW is obnoxious, some people here need to come down from their high horses about the superiority of their life choices.

I think there are two main reasons for sex before marriage:

1. It's natural & fun. People used to get married at 16. Now it's in the mid 20s on average and later for more educated people. The idea of not having sex until you're 30+ is against nature and, frankly, you're missing out on 10-12 years of great sex. Why would anyone want to do that?

2. While having sex before marriage is not a great predictor of later compatibility it tells you some things - same general preferences, physical connection etc.
Before getting married you will usually go through a list of possible issues with your spouse - finances, child-rearing, career priorities, religion (or lack thereof) - sex is yet another issue and as with many of the others, you get a better sense of your partner by actually seeing what s/he does (if s/he goes to temple/church/mosque, deals with money in a reasonable way, interacts with children in a way you feel good about etc.). So having sex before marriage is just another little piece of getting to know your spouse before committing.

I've always thought sex was amazing. It's fun, it's free, and it feels good. And it was several years before I discovered orgasms. Then I thought it was even more amazing. And then a few years later, I discovered how to have orgasms nearly every time. And I thought it was really, really fantastic sex.

Now, after I've discovered the variety of orgasms, multiple orgasms, mutual orgasms, etc. etc, not to mention the sheer variety of awesome sexual experiences possible, I'm sure I'm having the best sex of my life. *Thus far.* If it keeps getting better at this rate, my head might explode by the time I'm 35.

Perhaps I'd still be sure I was having great sex if I had never had the experiences I've had. But thank the sweet lord I didn't.

Another way of putting it - I bet at one time you thought your mom was the best cook ever. And then you went out to eat.

I guess I'm just reiterating what everyone else has said, but the story seems fitting:

My mother married my father as a total virgin, a "good girl", who'd never done more than a quick closed-mouth kiss. My father, of course, is gay. Their wedding night was... a psychologically abusive clusterfuck of "I don't know why *you* can't make my dick get hard but you must be doing something wrong". And ten years of torment followed.

Side note: apparently (these facts came later), my dad had dated and been engaged to another woman before my mom. Presumably she must not have been quite so naive babe-in-the-woods as my mom, because she broke it off. Many gay dudes in the 60s targeted "good girls" who wouldn't have dreamt of getting to second or third base before the wedding, because they were inexperienced enough to not have alarms going off in their heads.

And so, my mother told me, over and over, "NEVER marry someone without having sex with them first."

LW is lucky. Nothing more.

Interesting discussion, despite the LW's condescension. I would say sloggers are decidedly not christian, as they seem ignorant of even the possibility of the LW's sexual happiness.
This fag became born-again as a teen to save himself from the evil of queerdom, met his future wife in the church at 18 (she was 16) and married her at 21. My sexual experience consisted of 2 experiences with my best friend at 15 (gay), followed by fucking 3 women before my wife. Not a virgin, but low experience and mostly with the wrong sex for my orientation.
We married before we'd ever had sex. We kissed a few times and would have had sex before marriage but for our religion. And, despite me being a fag and her being a virgin, we both enjoyed our sex life until we divorced 8 years later. We believe the only thing that kept us together was sex. We both needed lots of it, and it was the one thing in our lives that made us feel close. The rest of our marriage was a disaster, so we had a couple kids.
Is my sex life better now? Yes, because I'm with men, like I always should have been. Is hers? I hope so- she says she's had better sex with subsequent husband/partners. But never has faulted what we had; just now knows there's more out there.
My point: it IS possible to have a decent sex life, even in the above circumstances, so I believe the LW's story. What neither of them know may never hurt them. Or not. But sexual compatibility can occur under the oddest of circumstances, especially if you believe your marriage is 'of god' like they do, and we did.
Dan's shit analogy was un-called for. More realistic would have been his/her willingness to do oral. I suspect they have little of that in their perfect sex life. Evangelicals believe oral is a sin- strictly dick-in-cunt of lawfully married spouse in missionary position.

To the LW: sexual incompatibility is like any other kind of incompatibility that affects something important to your being. If being a Christian is really important for both of you, imagine marrying an atheist. If you're both conservatives, imagine marrying a liberal.

Would you advocate marrying someone before knowing what his/her religion is (and before experiencing enough of it to see it's sincere)?

Of course even if you're an evangelical Christian and your husband is Moslim, or Buddhist, or atheist, or... you could still have a happy marriage. We all know at least one couple who is like this, and yet happy. But what are the odds?

If you had to guess, what couples do you think have a higher chance of staying together: those in which they knew about each other's religions before marrying, or those in which they didn't?

As Dan puts it, you're clearly sexually compatible. That's like marrying someone without knowing their religion, and then finding out s/he has exactly the same religion, including denomination, as you. Phew! Right? :-)