When they were dating, Tim Muldoon and his wife asked, “what if we did exactly what the Church recommended when it came to sex?” What they found was: Red Hot Catholic Love! Yeah, it’s possible.
We dated. We talked about sex. Of course we wanted it. But we waited.
Ours was a transcontinental romance nourished by letter-writing (which I recommend even in this age of the internet, because of the meditative quality of ink on paper). We approached our love deliberately, thoughtfully, and found over time that love grew. In retrospect, I think that our decision to wait for sex was a kind of pruning, allowing the growth of other elements of relationship: conversation, creative use of time, appreciation of the small joys of hand-holding and long kisses.
…Neither of us had any real idea of what sex was like till we were married. We figured it out as we went along, and that shared ignorance was delightful. There is nothing, I suspect, like learning how to love with someone you’ve already promised to love forever. It is incredibly freeing.