Maria has always wanted to find her special someone before making a physical commitment to him. The senior values love and the unbreakable bond of lasting relationships. Maria wants to have her first penetrative sexual experience with someone she knows she will be with forever. For now, she is an independent thinker and is not letting anyone get in the way of her dreams and desires to become successful.
On sex, in general:
I’ve never had sex before, but I know that it can either be really fun or make you do things that you regret. Sexual mistakes might not be the worst thing in the world if you learn from it, but it can spiral out of control really quickly if you don’t have the decision-making capabilities to look at immediate gratification as opposed to your long-term goals.
On desperately relationship-y people:
I’m really annoyed by people who are always looking for a relationship – like people who are in love with love, or people who like the drama of relationships for ego gratification. I didn’t want to be one of those girls. So I really made freshman year about focusing on myself, focusing on good friendships and enjoying the freedom from the emotional energy required in relationships.
On an almost-relationship:
Towards the end of my sophomore year I started liking one of my really close guy friends. We were talking about a relationship and what it would mean because I was going abroad the next quarter… I didn’t want to be in a relationship while I was abroad, but I still went through the process of getting to know him and trusting him deeper than I’ve trusted anybody before. He was much less conservative about sex than I was. My perception of sex changed a lot through being around and getting to know someone that I trusted a lot, but also who had a less conservative view of sex than I did.
On sex before marriage:
I come from a conservative Catholic background, so I’ve been raised to think of sex as only appropriate within a loving, long-term, emotionally-safe relationship – like marriage. That’s how I identify it. On top of that, I did a lot of my own thinking. My parents were very normal, real, open people. We weren’t crazy religious. I kind of came to that idea of sex on my own.
Before I came to college I would definitely say I’d wait until marriage. I still definitely think yes. I think that the perspective I had before was a little bit simplistic, and having grown in my understanding of it, I think there is a lot more nuance to that. I definitely think that if I had sex before marriage it would be with somebody that I fully intended to spend the rest of my life with. That being said, if I know that this is the person I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, the person I want to trust to that degree, why not just wait a little longer? It just comes with the fear of getting pregnant. If something does happen, like the unimaginable happens and you do end up breaking up... At the end of the day sex isn’t a huge sacrifice to make.
On staying single in college:
Sex can be such a cosmic experience and – it’s a very adult thing. You have to have a mature perspective on it. That’s the kind of moment when you appreciate it and that’s the kind of moment that it has the best meaning for you, or that’s what it would be for me. For me to want to have sex with somebody, for me to feel that strong bond for them… it would have to be a very serious relationship. The odds of that happening in college are little to none. There’s so much that I want to do with my life. I just couldn’t envision myself being in a relationship where I felt that strongly about somebody to the point where I was ready to marry them or thinking about marrying them. I have a pretty wide independent streak so I never wanted to be in a relationship that serious, definitely not within college. I just don’t see that happening. If the price of that was that I wasn’t going to have sex in college, I’m fine with that.
On sex and love:
It has been drilled into me that you should love your neighbor as yourself and that you should put yourself in someone else’s shoes. I believe that compassion and mercy is the most important thing. Sex is inseparable from love. That’s the preconceived notion that I came into college with – that sex, love and a child are inseparable. That’s the place where the family flows from and that’s how the puzzle fits together. And if you follow that guiding principle your actions will be harmonious and your actions will be healthy for yourself and for others. As of right now I think my relationships with religion and sex have stayed the same.
Check back Sunday for the last installment.