As said previously in various places, despite having had spanking thoughts since childhood I didn't explore until way into adulthood. And it is only really in my late forties (and now early fifties!) that I've really come to terms and am now happily exploring this side of my life. So I am definitely a late starter as a spanko.
Blighty's comments on my thoughts around porn made me stop and think about Catholic history. while I feel unconstrained by this past, it obviously needs acknowledgement and thought. When I became sexually active in the more everyday sense I was also a late starter and most definitely influenced and constrained by the religion I was then practising. I 'lost' my virginity to the boy I intended marrying at the age of eighteen - Seems very quaint now and that is only part of it. I wrote an autobiographical piece and tried to explain the complexity for me at the time:
I joined the ranks of the knowing, sexually experienced technical virgins. It was exciting but it was still about him. I still had to fight off his attempts to go all the way. He was no longer frustrated but wanted the ‘ultimate’ because he loved me… I genuinely wanted to hang on to my virginity because it was more romantic and full sex was definitely a sin. I was knowing enough to know the sexual activities I already practiced were beyond the pale but like many others my actual lack of intercourse was very important to me. I knew the Catholic Church, mothers and the problem pages of most magazines would smugly declare that ‘if he loved/respected you he’d wait’ but it all rung hollow. Because ‘the adults’ didn’t talk about the things I actually did for my fiancé I was able to live with the unspoken knowledge of its wickedness and damp down the anxiety of not being as ‘good’ as I would have liked to be.
And of course his desire to go all the way continued… I find this extremely difficult to acknowledge and admit today because it seems so absurd. I usually say the following as though it is a joke. It wasn’t. I prayed. I didn’t want to go to hell. I loved him. I would like to believe he loved me and would do so if we were not having sexual activity but this was my reality. This was the man I was going to marry and despite my best efforts he was still in agony because of my refusal of the ultimate. I also knew that if I considered it a sin and did it anyway there was no salvation because forgiveness was only possible through perfect contrition.
My solution was not really a satisfactory one but as I had to balance impossible choices I came up with a fudged solution to make sex outside marriage not a sin. I convinced myself that as we intended marrying it was OK and only circumstances stopped us being married already. It was a fudge and I knew it but I could live with it.
It's a lot easier being a Born Again Pagan!
