She doesn’t like crowds so reluctantly gets on an airplane and then has to sit next to a man. An assumption encourages her to talk to him which leads to some positive surprises and those develop into a major life change for her. An introvert’s story of acceptance and love.

A peek inside:

He sighs before he answers, “Is seems like the vast majority of people, which is strongly supported by almost all forms of media, think that nothing matters except achieving the conquest, of scoring, of almost raping each other like animals. I hesitate to refer to it as ‘making love’ because, for most people, there is no love between the participants and sometimes they don’t even care about the other person as an individual. As far as risks and consequences go, pregnancy and disease are definitely worth being concerned about, but there is also the reaction and response of friends, family, or acquaintances, especially if a person’s intimate partner doesn’t meet the approved standards of society or the often more stringent standards of those who may be in a position to make a person’s life difficult with their disapproval.”

“Oh. . . . Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that. I can imagine that some of the people I know might turn a blind eye to a ‘one night stand’, but would definitely feel the need to ‘correct’ me if I spend time with somebody who doesn’t meet their standards. . . . When you spoke so disparagingly about most people’s attitudes towards,” somehow with his basically calm discussion approach it’s a little easier for me to say the word, “sex as though they were only looking for a conquest or to relieve some tension as some of the females I’ve heard refer to it, I guess you think there’s another way.”

“I’m not sure I would call it another way, but I would definitely refer to it as a different approach or as having a different goal. . . . Many young people are indoctrinated to the idea that they aren’t really an adult or a full person until they’ve had sex and their animalistic hormones only add to the message. So their goal in life to one degree or another is to excitedly look forward to having sex. When they do have sex, if they find that it’s exciting and enjoyable, they do it some more and if they didn’t enjoy it, they’ll often try it some more in the hopes that they will enjoy it. Eventually, just like anything else which is done often enough, their sex loses its excitement so they try having sex in different ways, or with different partners all in an effort to keep it exciting. And businesses encourage that because they make a lot of money by claiming they can help people to keep sex exciting.”

I have to think about that for a little while before I respond, “I’ve seen and heard some of that in other people and even kind of felt it myself when I was younger. The older people I’ve heard about would never claim it was about sex because their emphasis was on having young people get married. However, since that is the only legal relationship in which people are ‘allowed’ to have sex, then it does make their emphasis clear, at least in hind sight.”

“That’s right and the major religions only add to that message by insisted that all sex outside of marriage is immoral and encourage people to be married young in order to reduce their temptation to have sex outside of marriage. Then they don’t give the young people any clue as to how to have an intimate relationship inside of marriage other than to ‘do what comes natural’ as though people are simply emotionless animals who are responding to the urge to mate in order to continue the species. Whether you want to believe in evolution or in an intelligent creator of some nature, it’s amazing how people want to think they’re superior to all other life forms, but when it comes to sex, humans act no differently than any other animal because, excuse my bluntness, any male insect knows how to shove his penis into a female’s vagina or their specie’s equivalent.”