1 Confessions Of A Serial Monogamist

I've been reading Mindy Kaling's hilarious memoir "Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?", and I highly recommend it. It is HILARIOUS and well worth the read.

I just finished the chapter in which she talks about how she doesn't understand her friends who routinely have one-night stands:

I don't even mean sexual health safety, like STDs. I mean good old-fashioned life-and-death safety. Here's what I can't wrap my brain around. I barely talk to strangers (a habit that I started as a child and that has served me well through my adulthood). So the idea of going to a stranger's house at night, or having that stranger come over to my house, sounds insanely dangerous.

Mindy Kaling and I are two peas in a pod in that respect.

Here is a major disclosure: not only have I never had a one-night stand, but I've only kissed three boys (men) in my entire life. When I was allowed to start dating, I dated my first boyfriend my entire sophomore year of high school (kiss #1). Great guy. Grew up to be a fireman and has a wife and three kids, and we keep in touch on Facebook.

I met boyfriend number two shortly after boyfriend number one broke my heart, and we dated from my junior year of high school through my sophomore year of college (kiss #2). Also a great guy, he ultimately moved to Birmingham and now lives less than half a mile from us, coincidentally. He just got married last month, and we keep in touch by waving when we pass each other in the car.

Boyfriend number three (kiss #3) turned into husband number one, and we dated for my junior and senior years of college, and then got married three months after I graduated. I was 22, and now we've been married for 16 years!

I don't think I really realized how unusual that is until I started working at The Place Where I Work Now. One day about five years ago, the girls (women, I guess) were all standing around talking about how many men they'd been with, just while they were in college. And when I told them about how many guys I'd kissed, they all broke into stunned laughter. (They may still be laughing.)

At any rate, I suppose I DO come off as pretty sheltered, but that's the big number. THREE KISSES.

That sound you just heard was my dad releasing a sigh he wishes he could have exhaled back in the mid-90s.

Origin: pualib.blogspot.com