Sex and the Austen Girl (& a BIG Giveaway)

Stephanie over at Written Word has Laurie Viera Rigler as a guest poster...she is the author of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict. Read her guest post here. She is also giving away both of her books to three lucky winners, just read her post and answer her question at the end in the comments section and for an extra entry either tweet about it or blog about it. So I'm blogging about it!

The question is: Are we better off now, or would we be better off back then?

This is a tough one. I definitely enjoy the way my dating relationships have gone and how I met and eventually married my husband. But my dating experiences have been kept within a culture within a culture. I'm a Mormon and all of my experiences have stemmed from that. So in a way I think I grew up with a hybrid of the two. I wasn't allowed to date til I was sixteen. My Church says abstinence before marriage. We also believe marriage is for eternity, not for just this life. So when we date every person becomes a perspective spouse! So it's a hugely different dating dynamic when we bring God into it and the dominating culture. I should clarify that I grew up in Utah as a Mormon where most everyone around me was my same religion...thus the culture/social expectations of dating were everywhere, not just the religious ones.

So when I dated, I dated men I knew would help me keep my standards and would respect me. My courtship with my husband was great! I made the first move and he responded in kind. So like I said before, a hybrid works best and that's the way it worked for me!