Posted on 06/15/2003 10:39:14 AM PDT by Mister Magoo
He's celibate until marriage, and dates won't tolerate it
June 15, 2003
BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Ten years ago, Darren Washington, 33, made a dramatic lifestyle change. He decided to abstain from sex until he got married. It is a choice that makes sense in a world where sex can literally kill you. But the fear of sexually transmitted diseases was not the only thing that motivated Washington to try celibacy. Given the pain sexual relationships can cause, he wanted to be part of the solution--not part of the problem.
On Saturday, June 21, he will be one of the panelists for "What Men Don't Like To Talk About" at Being Single Magazine's 5th Annual Bachelor Breakfast.
Washington, director of external affairs for SBC Indiana, says his celibacy has frustrated some women.
"A lot of women wanted to be sexually active," he said. "And you have so many people fronting. What I found out is that women wanted a man who was going to be faithful to her because a lot of men are juggling different women, having sex with different women, and so women thought it would be OK if I was only having sex with them."
Some women backed away after realizing Washington took abstinence seriously.
"I told one woman I just wanted to be friends and she said she already had enough friends," he said.
Then, there's the hurry-up-and-get-on-with-it sister.
"I dated a very intelligent woman, an attorney, who was OK with celibacy," Washington said. "But after six months, she wanted me to make a commitment. She felt if she knew we were going to marry then she could abstain. I couldn't make that promise."
Washington, a state-certified HIV/AIDS counselor, regularly speaks out about abstinence. He says he does so because it is the best alternative, particularly for African-American couples.
"I think a lot of people--men and women--don't understand the emotional and psychological effects that premarital sex cause besides teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
"When you give your body, you open an area to them that is really sacred. You exchange spirits with that person and that is how you end up with heartaches, pain and jealousy. There are women out here who are cheating just like men. You can't blame one [gender] more than the other. If men stood up and took the initiative and treated women with more respect and respected their bodies, women would want their bodies respected."
Sex shouldn't be part of a dating relationship, Washington said.
"You really truly have to be patient and wait for the right man to come into your life," he said. "There are a lot of men out here who have their pick of the litter. They date a lot of women and they know they are a good catch. They are financially together and a lot of these men are having sex with a lot of different women."
In the abstinence world, a date is a date.
"There are certain things that are off limits if you are not willing to be married," he said. "I can go out with different people to have fun, but I don't expect sex and I don't expect them to take their clothes off."
But for a lot of men, sex is seen as their reward for showing his date a good time.
""I don't expect a woman to have sex with me because I took her out to dinner and spent $100," Washington counters. "That should be normal if I am trying to win her hand and to prove to her I'm the man of her dreams.
On the other side, women who do not have romantic feelings for a man may get involved with him sexually because he is financially solid and drives a nice car, Washington pointed out.
"We have to stop using each other," he said. "One way to do that is to abstain."
Of course, the real question is whether Washington is really one of those brothers on the down-low. He chuckled when I asked, but admitted it wasn't the first time he's been asked about his sexuality.
"People live an alternative lifestyle for sexual liberation, not sexual resignation," he said. "Right now, a lot of people are looking for a cure to AIDS. My issue is, yes, we need drugs that will stop the spread of AIDS, but what about the people who don't have it. They need to abstain. If you can't put a ring on a woman's finger or you don't want to marry the brother, you shouldn't be out there."
As noted in a recent Sun-Times special report on marriage, African Americans marry at a significantly lower rate than other racial groups in the United States. By age 30, 81 percent of white women and 77 percent of Asians and Hispanics will marry, but only 52 percent of black women will do so, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
After talking to Washington, I recalled something my father used to say when his daughters started dating: "Why buy the cow when the milk is free?" Of course, we didn't listen. As things have turned out, fathers knew best after all.
For additional information about next Saturday's panel discussion, please call (312) 567-9900.
I have worked with a lot of people. I never cared who was celibate or not, and didn't particulary feel the need to ask them. I just feel that if it was something important to know, it would only matter to that other person and the one they were in relationship with.
Lizzie Borden took an axe, gave her mother......oh well, you know the story.
No, they don't.
Mistake.
Some men believe intelligent women are freaks, and "real" women are dumb, like cattle----Men who can't stand women who are smarter than they are. Of course, for you, that rules out the population of women with an IQ above 80.
Your screenname is quite ironic.
Six months may seem like a brief period of time to someone who's (cough!) in college, but once you're in your thirties and forties, women and men both tend to come right to the point a lot quicker. Time's a wasting, particularly for women who want to have children. And at that age, experience and wisdom should tell someone long before six months have passed whether or not they're wasting each other's time.
Or toying with someone else's feelings. A mature and virtuous man would not do that.
I agree. Some parents switch partners constantly, they introduce the new catch of the day as your new mommy or daddy. That is confusing and sets a bad example. Your children will lose respect for you.
Parents are people too, you just have to be careful.
If he's not in love by then, he ain't never gonna be.
Don't get me wrong, you could know somebody for years and years BEFORE you fall in love with them, but dating is different because it's courtship. It does raise expectations. At the very least, it raises questions. And she had every right to the answers even earlier.
Even FreeRepublic has many women not worthy of him.
Personally I think I'm too good for the little pompous ass (as well as too old, thank God). I'd never treat a man the way he treated her.
The optimal IQ is the average IQ, 100.
Yes. What's wrong is that he is commitment phobic. As he practically said himself:
"I dated a very intelligent woman, an attorney, who was OK with celibacy," Washington said. "But after six months, she wanted me to make a commitment. She felt if she knew we were going to marry then she could abstain. I couldn't make that promise."
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