A sad case of warped thinking.

(source: Gawker.com)

There's a rather strange article in the NYT Modern Love column this weekend.

Essentially, a Mormon woman waits to have sex until she is married, but never gets married and at age 35 finally wakes up, realizes that saving sex for marriage doesn't guarantee that marriage will happen, and hauls herself off to Planned Parenthood to be outfitted with an IUD, presumably so she can begin to explore this heretofore uncharted territory.

There are some weird, judgmental statements: one offhand comment about a teenager in the PP waiting room who is "bound for an uncomfortable, humiliating four minutes in the back of a borrowed Chevy Chevelle."  Never mind that a teen seeking birth control is what many would view as responsible, and that 35-year old virgins are plenty weird themselves.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this author.  On the one hand, the piece is a nice reminder of how religious indoctrination can fuck up one's thinking to the point where one deliberately misses out on life's pleasures in exchange for some nebulous concept of "reward."  Her explanation for why she didn't follow traditional Mormon doctrine and get married as early as possible is somewhat flimsy: "leftovers [men who did not marry young] were left over: closeted gay men, porn-addicted virgins, along with the merely awkward, uncompromising and unlucky."  While I don't doubt that SOME of the men she is referring to are indeed unsuitable heterosexual partners, at what point does this self-pitying woman take a look in mirror and ask, "What do I have to offer?"  It seems as though she was waiting for the right relationship to fall into her lap, without any effort or even mild inkling to search beyond the "leftovers."  And if that is the case, then it's is her own damn fault no one wanted her for a partner.  Whiny, oh-pity-me-I'm-such-a-martyr women do not make good companions, and if I were a man I would surely steer clear of someone who publishes such nonsense in a major newspaper.