Yes, this has been an issue for awhile. It seems to be particularly with regard to some purchases but not others....I assume because of how some are outsourced, even if the website doesn't say it's a third party seller. I spent a fair amount of time looking into it last year, and the consensus was for some things, there simply isn't any recourse.

Paul is also not necessarily a great role model because he very much believed that the world was ending VERY VERY soon. Marriage and procreation is of far less importance if you genuinely believe the Second Coming is likely to be next week, or even within the next couple years. I really feel like Paul is radically misunderstood by both evangelical and progressive Christians.

I've been thinking about end game on this. I feel like we've been very careful. We've been far more careful than almost anyone I know in real life, although by the standards of folks on the board, I really am not. Other than a brief three week period in June, we've only done take out or outdoor dining. We've worn masks when indoors with anyone, with only a couple exceptions: 1) when we visit with my in laws and eat with them a couple times a week, and 2) when my youngest child socializes with a small group of friends, all of whom are vaccinated. Our exposure will increase dramatically next week when my kids return to in person school, and I won't lie, I am pretty anxious about that, but for academic, social, and emotional reasons, I think they very much need to go. I do figure we are all likely to contract covid at some point. I trust that vaccination is likely to ameliorate the risk to a large degree, and we will get boosters when it is our turn to do so. Other than travel and things like theater and movies, we are mostly living life normally, just with masks. We don't have a high risk lifestyle, and I definitely have more anxiety over doing what needs to be done. But we're going to medical appointments and picking up books from the library and take out from restaurants and doing in person grocery shopping and what not.

Wait, they seriously wouldn't be stuck on the side of the volcano? Would they???? What will happen if they can't get out?

Yes. But I've had issues off and on all week. Today might be worse though.

Oh yeah. We've been clear about that. And honestly, I do not think either of my kids are heterosexual. But still. Knowledge is important for self protection.

Yeah, I do not think their situation is typical. I think it was definitely in a "those babies were definitely meant to be" situation. But two forms of birth control is a good rule. In our marriage, we just rigorously, 100% of the time, no exceptions ever used one mostly (except for a period of time when finances made pregnancy a super duper bad idea). But yeah. Astronomical.

I don't disagree, but as someone with a friend whose husband had had a vasectomy (with the testing afterwards), was taking birth control pills to regulate her period, AND was using condoms (don't know reason for that one) and still got pregnant with twins, I feel like it's safer to use multiple forms of birth control.

My husband is on the board of Asylum Seekers for our town. (Calling it a board is kind of overstating it a bit. It's Mike, Herb, and one other guy who pretty much do all the asylum seekers stuff as an offshoot of the Refugee Partnership.) Just got word that we are getting 9 Afghan families. So, that's good. Now to try to find them housing....

Oh yeah. I totally AGREE with it. I just think that would be a sucky situation. But y'all are definitely, 100% doing the right thing!

Eh, I bought them for my sister (who was 16), my god daughter, and the 74 year old woman from church who was complaining about her husband's lack of ardor.

And also, especially when people have waited on marriage to have sex, the wedding night is sometimes a bit of a disaster. There's so much pressure and they don't know what they want/ need. It sets up unrealistic expectations that are very painful.

I agree with this, but man, I feel really sorry for anyone whose power goes out or whose major appliance (like refrigerator) dies, or who has a plumbing leak or other major disaster.

Maybe as a spin off to a spin off....what do you teach your kids about m*sturb*tion? I feel like it's an important way to get to know yourself, and I have offered to purchase aids for my kids. Neither has taken me up on it, though.

Why?

When your finances are completely intertwined with someone else, you are vulnerable in a way that I think is scarier than if you're just having sex. You really don't know people for whom sex is just something that feels good and doesn't have a huge emotional connection? It's not that way for me, but I've definitely known folks who did not ascribe much more meaning to sex than they would to eating a nice meal. It's not what I want for my kids....I'm kind of agnostic on the waiting for marriage topic, but I don't want sex to be casual for them. But I've definitely known more than a few people like that, and they aren't bad people or anything.

Yeah, I'll be honest, Bill Clinton really expanded my worldview on that topic..... Questions, indeed!

That is such a huge issue.

I have pretty limited life experience on this topic, but I'm not sure that I agree that sex is the most intimate/ vulnerable you can be. I think sex can be (not that it always is) just a purely physical thing. I think emotional and financial intimacy is in many ways more vulnerable.

You are definitely not. And I have also heard the term before, and I find it horrifying.

This was never winnable, and it was even less winnable when we also invaded Iraq. I kinda can see why we went after Osama Bin Laden, but staying after that seemed increasingly counter productive. And a very difficult situation occurred when the former president abruptly withdrew so many soldiers that it made it basically impossible to hold the country even long enough to get our people and allies out. Reliance on contractors and lack of coherent strategy made it even less effective over the years. But at this point, after what we've done to our allies in both Syria and now Afghanistan, why does the US even have allies anymore? Why would ANYONE on the ground trust us? Why would anyone help us? We are completely and totally untrustworthy. That seems incredibly counter-productive from the standpoint of our own national self interest. I am horrified for what is happening to the people in Afghanistan, and I am worried about how people who fought/ spent time there are doing. Moral injury was already a concern, but now to have it be pointless as well is just.....really, really sucky.

I didn't grow up exactly in the bosom of classical evangelicalism, but I certainly grew up AROUND it, attending a very conservative United Methodist church in the South at the height of the purity movement. My public school's sex education involved cheerleaders doing cheers about just saying no to sex and lots of analogies that sex before marriage turned you into used chewing gum that nobody would want and that you'd be gross. So I was personally pretty committed to the whole no sex before marriage. And honestly, I think that was way less than ideal and that there are things that would have been good to know about myself before I got married, though it's possible if I had known them that I might not have gotten married, and that would have been sad. My kids are 16 and 17, and I've never been really comfortable with what to tell them about sex before marriage. I've always said that contraception fails and that our family is REALLY fertile, and you want at least two methods if you're having heterosexual sex. I've always said that I think there is real value in chastity before marriage but that it's not an unambiguous good and that it's very easy to turn virginity into an idol. And that I think that there are so many other things that are so much more important in a relationship than virginity, like being ready and having the skills to forge a good marriage. But when we're talking about early marriage, your stance on sex before marriage obviously makes a big difference. It's one thing to ask kids to wait to have sex till they are 22. It's another thing to ask them to wait until they are 28. How important do you guys think waiting on sex for marriage is?

As someone who married at barely 22, to someone who was even more freshly 22, I totally agree that building a healthy reciprocal relationship takes a lot of practice. But I think there is something to be said for getting that practice TOGETHER. We had a lot of hard things to confront and deal with early in our marriage, even after having dated for four years before marriage, and some of them were BECAUSE we had committed to chastity before marriage. (Honestly, my experiences with chastity before marriage have led me to definitely think that is much less valuable than I did when I was 22 and getting married.) But we learned together what makes for a good marriage for US. I'm not entirely sure that the things that make our marriage so good and so strong would apply in the same way to relationships with other people. We learned together what each other values. We learned together what the other person needs. We learned together how to give and take in a way that is mutual. We learned together that neither one of us can serve the other one's entire social and emotional needs. I think there is value in doing that formative growing up TOGETHER. Neither one of us got set in our own ways of doing things without the other. And while people do change a lot through their mid 20's, I certainly have changed a lot since then. Every ten years or so, we realize that each of us have changed in different ways, and we have to practice accommodating our marriage to the new people that we have become. I think it reminds us that love, and marriage, is not a one time choice or decision. Marriage is a decision we have to make anew maybe not every day, but certainly every few years. I certainly don't think this is the only way to build a marriage, or necessarily even the best way for everyone. In a whole lot of ways, I think our marriage is pretty atypical. But it's strong, and it works for us. There is beauty and strength and value to marrying later in life, after having had time growing up separately and doing your own individual adventures. And there is beauty and strength and value to marrying younger and growing together.

I'm generally pretty laid back, but this would be a no for me.

Actually, I kinda did think about this. I knew I wanted to get married/ have a life partner, and I knew that I wanted to have children. I deliberately made the decision (for myself) that I was not interested in dating until I was close to a position in life when marriage made sense. So I did not date in high school. I spent a lot of time thinking about what qualities made for a good marriage and what qualities were important to me in a partner. And in college, I didn't exactly start dating to look for a marriage partner exactly, but I definitely kept that in mind and evaluated people according to my list before I started to date. It was not a particularly romantic approach to marriage, but Mike and I got married right after we graduated from college, and we've been married for 23 years now.