Dating and Falling in Love | Page 7

amazed. You really
didn't press at all. You were actually
protecting my right not to be pressured or
influenced to have sex. I just loved you for it.
And something you did in line with this that
really made a huge impression on me that
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caused me to fall in love with you even more,
was on that Christmas eve, you sent a
courier to my door with a cassette tape of you
telling me how you felt about the subject. It
was about a good 45 minute-long tape
cassette. I still have the tape. Do you
remember what you said on that tape?

SCOTT: I sure do. It cost me over a hundred
dollars to have it delivered, because it was
Christmas Eve. In our dating, we were really
intimate and close with each other, and I
think we were rapidly approaching the issue
of marriage and commitment, as we felt so
close to each other. But you were really
concerned about the issue of losing your
independence, and that whole issue of your
own identity. I was very sensitive to that and
empathetic about it. It came up on this issue
of, "When do we make love? I mean, there's
just so much love flowing here!”

I decided that because I wanted to honor your
womanhood and to honor your independence,
that I wanted to express this more in depth in
a tape so you could listen to it more than
once. I don't remember all the things I said,
but it was about 45 minutes, mostly just
speaking directly to you about the subject so
you would feel assured there was no
pressure.

I knew you were going to be driving to a
friend's house for this holiday, and I wanted
the tape to arrive for your drive. I wanted you
to know that this was really an issue of
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equality. It was really an issue of honoring
who you were, and that our relationship, I
felt, would be eternal. I really loved you and
wanted you to feel relaxed and happy and
free and loving yourself with all of your
dignity and self respect. I said that in as
many ways as I could so that you wouldn't
feel any sense of pressure. I felt so much love
in my heart. I wanted to be closer to you,
really in all ways - spiritually and as a
couple. But I realized that the best way to get
closer to you was to honor our friendship,
and to let it keep growing so that this was
going at the pace of the slowest person.

SHANNON: I cannot tell you how deeply that
impressed me and how much I loved you for
it. And it's the first time I ever felt so
tremendously honored in my womanhood.
No man that I’ve ever dated has ever honored
me so greatly.

SCOTT: Well, really let's be honest about this
whole issue. Whenever you have sex when
you're dating, this changes the equation from
friendship to a whole new thing. And really,
the issues here are not, "Is having sex
enjoyable?" For some, the issue may be, "Is
this a moral issue?" The real question is, “Is
it good for the relationship? Is it good for your
dignity, for your self-respect?” We want to be
true to ourselves. We want to look back
without any regrets. We just want to have a
sense of freedom. Freedom and love really
should be synonymous. We want to be able
to feel honored and respected by each other.
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So really the ultimate love is not sex, the
ultimate love is honoring each other.

The 5th stage of dating and falling in love is
taking each other higher. It's so easy to
make the mistake of taking each other for
granted, rather than taking each other
higher. I remember when we started dating
each other, we would get out those yellow
ledger pads, and you'd be saying things and
I'd be writing down what you said, and you'd
be writing down things, because we really
honored and respected what we were learning
from each other. We were inspired and
wanted to know what was in each other's
hearts.

SHANNON: Scott, who ever heard of going on
a date and taking notes on everything each
other is saying? It was hilarious.

SCOTT: That's what happened, and we did
laugh about it, but we were really going into
the substance of who each of us was. As we
went