The Road Less Traveled.
Welcome to The Preppy Chronicles. A fact that I find to be of considerable annoyance is that it seems of late all the articles that I write and post are not the ones that I start out to write.
( Please bear with me if this post seems a little on the jumbled side. )
This is about sex, religion and being human.
I want to be abundantly clear, I have mixed feelings about all three of these, sex, religion and being a human. I find myself constrained to write about things taught to me when I was a child, by very well-meaning people, but these things have caused me to look at the world with a slant that has controlled EVERY relationship in my life.
It was the year 1968, I was six years old. The prevailing theme in my church culture then and for many years to come, was that sex was only for procreation and that any sexual contact outside the bonds of marriage was SIN.
This is a lot to take in at 6. This is when I as an unwitting eager to learn little boy, was victimized by a thought process, and by my religion. My religion had been hijacked as well as my childhood.
There is an axiom which states: We are only as sick as our secrets. The things that you are about to read, I have told no one up till now.
The knowledge that I had been a victim of my thinking for over 40 years came as quite a surprise.
As WASPs, we are taught that emotions are not to be shown and that feelings are the devils work. Thus, as a tribe we do not emote and when we do it is not a pretty sight. Like all great train wrecks, people cannot help but stare. This has little to do with the subject except, we are taught that we are above these petty things. I also needed to take a breath before I write the rest.
The result of this thought process and the result of growing into a teen and having almost every thought be about sex. I never learned about what a healthy relationship was. In our home sex education consisted of, as a family, sitting down and watching the movie “ The Summer of Forty-two ” At some point in the future, I decided that I would not have sex until marriage. I have never understood the logic that sex outside marriage was a sin and evil then all at once with a piece of paper and a few words you were encouraged to go to it like rabbits. I do believe in marriage. I also believe that sex within marriage gets better over time.
Nevertheless, the decision was made, but as time passed I amended the decision to read that: I would not marry until the age of 29. My thinking was that I should be mature enough at that age to handle a marriage relationship. Now, let me say that I remained a virgin until I was 29, yet I still remained unmarried. With my lifestyle, I was afraid that I might die not ever having sex.
What took place next was not my proudest moment in life. I will not go into any great detail, let me just say that I have never have sex or engaged in sexual activity with anyone that I have loved or was in love with. So… When I share with you that I have been a victim of my belief system this is what I mean, I have lived a life of emptiness, guilt and shame.
I have always attracted women that tend to use me. I have told myself that was OK, because I was living a life in sin and that is what I deserved. The shame is overwhelming. Sex without love is empty and lonely. The more that you try to fill that hole the bigger and deeper that hole becomes until the ache and pain is all that defines you.
I no longer wish to be a victim.
What is the solution?
“ From the moment, I fell down that rabbit hole, I’ve been told what I must do and who I must be. I’ve been shrunk, stretched, scratched and stuffed into a tea-pot. I’ve been accused of being Alice and of not being Alice, but this is my dream, I’ll decide where it goes from here ….
I make the path.” Now here is the kicker: “ Alice, you cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours because when you step out to face that creäture you will step out alone.”
In the past few years, I have stepped out and faced that creäture many times and I will do it again. I will no longer be a victim to my thoughts and beliefs. Rather, I will fight, and I will win. I win by admitting that I am powerless over my old patterns of thought and beliefs, and that by turning it over to God and trusting that He will give me the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know what only He can change in me.
I believe that I am a Spiritual being on a Human journey and that I need to embrace my humanness. Will this change take place over night ? No, but I believe, that with a bit of time, some work, I will be able to have a healthy relationship and one day be able to say with pride that I am not just having sex with the woman I love, but with whom am in love with, and that our relationship is healthy as well as Spiritual.
Until next time.
Always, Bumby
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Hummmmm, I applaud you. This post embodies what blogging is all about. Thank you for sharing the darkest parts of yourself. You are a very courageous man. What I want to leave with you is this my friend, regret is useless fodder but repentance is clear understanding of who you are. In the fathers eyes love/hate, good/bad, joy/sorrow are all the same. Life is like a coin with it’s heads and tails. They are equally important in making up that coin. You, I and everyone are that coin. There is no good or bad essentially in our learning process. The sin is the ignorance in the self and lack of clarity. Rejoice in the goodness that GOD has created in you and discard anything else that isn’t working for you anymore. I think the Christ said it best, “go and sin no more.”
Thank you for your words they mean a lot to me and I will take them to heart. This is only the beginning.
This is also the first post in the new series on Sex and The Preppy. Not quite what I thought the first post would look like, but I am glad to have this be a part of the whole body of work. I will keep all informed as to my progress in healing and resolving this important issue in my life. And if you pray, please send one up for me.
Thanks.
Wow… moving… touching… thought-provoking… I have so many thoughts going through my head right now. I cannot comment here for what is going on in my personal life at the moment — I think you know — but will organize my thoughts and share them privately.
Meantime… I will share with you that the newer, older (not older than you though!) and wiser me is no longer afraid to go after what she wants. I am not happy at the end of the day if I do not follow my head and my heart. I will not live my life with regrets. I will not sit back and watch life pass me by. I make an effort to truly live my life every day. I no longer feel guilty about doing things that please me.
Jessica, thank you and I do understand. For me this part of the journey has just begun. When I read the responses I know that I have gone through this for a reason. LOL I am not that old:)
Along with everything that seems to be developing within this particular subject material, all your viewpoints are generally relatively refreshing. Nonetheless, I am sorry, because I can not subscribe to your whole strategy, all be it radical none the less. It seems to everyone that your comments are generally not entirely justified and in fact you are generally yourself not really entirely confident of the point. In any event I did enjoy looking at it.
Thank you for your candor, as I move through this process I hope that you will come to see that in my mind, my comments are entirely justified.
[...] stunned as the tears flowed. In between weeping and a gut wrenching wale, I wrote the first post. The Road Less Traveled.Through-out the next set of posts, I began to explore the deep history of my roots.My family came [...]