A Compromising Position

I have been compromised. Well not recently unless you count the number of times I'm alone in a room with a man. Normally all that's going on is talking and me giving orders since most of these men are in my employ, but nonetheless with all the Regencies I've been reading lately and all the girls I've seen running around camps in clothes that are more scandalous than Lady Caroline Lamb's wetting of her skirts I've been thinking about how many times women today would have been compromised and at what age. My first kiss occurred when I was thirteen and if I was forced to marry him because let's face it, there were witnesses, we were at the May Dance, I would be married to a professional wrestler. Ha! The mistakes we made when we were younger.

I have read that today the average woman kisses 75 men before she gets married. I must admit that I am far behind. I think I'm at 23. I look back at those kisses some innocent and some not and think "If I knew being seen kissing that man would mean I'd have to marry him would I have thought differently....would I have kissed him?" In most cases I'd have to say "No." There were two that I would have actually not minded marrying, but now that I look back at them I could never see myself married to them. Both of these men I knew for quite some time. I dated one for two years and the other for five. I knew them quite well. Can you imagine only knowing the man you would marry for a few weeks during the season? You couldn't really talk alone or just hang out. Everything was chaperoned. Isn't it amazing that there were love matches after all?

My parents have mentioned to me in the past that if arranged marriages between the upperclasses still existed that I would be engaged to a man that I grew up with. I was born exactly one week before he was. The kicker is that although we were friends growing up, we were more competitors and now barely talk. Although for some strange reason we are Facebook friends. Knowing who we would become I'm glad our parents didn't arrange that marriage, but it makes you think.