Dear Dr. Laura, 

Your advice regarding loose women and shack-up honeys is tried and true. 

My teenage years were, out of unfortunate circumstances, quite unsupervised. When I was 12, my dad died of liver cancer, although even by then, I felt very much loved by him. My mom suffered a continuous series of nervous breakdowns and shock treatments. She was ill from the time I was 7 years old until her death when I was 32. During her illness, I was often shuffled off to live at my aunt's house as my dad worked long hours and I had 4 siblings. 

I attended Catholic schools, so my upbringing was geared toward the encouragement of practicing purity when it came to the opposite sex. That meant things like: "don't appear half-naked in public" because guys are "aroused" easier than girls.  "Don't give out" (fondle, etc.) or boys won't respect you.  As for sex, wait until your wedding day, after which you and the man you've grown to love, will get all the experience you want together discovering each other. 

During my teen years, even though my mom was very ill and my dad had died, I kept all of these moral values. What saved me was the idea: if Dad were still alive, I wouldn't want to disappoint him. I took all of this advice, about staying pure, seriously. Many of my girlfriends did not. Some became pregnant. Others had a reputation of being whores. Many of them ALWAYS had a guy, or more than one, on their arm - I did not. 

Something told me that I had it right and that being lady-like would attract the marrying kind when the time was right. As a result, at the age of 25, I DID find a terrific guy who held the same standards as I did about purity in women. We married and had two children. After 20 years of marriage, he died somewhat before his time of stage 4 brain cancer. 

When my daughter was 19 and my son was 22, I again met a great man who respected decency and I conducted myself as a virgin would, albeit I surely was not as a mother of two! After a three-year courtship, we married. We wrote our own wedding vows, and I'll never forget when he said: "Before you came into my life, I had never met anyone like you." Why am I saying all this? Listen to Dr. Laura's warnings, "Why buy the cow when the milk is free? And don't be a shack-up honey." It's all good advice-then and now. Thank you, Dr. Laura, for vouching for decency in our young women, as it brings out the best in the right young men. It was surely a way of life, back then in my teens that served me well to this day. 

Warmly, 

Rosanne