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First, because my first name is Valentine, I want to wish all of you a happy Valentine’s Day. As I was thinking about today, I found myself looking back over the times when I was dating. Times have certainly changed. What I met my first wife back in 1963, sex before marriage was a no-no. The reason was the fear of pregnancy. The only reliable form of birth control was condoms. Condoms were not openly displayed in drugstores and you had asked the pharmacist for them. If you are young or just looked young, you would always get a lecture from the pharmacist. You avoided drugstores like the plague. The other places you could buy condoms were dispensers you found in the restrooms of bars, some restaurants, and many gas stations. Those could often prove unreliable because they were cheaply made or they had been in the dispensers so long the rubber was falling apart from age. By the time I started dating after the death of my first wife, things had changed because of the pill. Sex before marriage had become a yes-yes. So you don’t have to do the math, I should explain that I was in my mid-20s and dating women my age. One of my very first dates made the yes-yes fact very clear. I was saying good-night to a woman I had had a very enjoyable evening with when she started to cry. She thought I found her unattractive or in some other way undesirable because we were not going to have sex. I explained that I was just starting dating again. I told her I was operating on the old no-no rule. She explained the new rules to me. I think it was a rather unique time. Women suddenly felt free to engage in sex without the fear of pregnancy. I’m not sure what the rules are for dating and sex are today because later this year I will have been married for 50 years. If you’d like to pass along your experience in dating, you can reply to this post or use “Contact Me” page here on the site for privacy.