Imagine, a universe in which people are born with the urge to express their sexuality, and, in my day, believing that you had to put off having children until you graduated from college or trade school.

Many young people aren’t conforming to the old patterns. Young pregnant women are finishing college and both sexes are engaging in sexual activity without fear as long as their contraception works.

Certain religious orders do not allow their church leaders to engage in sexual expression, even though the god that they worship made humans with the capacity to enjoy sexuality. I learned about this firsthand when my husband and I visited Nepal and India some years back.

Women were not allowed to wear skimpy sleeveless garments when visiting temples. Priests of the church were not supposed to look directly at any woman lest they be tempted.

“When will men stop thinking of women only as sex objects,” I thought to myself.

After watching MASH reruns with the chaplin worrying over how people regarded him in informal contacts and having to refrain from intimate fraternizing with the nurses, I don’t think that the life of such a church leader would be easy. On the other hand, one particular male surgeon in the MASH unit thought of nurses as only playthings reserved just for himself alone.

My own sister was a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps and knew about all this firsthand. She was propositioned by many an officer, many of them married. The marriage vows were often overlooked during wartime.

Many times a traveler who was given respite in a village was offered the wives of the village leaders to give them sexual comfort. The women gossiped and chortled amongst themselves when comparing these traveling men with their own husbands.

“A husband would have to be quite sure of himself to offer his wife to a male traveler,” was my thought on the subject.

In early Hawaii, there were sex games in which the female villagers hid in tall grass and any man who found them could have sex with them. In western culture there are married couples who practice what is called open marriage.

I remember when I heard of a group of married couples who had sex parties. Each man would throw his car keys on the floor. Then each man would pick up a different set of keys and could sleep with the woman who said the keys belonged to her husband. (In those days, it was only the husband whose name was on the car title.) I was never involved in this game playing as I, like a swan, mated for life.

Some months ago I asked my husband if he had ever had an affair with any of the women he made friends with during World War II. He was beginning to ponder this question when I stopped him with, “No. Don’t tell me. After all, you came home to me after sending me that ring and the message saying I should consider myself engaged.”

I still have the ring and the knowledge that our marriage lasted for almost 63 years without anything to darken this memory. As I always say, “Why spoil a good thing?”

Georgie Bright Kunkel is a freelance writer who can be reached at gnkunkel@comcast.net or 206-935-8663.