Dinner tonight with Mark--wine and tapas, yum! I chose the restaurant and he l-o-v-e-d it. He suggested going out again Friday. Then he drove me home and kissed me goodnight. I was home in my pajamas by 9:00.

This is a whole different thing for me. I have never dated a guy who wasn't all over me by the third date. This is not a complaint, not by a long shot, because it fits rather well into my plan, which is to postpone having sex until I feel ready.

In the past I've had a very difficult time exercising any self-restraint when it comes to sex. I don't know what "ready" will feel like, because I don't think I've ever waited until I was truly ready. Getting physical always felt like it enhanced the closeness and deepened the relationship, but I don't think it ever really did either of those things. Looking back, I see that whenever I was uncomfortable with the uncertainty of getting to know someone and wondering whether something might develop, I would have sex with him as a way of trying to dispel the uncertainty. Then I would find myself involved emotionally in a way that he wasn't, and then I would get my heart broken. No matter what I thought, I was never capable of having sex and treating it as a casual event.

So now I've met this nice, responsible guy who hasn't even hinted at more than innocent kissing, and all I can do is live with the uncertainty that used to trigger my impulse to get things going. Uncertainty is hard for me, so hard that right now my throat aches and my stomach is tight. Can I do this?

I wondered what was up when I read my weekly horoscope: You can't just do what you used to do. You can't just go on applying the same old formulae, no matter how successful it used to be for you. You can't stay stuck-in-a-rut. You can't go round and round in the same old circles. You can't... well, you can't do what I am doing here. You can't jut keep repeating yourself or playing out endless variations of the same old theme. Either you chase change or change chases you. It is always more pleasant to catch than to be caught. You are breaking down barriers now. You are entering new realms. That's nothing to fear.

Okay. Maybe I can do this.

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