DEAR EMILY,

In the more sedate 1960s, I was working for a market research firm when a fresh convent-school graduate joined the firm and was assigned to be my assistant. I was to oversee field work, and she had to come with me. We’d be out in the field most days and, mostly, I’d give her a ride home.

After some months, I sensed that she was attracted to me. After work one day, we had dinner. When I brought her home, she thanked me and kissed me on the lips before alighting from the car. From then on, we found reasons to work late in the office. I had my room and for any excuse, she’d come to my room. She was not a looker, but she was sexy.

What started as gentle kisses became torrid later on. In short, we became intimate. A girl, barely a year out of convent school and doing those sexual moves to me, a product of an exclusive school for boys. The year was 1969. She left the company eventually to study abroad.

All that time, I was also attracted to someone in charge of research. I was told she was aloof and supercilious, as if no officemate was worthy of her attention. She lived in a posh Makati village. Her father was a high government official. She was a recent graduate of a snobbish convent school.

But my charm seemed to have worked, for we were soon dating and became very intimate. Once, she asked what I wanted and, without finishing the sentence, made her move.

After two intimate relationships with convent school-bred girls, I came to the conclusion that girls, regardless of their high station in society and conservative education, have the same desire for sexual pleasures before marriage as boys. I concluded that it was just natural for girls at that age and starting in their careers to be open to physical intimacies.

The second girl said she had had only one suitor before me and I never tried to find out how intimate their relationship got. Regardless of whether or not that suitor had the same liberties I enjoyed, I eventually married her. I didn’t think I could find a working girl past her 21st birthday whose body had not been touched by a man. I tend to think even a college girl who dated frequently would have also been touched before graduation.—Resigned

What made you think convent-bred girls would be different? To paraphrase Shylock from The “Merchant of Venice,” “If you pricked them, will they not bleed? If you tickled them, will they not not laugh? If you poisoned them, will they not die? And if you wronged them, will they not revenge…?”

Girls, convent-bred or public-educated, will be girls! Same excitement, same stimulation, same desires and pain as the rest! They’re just human, nothing great or humble in that.

Besides, the ’60s was the advent of the freedom that would blow the mind-set of the world forever—hippies, maryjanes, flower-people, the Beatles, miniskirts. It was, most memorably, the “make love, not war” and the “you’ve come a long way, baby” era.

The fact that you married this woman and was not turned off by her past sexual proclivities says a lot about you. You’ve accepted (though you’re surprised) that their convent education was no hindrance to their sexuality, and had the freedom to enjoy that knowledge.

You’d probably have a heart attack when you learn about the unbridled sexuality of the youth of today. It is now as common as shaking hands.

E-mail [email protected] or [email protected]