I have been married five years and I have a one year old. My confession is that when I married my husband I did not know him and much less was in love with him. I was seventeen, still in high school and my grandmother was dying of cancer and she told me that her dying wish was to see me married. The groom, he is the grandson of one of her close friends from her church. Little old lady stuff. The old ladies decided that they would push us together and my grandmother used her dying wish to do it.

We got married in a small ceremony at the church and the Pastor officiating asked me about a hundred times if I knew what I was doing. I guess a seventeen year old and a 30 year old man she never saw before sort of went against his better judgement, he has told me that it went against his better judgement, but he married us anyway because I told him I was going to do what my grandmother wanted, get married before she died.

All the time I was dealing with getting married I never once thought about what he was thinking, marrying some school girl he didn't know. Hopefully I was pretty enough for him, because that is all I though, if only I was pretty enough for him. My grandmother told me that the purpose of the veil was to hide the girl's face, in case she wasn't pretty he couldn't back out because once he was married he was married. I didn't need a vail, I think I was pretty enough without one.

He was pretty tall for me, over six feet to my five foot four. I did while we were standing there in front of the Pastor think about the fact that I was going to get sex that night, my wedding night sex. All the dating and making out before wasn't going to be much use, he didn't have to back off, as a matter of fact he had to make sure he did it. So I knew I was going to have sex that night. When I said I Do, in my mind I kissed my virginity good bye.

Sex wasn't bad, he wasn't rough or anything like that. He told me I was his wife and it was his right to consumate our marriage and I should not think anything bad of it. We were in a hotel room by the airport because the next day we were flying to Hawaii. With the neon signs flashing outside the window I took all my clothes off and stood naked for him to see if I was acceptable to him, I thought I was pretty enough but he may have wanted something else. I passed the test and I asked him I was supposed to lay on the bed. His hand as he ran it up my thigh caught my breathe, but I told him to go on and get it over with the sooner the better I didn't think I could do it if it didn't happen right away.

So there wasn't any foreplay, he pushed me on my back and I opened my legs and I guess I was dry because he had to his hand down there before I got wet enough for him to get his business done. No kiss, nothing like that, get his business done, consumate the marriage. We slept in separate beds that night because that room had two beds. In Hawaii I finally slept with him and we had some more consummation sex and it was kind of at the end of the honeymoon that I touched him.

We came back from Hawaii and he took me to live with him and we had this talk about who was going to do what. All my duties were lined out for me, and they were all the duties that I sort of expected but did not want to do. But I did them, bad at first, but got better at it, and he helped me get a plan so that I could do some this day and some that day, but cook every night and once a week we went out. I met some of his friends, most were couples with kids and I told them I was going to have kids. OK so you're going to have kids? I think right now that I must have looked like I was trying too hard. I was accepted, like accepting a little sister that is really way too young to be out that late at night.

In my senior year in college I had my kid, the first of several yet to be conceived. My grandmother is not with us, but her friends of church tell me that when they pray for her they let her know that I am married and they are looking after me. Ours was an arranged marriage in every way, I met him one week before I got married, but my grandma and his grandma knew that they could match us up and they did.