We had an abstinence educator come in and use the rose visual, asking each person to take a petal from the rose, then at the end saying that each person we had sex with was like giving them a petal from our rose, so by the time it went around the class it was only a sad, barren, lonely stem. I was horrified to think that that’s what I would look or feel like, and certain I wouldn’t want to present that to a life partner either. It was a false, harmful metaphor.