This question may possibly belong in Great Debates, if so please move it and I apologize.
As a Male, in my personal experience, I have never had a single women who would share confidences about losing her virginity that without exception what they tell me has varied from unpleasant to nightmarish. Primarily this involves the pain and discomfort of tearing of the hymen. Now it is possible that my sample is badly biased, but it is fairly large (around 50 women) which makes me suspicious that it is completely without merit. If it’s true, and if women talk to other women about these things, I would assume they communicate this information. My question (primarily to women obviously) is: is my supposition right? and What do women think about it ahead of time? Do they know to make preparations of any kind? I believe this is one of those secrets the sexes keep from each other, maybe we can come up with a comparable ‘male’ secret I can rat out in payment.
I’m sorry, what is your first question? Whether losing your hymen hurts? Yeah, it does, that isn’t exactly a well-kept secret.
As for the second, the only preparation I’ve ever heard of is of two kinds: some women try to find a first partner who seems like he won’t be a total asshole, others go for “since it’s going to suck anyway, I’ll just do my best to get rid of it as soon as possible and then start looking for guys who aren’t assholes.”
I know it hurts, my question is are womens first sexual experiences as universally unpleasant as my sample indicates, and how big a role the pain plays in that.
I do not know one woman who said the first time was anything but mildly unpleasant to terribly painful. I don’t believe there are many women that enjoy their first time no matter how much they love their partner or how gentle is tries to be.
I think the first time is also often unpleasant because the woman often feels self-conscious, awkward, insecure, embarrassed and suffers from severe performance anxiety. Add to that an inexperienced partner (which is fairly common, with good reason), and it’s no wonder that it is rarely a memory that fulfills what are probably overly romanticized expectations. Furthermore, while men may feel the same degree of self-conscious performance anxiety, one way or another they probably end the encounter with an orgasm, which elevates the whole experience. Women often don’t.
With all these issues going on, the physical tearing of the hymen is really a pretty minor thing. Lots of women don’t have one by the time they have sex: either they never had a substantial one, or they’ve stretched/broken it already through tampon use, “everything but” play, or exercise. If you are leading up to suggesting that doctors break girls’ hymens in order to improve their first sexual experience, I don’t, honestly, think that would make that big of a difference.
From my scientific sample of two hymens ruptures I can say that its fiftey-fiftey as to whether it hurt or not. The one said it was unpleasant, but not overly painfull while the other broke down, cried and thanked me. YMMV.
Alas, I know that I shall never get another chance to get a third opinion first hand.
If you are seriously claiming to have had sex with (around 50) virgins, I think you must have started when you (and they) were around ten years old. In other words, I don’t believe you.
Not unpleasant. Awkward, fer sure. I rode bikes and horse a lot and used tampons, so that may have contributed to it not being particularly painful or unpleasant.
I was young, he was not, and it hurt like hell, at first–just the hymen-breaking part. Once we got past that point, the actual thrusting felt pretty good. No bleeding in my case. No orgasm either. In fact, I had sex for several years with a couple different partners before I figured out how to reach orgasm. It’s not as much a reflex as guys might think. I think that may be the main factor in the first time being relatively unpleasant: there’s no payoff at the end.
Minor pain, on par with being pinched rather hard, but it didn’t last very long.
Thankfully only minor bleeding as well.
I’m going to agree with Manda JO that it’s the whole experience that can be stressful.
New lover, first lover, do I look ugly naked, am I doing this right, will I get pregnant, whatthehellamIdoing, doesthisreallyhurtasbadastheysayitwill?
You know? It’s really kind of hard to type without spaces.
If a young woman is particularly anxious about the pain associated with breaking her hymen, her gynecologist can snip it during a routine pelvic exam. It’s not really that big of a deal.
I don’t know that my friends and I ever discussed the hymen breaking part very specifically, but we’ve certainly shared stories about our first times, and most of them were pretty “meh”. A few were downright horrific, but those were the rapes, so I don’t think it was the hymen so much as the force and terror of rape.
“That’s IT?” is a pretty common refrain from young women. We older and wiser ones just nod and smile and wait for them to discover the orgasm in their own time.
Slight pain (memory faded with time, but I think the “strong pinch” mentioned upthread was probably accurate), some bleeding.
The sex was still good, though. I mean, if I accidentally slam my head into the headboard or the wall now, that hurts, too, but it doesn’t mean I hop out of bed and cry for the rest of the night.
TL;DR: “part of it was painful” != “all of it was bad”
I remember a girlfriend I had in college; I went there somewhat late, so she was mature but rather small. She was “saving herself”, so we didn’t get very far. But, my fingers are 3/4-inch diameter and 2 would be a fairly thick combination but she never made any suggestion of discomfort during any of our relationship - rather, the contrary. Anyway, I ran into her a while after her wedding several years later. I observed that “Oh, you wore white” and she said “Of course!” so I asked if it hurt and she said “It hurt like hell!”. Either she was into telling white (?) lies or was self-delusional or it was a self-fulfilling expectation… but from what I know she should not have hurt. So what your female friends tell you face-to-face as a male may not be the most reliable indicator.
Of course, she’d had several doctor exams; and used tampons. OTOH, I heard second-hand from a female about another co-worker who went to the doctor needing an internal exam. It probably didn’t occur to the (male) doctor a good-looking 22-yo would still be a virgin, and she had a mometary stinging pain and a bit of bleeding… Oops.
Well, you may not know as much as you think you do. The hymen can be somewhat elastic and can be perforated without totally tearing, and different kinds of penetration can have different results. The old “why is virginity like a balloon, one prick and it’s gone” joke may be how a lot of guys imagine the piercing of the hymen, but it isn’t necessarily accurate.
I remember that the first time I used a tampon I tore my hymen and it hurt, and then the first time I had intercourse it tore again, and bled considerably. Hell, some women have actually had repeated intercourse and become pregnant without having the hymen fully opened until the baby’s head comes down the birth canal.
So I don’t think you have any a priori reason to assume that a woman is lying to you about her hymen just because you think “she should not have hurt”.
I can say that its fiftey-fiftey as to whether it hurt or not. The one said it was unpleasant, but not overly painfull while the other broke down, cried and thanked me. 
YMMV.
