You are assuming that having a large number of sexual partners automatically addresses hangups, and that if you had had that number, you wouldn’t have hangups now. That might be true, in a way - you would probably have different hangups, but probably not fewer.
Having a lot of different partners isn’t the point. You can address your hangups now, whatever they happen to be, just as effectively now as you could as a teen-ager - probably more so. But finding a dozen different women to have sex with isn’t going to do it.
It sounds to me like your big issue is that you are worried about something that is really tangential to your happiness. “Just don’t worry about it” is pretty glib and facile, but it really addresses something. If you find someone to whom you are attracted, it won’t matter if you were a virgin until you were 25 or if you had an affair with your kindergarten teacher. Think about that person now - if she is the kind of person to have sex with, she won’t care, and neither need you be. “Never apologize, never explain”.
Well, back of the envelope math says that, even if you’re in the top 33% of the 40-44 male age bracket (per the Slate calculator), that still puts you in the company of around 3.5 million men in the United States. So you’re statistically above the norm but hardly a unicorn.
But if you remove all the people who waited until marriage (or some other commitment point - like an engagement), or choose not to have sex ever - your numbers probably jump pretty dramatically pretty quickly. If you then remove people who married young - say before 23 - but limited yourself to the 30 and under set, you’d get a different profile again. It would be really interesting to see the numbers when you remove the 0s and 1s as a different population.
And Tacos isn’t comparing himself to guys like Shodan, who are perfectly happy to wait until marriage and don’t value casual sex. Nor is he comparing himself to a guy who is engaged and about to commit to sex with one person for life.
(I’m making no judgment on either, just saying that I suspect the stats as presented are a bad measurement for what Tacos is comparing himself to. And as a judgment call, he shouldn’t be comparing himself at all to anyone, for all the reasons already stated in this thread and about a gazillion others.)
You know, it’s not like you need Malcolm Gladwellian 10,000 hours of fucking to become halfway decent at putting penis to vagina.
I’d say there are actually a couple of downsides to losing your virginity later in life:
One is the opportunity to have sex with teenage girls without being creepy.
The other is that sex is somewhat of a developmental and social milestone. If you delay it significantly beyond the bounds of what is considered “normal” or “typical”, you can build it up in your head as too much of a “BIG DEAL”. Which is kind of what we are seeing with the OP.
If the OP wants to “make up for lost time” or whatever, there are certainly plenty of dating sites and apps like Tinder to…uh…practice your craft.
The idea that you would have gotten over your sexual hangups if only you could have had wild carefree promiscuous sex as a teenager is wildly mistaken.
Again, you’ve got the causation completely backwards. Yeah, there are lots of people who had enjoyable varied sex lives when they were younger, and now that they’re older they still have enjoyable sex lives. That’s not because the early sex cured them of their hangups. It’s because they didn’t have them in the first place.
You’ve got some problems for sure. “If I could have convinced Jessica to have sex with me when I was 16 then I would have been more confident and so I could have had sex with Heather and Brittney at 17 and then I would have been popular and more confident and I would have aced my SATs and gotten into a good college where I would have constant sex with all the girls there and that would have increased my confidence even more and I would have gotten better grades and landed a great job right out of college where I would have sex with all the women in the office while making a great salary and by the time I was 25 I’d be a millionaire and own a mansion and a yacht.”
That’s a delusional story to be telling yourself. It wouldn’t have happened that way, even if you could have had sex with Jessica from algebra class.
I didn’t mean to imply that you were. Just saying that your experience is outside the average but common enough that there’s no real reason for it to seem weird or strange especially to you or your peer group.
Eh, they might or they might not. Anecdotes and all that but I can’t say I remember anyone from my college (or shortly after) days intentionally saving themselves for marriage. They no doubt exist but I assume they make up the far end of the curve just as super popular people with a different partner nightly make up the other extreme end. Neither is very reflective of the norm.
All depends on your peer group, I suppose. I hung out with an Evangelical Christian group for a while when I was in college, and without exception, they would have said that they had no intention of having sex before their wedding nights (because, frankly, any other answer would have been socially unacceptable within that group). Now, how many of them stuck to that is another question, entirely.
I don’t remember anyone I know (male or female) mentioning that they “intentionally saved themselves for marriage”. But that’s not the only thing will potentially bring the numbers down - just change Dangerosa’s example a little bit. Eliminate the one night stands, maybe. Or rather than getting involved with the future spouse at 30 and getting married at 34, maybe the person met the future spouse at 21 and got married at 26. What are the chances that that person has had more than 15 partners?
I absolutely know that my experience is not representative - but I know at least four couples who got married in their mid-to late twenties who originally got together when at least one of the couple was around 16. Even if there was no intention to wait until marriage ( and I’d be surprised if any of them did wait) , I’d bet a large sum of money that at least 4 of the people have had only the one partner and none of the others got anywhere near 10.
I wouldn’t let that worry you. I didn’t exactly have girls chasing after me eager to have sex with me in high school, or at least I didn’t notice. I didn’t lose my virginity until 22 and I’ve definitely made up for it since then.
I think you’re way overthinking this. Everyone’s experience is different, you may have a late start but you’re still in the game. You’ve got to have confidence, not worry, and above all just be cool and have fun. Sex is a great thing if you have chemistry with your partner. It may take several tries to find someone with good chemistry. Just remember, you’re there to have fun. If it’s not fun then talk about it with your partner or move on.
The general trend is for younger people to be having less sex than they used to. Not really due to religious reasons or awaiting commitments per se but likely for various other social factors such as moving out of their parents’ home later, prioritizing careers/education over dating/hook-ups, fear of sexual assault (or accusations of assault), pregnancy/STD concerns, less time spent socializing in person vs via social media, etc. It’s not a bunch of Promise Ring owners pulling the numbers down, younger people as a general group just aren’t doin’ it like they used to.
I have two teenagers and I think that is very true. My daughter is asexual, my son doesn’t want the bother of a girlfriend and isn’t willing to make the trade (although I suspect he might hook up once in a while)
(On the other hand, my daughter had a group of friends her sophomore year that were going at it like bunnies…)
On your question, I wouldn’t worry about it. Seek sex-positive forums and venues, like Dan Savage’s column “Savage Love”. Venues doesn’t mean a sex club, it just means be around people who are open minded about their sexuality and aren’t afraid to explore things in a respectful, safe, and caring manner. It can also help you view sex separately from being in a relationship, since they’re both important. I’d frame it as intimacy, since that doesn’t require sex and is more about being present, and caring about companions as total human beings, not just bodies.
Sometimes people with a lot of partners have hangups, too. And sometimes we can laugh about our hangups with our lovers, who have their own fears.
Ambivalid and I (we only met 3 yrs ago) both did not have sex until age 19. I would think that there’s probably something to be said for the confidence and social integration associated with a person who has sex at age 15-17, but at the same time, I do not necessarily think it’s a mark of shame to wait.
I don’t think the sex itself and whether you choose to have it means as much as the maturity, adaptability, and successfulness of the person as a whole. As in, I think there’s a good chance you can still be a totally functional person and not have had sex at age 15.
Personally, I see the person who had sex at age 15 not having benefitted from the sex as much as the sex is the mark of a certain level of maturity.
Well I feel loved and listened to haha. 17. 17 years old was when I lost my virginity. It’s not as if I haven’t mentioned that a time or two.
ETA: In hindsight, I wish I’d waited. It was horrible, horrible sex with a partner I was ashamed to admit to being with. And we were both drunk. Just bad.
Maybe. Maybe you’d have some new ones instead, like explaining that you have Hep C to every potential sexual partner or a child support payment. Don’t get me wrong, sex can be great, but there are real potential downsides to it as well, which is why we don’t endorse kids doing it.
Let me tell you a story. After my marriage fell apart, I had a need for money, so I was an idiot and decided to start dealing cocaine again. One of the “benefits” of being a cocaine dealer is that you will get women offering to sleep with you in exchange for cocaine. I accepted a lot of those offers, and I ended up with way, way more sexual hangups after that than I had before. When I quit dealing and most of the women disappeared … even knowing it was coming and why, that one hurt deep, and it tripped me up for a long time.
Trust me, It’s never about the numbers, unless you make it about them. If you can’t shake that thought, I sincerely recommend finding a therapist who you relate to and working on why.
It totally depends on the people you hung out with. My first was at 16 and it was horrible. My next girlfriend was at 17 and she was 20 but wouldn’t sleep with me until we got married because she had and lost a kid already. So, I’m sexually cursed already. The girls back in the 80’s were cute and tight but the worst sex ever was all the way until my 30’s except for that 40 year old that already had a kid too when I was 23. Anyway, every one has their own beliefs, regrets and questions. I look back a 40 partners and still think things could have been better. I should have banged that girl at 10 and 12 and 14 that begged me. But I didn’t. Having the opportunity and knowing I was that cute says something.
So, yeah. There’s a psychological effect on any decision you make in life. You’ve now seen lots of stories and we all wonder what it would be like if we had done something different. The hardest thing in life is realizing there’s a future instead of living in the past because there is no future. Ahhh…but some of the memories are great!
