I certainly regret that I did with it certain people. That’s vrey different form regretting all of them, of course.
What she said. 
The more you do something the better you get at it. (presumably) And you want to be the absolute best you can be for your spouse/partner, right? So why wouldn’t you make sure to have experience with sex first so you can really show them a good time?
So no, I have no regrets about my sexual past before I met my man. I figure it just makes me that much better at it for our mutual pleasure.
I don’t regret the postmarital sex either.
Very interesting. But it still begs the question, if young people were having intellectual discussions prior to marriage, why do they bother getting married?
And, as far as if they married and then discovered they were intellectually incompatible, the love between them, and the patience it took to wait until then, would indicate the ability to work out those differences. Besides, it’s not like they have had intellectual discussions with other people to which they can compare and say “Shit, my spouse’s capacity for intellectual discussion is weak compared to previous dating partners.” Having nothing else to compare it to would make those intellectual discussions much more rich and enjoyable. You would only have knowledge of two options, intellectual discussions with spouse and no intellectual discussion. Perhaps your spouse could be better, but when you have no other reference point, you’re just delighted to have someone with whom you are sexually compatible and can have share some kind of intellectual intimacy. And you don’t have to worry about someone breaking off an engagement because, “Sorry, honey, the sex is great, but your intellectual discussions don’t measure up” thereby putting all of the importance on intellectual compatibility.
Oddly, we’re almost to this point already: “He/she was verbally abusive/a dullard/ a moron, but the sex was great.”
Plus, for those who didn’t wear earplugs on dates, they may have been infected with verbally transmitted diseases (probably just stupidity, or weak logic. The verbally promiscuous would be overwhelmed with logical fallacies). No one would want to enter into a marriage with someone with a VTD.
I don’t regret having premarital sex.
Dealing with verbally-transmitted diseases? Those precautions are going to completely change politics…
You fool! You stupid spoiled fool! 
Where are your threesomes now? 
For what it’s worth, I don’t regret not yet having premarital sex (not for moral/religious reasons, just because the right situation hasn’t come up). I’m 19.
Here’s one.
I’m 32, never been married and have had two children. I have had a few years- long-relationsips and have had lots and lots of sex within those serious relationships and have also had casual sexual relationships. I’ve mostly enjoyed each sexual experience.
However, now that I’ve done almost anything you can do sexually, I feel like there isn’t anything physical or emotional that I can give to my future-husband that I haven’t already shared with someone else. It makes me feel kind of used up. It makes me feel a little less special when I’m in a relationship with someone and I know that all these other things he’s doing to me he’s done with someone else.
I’m not saying that I think pre-marital sex is right or wrong. I will encourage my daughters to wait until they are at least 18 before they start having physical relationships that go beyond kissing and mild fondling.
I wish I was having premarital sex right now.
I waited till I was 23 and my wedding night. I don’t regret it at all.
I don’t regret that at 40, I have only ever slept with one woman (and am still sleeping with that woman).
We learned to appreciate our relationship without the heady rush of sex being involved, which (in my limited experience) confuses and complicates matters. We talked, did things together, and focussed our energy on building a relationship to last a lifetime - and fooled around just a bit.
Which was good, because there have been … dry times…, for various reasons over 17 years, and I don’t doubt that there will be more to come. And because sex is only a small part of who we are as a couple, those times don’t even come close to breaking the love between us.
I am a christian, so this colours my philosophy, maybe. I won’t judge anyone who decides to have sex before marriage/committment/whatever. I will judge people who have sex stupidly, without thought to the consequences. In todays society there are very few excuses. But any sex should be about making intelligent, informed decisions for good reasons, and many kids are not equipped to make those choices by the time they let their bodies start to think for them. I’ve seen too many situations where young people have let their bodies rule over sense, and ended up in a mess.
Much of what we admire in humanity (altruism, self-sacrifice) is the extent to which we triumph over our animal nature (I think Richard Dawkins “Selfish Gene” concept provides a great model of original sin, but I might be considered a heretic for that opinion). So to those who say that sex is a natural desire and should not be repressed, there are lots of other basic innate behaviours that we suppress all the time. As for the “test drive” theory, I prefer to think of sex as a journey between two people - lots of laughing and failure and triumph and joy. Finding something new that works brings the joy of discovery to a relationship - finding out that it was something learnt in a previous sexual relationship would change that sense of discovery, to me anyhow.
Finally, I’d challenge the language we use when people talk about virginity (which has developed negative connotations of incompleteness and repression) - the use of words like lost and taken. I prefer words like gift and offer. A virgin has the opportunity to allow their partner to help them begin a journey together, a gift to offer to the marriage bed. And it doesn’t matter whether both partners can offer that same gift (my wife had two children when we married - I knew she had had sex). I know people say that any time with a new partner is like the first time - I couldn’t comment, but I don’t actually see it being entirely true. I do know that if I found myself on my own and looking for a new partner, I’d wait again.
Forgive the ramble - but there is different ground to the “I don’t regret premarital sex”, the “I regret not having (more) premarital sex”, and the “I regret that I just can’t get premarital sex”
Or maybe all the above is a justification for the fact that I could not actually get any before I met my wife-to-be. Maybe, but I am very comfortable with my position.
Si
In some sense I regret it because it was a violation of my religion, and because the person I was with didn’t really care about me the way I would have wanted someone to. However, having repented from it gave me a whole new life and perspective on my religious belief so I can’t count that for nothing.
I’m also 40 and have never slept with anyone except my husband, usually refered to here as Himself, (with whom I still sleep ) and don’t really regret my decision. Yeah, I’ve had times when I was curious about other men, but really, that’s all it is. Vague curiosity. I always thought I’d wait for marriage, but it began to look like marriage would never happen. So when I met Himself and I was attracted, and he was attracted (he was definitely not a virgin), and I decided I trusted him, I went for it. 
And then we ended up getting married anyway. I can’t really imagine my life any other way, now.
I’m 37 and have been married to my wife for 5 years. Before I met her I had only had sex with 3 other gals for brief periods of time when I was 18, 24, and 28. These were girls I had convinced myself I was in love with and wanted to be with for the rest of my life. There were other girls I dated and met throughout my 20s with lots of opportunities for one nighters or having a fling just for the fun of it but I took the high ground and decided that if I didn’t feel I was in love with them I would pass.
Now I feel like an idiot for passing up those opportunities. I’ll run across old friends who remind me “Oh yeah, remember Jackie. She was hot. She wanted to sleep with you. Why didn’t you ever take advantage of the opportunity?”
Me: :smack: :smack:
“Remember when Nikki’s sister was visiting from California. She would have went home with you that night. She was hot. Why didn’t you take her home?”
Me: :smack: :smack: :smack:
You really need to jump on those opportunities when you get them. Literally.
The sad part is that lots of people my age (20) take pride in all four (ignorance of sex, cooking, driving, money management).
Quasimodal and pulehoopo, I was always an awkward kid (still am sometimes) and I was convinced during my youth that I would be a virgin for a long, long time. As it happened, I was 17 (as noted upthread), and it only happened because the lucky girl basically came right out and asked me if I would have sex with her. The world may never know just how serious she was when she asked about it, but when I called her bluff she was game, big time. I know it’s cliche, but it happens when you’re ready. And the most important part of getting ready, IMO, was understanding that women are not a strange race to be figured out, but just people with different parts than me. This is all much, much greater than the sum of its parts. What it means is that women are as sexually complex as we are, and deal with the same insecurities, nervousness, excitement and basic longing that we do.
The recontextualization of chivalry in our modern, informed age has done away with the cookie-cutter formula men used to use to get pretty young things to fall in love with them. It’s easy to see that as making it tougher to get laid, but it’s just different. It’s a more involved process of connecting to women on a deeper level and understanding that they work pretty much the same way we do. If you don’t think so, pick up an issue of Cosmo sometime; if it weren’t all about getting dudes, you’d think it were written by and for straight men.
Optimism is the first step. Confidence is the second. Understanding is the third. The fourth step: forget the whole thing and live your life. I found out first-hand in my senior year of high school that it’s much sexier not to care about whether you get laid or not. I only got laid once I got frustrated with trying so hard and just wrote the whole thing off–I was already “tall and dark”, and suddenly I was mysterious too. I was beatin’ em away with a stick without even realizing it.
Gah! Tell me about it! This one couple (of girls) in particular were hot for me in a serious way. I mean, one of the girls had been wanting to get into my pants for a long time (I’d never done anything about it because I never found her that attractive); the other girl was scorchin’ hot and we clicked immediately the first time we met. I can’t believe the whole thing, looking back. I gave the two of them a ride to the trolley station from school, and the hot one said “I wish we had some way to repay you!” I deadpanned “A threesome would work.” They looked at each other and the one who’d dug me for a while said “Yes! I mean, just kidding, um, bye…” and they ran for it. The next day the hot one told me that her girlfriend really hadn’t been kidding, and she then proceeded to write directions to her house and give me both of their phone numbers. This was a couple of weeks after I lost my virginity and I was getting laid regularly by two women, so I blew them off because I wasn’t that interested in the one girl. When the well dried up a year and a half later and I was back to solo flights only, I realized what an idiot I’d been. By then the hot one was in a mental hospital (of unrelated causes, or so I assumed ) and the other one wanted me to herself.
Live and learn, right?
Sure, but there’s nothing like the way two people who just had sex with each other for the first time, can light up each others’ day just by shooting a glance at each other from across the room the next day. And taking the piss (as they say on your side of the pond) from your buddies for getting laid is the best kind of taking-the-piss. The best.
But your experience also sounds great. Just goes to show there’s always more than one way to skin a cat. So to speak.
I’ve argued heatedly with philosophy professors that these so-called triumphs really only happen because they bring their own animal pleasures. IME/IMO as a former Orthodox Jew who has since abandoned my faith, the motivation to do what you’re s’posed to do in Judeo-Christian religions is that you’ll feel good about it afterwards. Or, at the very least, that good things will come to you if you do. Everything we do–and I mean all humans, saints and saviors included–has some obvious benefit to us, or else we wouldn’t do it. But I digress–that’s a topic outside the scope of IMHO, I suppose.
I regret some of the cirmcumstances, but not premarital sex in general. I got married at 33, so waiting wasn’t a choice, plus I had been living (with a one-year break) with my now husband for about 6 years prior to our marriage.
I’m 38 and have not been marrided (Alough I do have somone in mind) If I hadn’'t had sex by now that whould just be sad.
Oh, yeah and for the record the premariatal sex was pretty good too.
One of the problems I see is that there is a ignorance of sex coupled with actually having sex - and I would expect more of 20y.o, but it is happening in much younger people.
The biggest problem is that there is a duality involved - women appear to be looking for the one (connecting on a deep level), but are also required to have some wild, meaningless sex on the way. Guys don’t know which play to make - the bad boy wild lovemaker or the steady, committed, deep, life partner. I read an article a long time ago - a woman journalist was writing about the difficulty her single friends were having getting dates (not sex). She herself had no issues - because she never turned down a request for a date. She had some bad times, some good times, some disappointments and a few serious surprises. She was never short of a date or companionship, and men were never afraid to approach her. The whole superior-hot-woman-with-the-vicious-putdown thing requires men to have such a thick skin when approaching a woman that no real connection can occur unless sex is involved.
Thats just endomorphines, pheromones and oxytocin. And there is an issue there. Our bodies (at some level) are actually designed to bond and trust our sexual partners, via biochemistry and brain function. When people teach themselves to ignore imperative signals, well - we’ve all seen Fatal Attraction
I do believe that this is why some breakups are more destructive than others, and how a quick shag turns into obsession and love into hate - biochemistry is fighting with a situation it wasn’t designed to cope with.
I’ll avoid hijacking the thread, but game theory suggests that the quick selfish win is usually the best play - it’s harder to justify the long game from a purely cost-benefit analysis. IMHO.
Si