I’m gonna jump in and say the opposite. In my circle of friends, virginity is not valued.
Before I started dating my boyfriend, he and another friend of mine had both agreed then neither of them would ever want to date me because then they’d be my first kiss. Nope, they emphatically didn’t want to be my first.
When we started dating, it made my boyfriend very nervous that I was a virgin.
Out here in Colorado, we have had a warm year so far and we are looking for a virgin to sacrafice to get the snow started, so of course we value them.
Now, if we can just find one.
TV 
I know this will probably get a lot of laughter from everyone out there, but I’m going to say it anyway. 
I valued male virginity very highly when I was a teenager (in the 1980’s). I was saving myself for the man I married, so why shouldn’t I expect the same in return? I don’t think virginity in a man is “cute” and I would never have even thought of trying to “initiate” anyone as I was a virgin myself until I got married. I think a man’s virginity is a choice and a purpose, at least in the men that are deliberately retaining theirs.
Of course, the act feels better when both people know what they’re doing–practice makes perfect and all that. But why does everyone assume that you can’t get to that perfection over time by being with one person over and over? No one starts out as a sexual expert and we all have to live and learn. Personally, I didn’t want to learn under pressure. I didn’t want to be making love in fear that he was secretly wishing I were better at it. So I placed high priority on marrying a man who was also a virgin so we could learn together. Nigh onto impossible in today’s society perhaps, but I managed it. And what’s more, I have never regretted it.
I know a lot of folks feel they’d be losing the excitement of sex if they had to be with the same person year after year, but I haven’t noticed anything of the kind. There may not be that first rush of something new, but there is a depth of feeling that IMHO can’t be achieved by going from person to person. Staghunter and I have been married for eight years and “it” gets better all the time.
I’m 33 years old, and I’m a virgin by choice. I’ve spoken about this to groups of teenagers on several occasions, so let me tell you what I’ve found.
When I ask the teens if they want to marry a virgin, they almost unanimously raise their hands. When I tell them that I have remained a virgin, the girls invariably break into resounding applause. Often, some of the more vocal girls will say things like “That is awesome!” or “Dude, you rock!”
The boys don’t usually applaud, doubtlessly because they’re afraid of what their peers would say. Still, you can tell that they’re impressed. Their eyes light up, and they’re clearly interested in hearing more.
Now I don’t know this for sure, but I think that many adults would prefer to marry a virgin as well. There’s certainly the delight of knowing that this person doesn’t have an STD (not even a latent one), or that he/she isn’t secretly comparing you to a previous lover. Several adults have said this to me, and I suspect that a lot more people feel the same way.
A virgin marrying a virgin. Talk about the blind leading the blind.
Or is ignorance truly bliss?
I couldn’t say about marrying a virgin, but the first guy I had sex with was also a virgin. Was it a problem? No, he was extrememly gentle with me because he wasn’t over confident in himself either. Also, there is such a thing as research… watch some movies (porn and instructional), read books (yes they have books that tell you all you could ever imagine). And these days, websites (didn’t have that stuff when I was at that point though).
Let me just say that I enjoy being a non-virgin much more than I enjoyed being a virgin. There’s a reason why the Quebecois word for “to lose one’s virginity” is se déniaiser (to stop goofing around).
I’ve had sex with one or two virgins in my time, and that IS cool. But it’s not because they’re a virgin; it’s more the fact that they won’t be a virgin in a little while, i.e. that YOU get to show them how great it is not to be a virgin. There is pressure, this is true. But it’s otherwise cool. Same applies to being someone’s first same-sex partner.
What the hell does your name (Controvert) mean? -raises eyebrow- I am intrigued.
Seems to me that most people respond to claims of virginity with a “Wow, you’ve held out this long!” or a “Poor you!” thought bubble.
Y’know, one of the nice things about virginity (ok, total abstinence) was total and complete assurance that in now way that just about anything could go wrong. Chances of pregnancy and contracting STD’s are lowered quite a BIT. Comforting much.
Male virginity means a lot to me. I think the fact that you held out (presumably) for someone you care about is a lot cooler than just getting it over with so you could brag about not being a virgin later. When I found out that a friend of mine had lost his virginity and slept with several girls over the summer, I was extremely upset (maybe isn’t my business, shut up and listen) because he’s too immature to value any relationship, much less one serious enough for the participants to have sex. It made me angry and sad to think that he had wanted to get it over with so much that he took down 3 girls on his way down with him. They weren’t real relationships at all. He doesn’t even talk to them. How sad.
Speaking of instructions…I never dreamed it would have this many views/replies, but my thread got pretty interesting (and at times, TMI, to be sure)
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=96492
Two Virgins + Wedding Night = my favorite Onion article EVER http://www.theonion.com/onion3510/awkward_sex_encounter.html
You are quite obviously of the group that doesn’t differentiate sex from emotion. I will agree that sex is a lot better if there is a strong relationship involved, but what’s wrong with just having fun with no commitments? My last two partners (notice that I won’t call them girlfriends) have been just that - sex without any real attachment, and we all knew it going in. Why is that so sad, and why do you consider him to have “taken down” 3 girls with him? You’re saying those girls didn’t have a good time with him? Hey, maybe the girls were using HIM for sex (it does happen, you know).
I know it sounds like a made-up word, but it is actually found in the dictionary. (If you don’t believe me, try http://www.m-w.com )
If you pardon my “verbing” of the word, it could be taken to mean “one who engages in controversy”.
ski, you bring up a very valid point. My problem with my friend is that in general he manipulates girls-chats them up then runs away whenever he’s done playing. And I assumed from what he told me (granted, not much) that this was the same kind of situation. Since girls have often been hurt by his behavior, I assumed it was what happened. It was an assumption, and that’s never good, but from his previous behavior I saw no reason to assume otherwise. -cringes- This falls under the category of “My Bad!”
And no, I don’t have a problem with people having sex just for the sex itself. If both people know and acknowledge what they want, then I have no problem with it. It’s just a situation that has capability to get real ugly. (One person only wants sex, the other wants a relationship, etc.)
Controvert, thank you. -tips hat- I like it.
Searching For Truth, thanks for the hilarious link to the Onion. Nice emmy award subject, wink, looks like we have some Farscape fans here.
Was it THAT obvious I was half-watching the Emmys? You’re very welcome for that link…it made me laugh so hard I cried. I quote it frequently…me and ARose can quip parts of it back and forth, and boy do people look confused when we do!!
Boy, this is an interesting thread on a thought-provoking and worthy subject.
I’m kind of in agreement with matt_mcl; Non-virgins do have more fun. As someone who has found himself in some really odd (not awkward) sexual situations, I’m not sure what to think of virginity now. It just hasn’t been an issue with me for some time.
I do know that I originally set out to be a virgin until marriage, then caved during college. I don’t regret that decision though—it was getting to be really embarrasing to try to carry on conversations with my friends about sex when I didn’t know what anyone was talking about. To me, the decision to lose my virginity was very deliberate. I planned the whole thing out, then just went and did it.
Looking back on that now, I think the only thing I would’ve changed would be that I would’ve lost my virginity a lot sooner. I certainly had some opportunities, which I turned down for what later seemed like insufficient reasons. To me, virginity and sex in general occupies too much space in the minds of many people. People either agonize about when, where, or with whom, or they worry about how often and with whom. Damn few people die a virgin; we all get some at some point. Does it really matter when? If you go looking for it, you’ll get it soon enough, if you DON’T go looking for it, it might just come to you. Either way, at the end of your life, your first time won’t have mattered that much.
I guess for me personally, virginity was and is no big deal. But I wouldn’t want to be with a virgin unless she wanted me to be her first. But at the age I’m at (25), I really don’t meet many virgins who I would ever consider having a relationship with. The ones I do know (male and female) are so deeply religious they might as well be nuns. To a relatively indifferent to religion person like myself, that’'s a real drag, even though I respect their decision.
SFT, it’s a mistake to think that sex somehow makes a relationship “serious.” The situation you describe in another post (one person looking for sex, the other a relationship) has far less potential for heartbreak as people age. Not because it doesn’t happen, (it actually happens more often) but because people learn to recognize it before things have gone too far. And how do they learn? By doing just what your friend above did. Looking at it as “sad” is being unrealistic, since for most people heartbreak at some point in life is simply inevitable. We can’t all marry our high-school sweetheart. What about those of us who never had a high school sweetheart, anyway?
Personally, I think it would be nice if the world really worked the way we teach children to think it works. But it doesn’t. People do bad things that hurt other people so often that it’s better to just try and protect yourself than to feel upset about the injustice of it all.
Hell yeah, man. I love a good virgin.
my wife and I decided to wait.
Was that better or worse than not waiting? - How could I say?; I’ve no way of making a comparison - (the options of [waiting until marriage] and [not waiting] are mutually exclusive).
Was it ‘the blind leading the blind’? - Not really; it doesn’t take a genius to work out which part goes where, OK, it might be a bit fumbly to start with, but learning together needn’t be a bad thing, seems to have worked out OK for us.
All I can say is that for me/us it seems nice not to be carrying any sexual/emotional baggage from previous relationships (although of course I can’t objectively know what it would be like to be carrying that baggage).
Sounds like typical Voltaire (I could say “it is one of the superstitions of Voltaire to have imagined that he was the only person ever to have lived without an agenda”, but I won’t )
For all those folks out there who liked keeping their virginity till marriage because then they weren’t comparing their spouse to all the previous people, I have one question.
If your spouse were to pass away, would you ever re-marry?
I had sex with a lot of people before I got married (and some during and after, too) and I just don’t get that “don’t want any comparison” thing. My ex-husband is a GREAT cook. Does this mean that any man I date now, I’ll be mercilessly comparing their cooking to his? Not likely. In fact, I’ll even make some of the dishes my ex taught me, and serve to them.
I don’t expect a lover who’s never eaten before, or never been in love, and I really don’t understand wanting someone who’s never had sex just so they won’t compare me to their last. The closest I can come to that is this: I expect that my partner will be honest about their previous experience, but discreet. I want to think that if I get intimate with them, and we break up, that they’ll treat the memories of our time with enough respect not to giggle over them with their next date. How a man treats his mother and his ex-wife is a very good sign to me of how he’ll treat me. (I don’t mean he has to be spineless, but honesty and fairness are very important.)
All of this doesn’t mean I won’t date a virgin, but if I do again, we’ll still be having the talk about what I expect in the way of discretion, honesty, and what I’ll give in return.
Corr
That’s a hypothetical that is too painful to contemplate, but for your sake I will try.
The thing you’re missing here is that if my husband were to die, I would not revert back to virginity. When I was a young woman looking for a husband, I was a virgin and knew absolutely nothing about pleasing a man sexually. You just have to know me to understand that it would have crushed my spirit totally to be with someone who thought I was a terrible lay or someone who thought he needed to teach me how to do it “right.” At that time, before other and more harsh trials happened in my life, I would have worried about it, even if it never actually happened. Now, I have eight years of experience in the “joys of sex” and wouldn’t be afraid that I couldn’t please a man.
I can’t say whether or not I would re-marry. If I were to, however, I wouldn’t place such an extremely high priority on virginity like I did as a teen. I would, however, place high priority on how he views the sexual relationship. I wouldn’t marry a bed-hopper that treated the act as his own personal toy, nor would I marry someone who feels that sex is only for procreation. And I wouldn’t have sex with him UNTIL we married. That’s just the way I am and I won’t compromise with it, no matter what the politically correct thing to do at the time may be.
If I did re-marry, I wouldn’t be able to squelch all images of my first and only lover. Sex IMHO is a very powerful thing and I believe it’s impossible to blot out past loves from your mind. And I wouldn’t expect him to do that either. I don’t know if that would cause a problem or not and I hope I never have to find out.