I mean, if I’m wrong about the poster’s gender and she’s actually a woman, and if she meant that the combination of cuddling, kissing, and having her girlfriend say I love you once led to an orgasm, where cuddling actually means violent crotch-cuddling, then I can understand.
Otherwise, sweet jesus is that remarkable. What’s going to happen when you exchange vows?
Not if they don’t know what they like themselves. If someone waits until marriage to kiss, what do you think their views are on masturbation, or getting tied up? At the same time, I definitely knew girls in their late teen who were regularly having intercourse and knew less about their bodies and getting off than plenty of ‘technical’ virgins.
One thing–when you wait you have plenty of time to do research. My friends had a stack of books they passed around to whoever was getting married next, and some of us bought copies of The Joy of Sex or whatever to keep permanently. The married ones passed along things they’d learned (so did the parents sometimes; my roommate’s mother had some doozies :eek:).
Guess I should add that we had pretty strict rules about what was OK before-hand; ‘technical’ virginity was not something we did, though of course kissing was quite popular.
Well, I’ve had plenty an orgasm from kissing and groping with all clothing on and fully fastened, so it doesn’t seem all that out there to me. Hell, once I got damn close from him running his tongue along that little ridge in the top of the roof of my mouth. Maybe you people really aren’t doing this whole cuddling thing right.
But you described the scenario that I said I could understand. It seems pretty likely that you’re a lady, and you were kissing and groping.
That’s not the same as “having my girlfriend tell me she loves me.”
Which isn’t to say that I’m not doing it wrong; I’ve always suspected as much.
Or we just have different erogenous zones. 
See also: groping and kissing != cuddling.
Wow, that seems so opposite of what I believe. I love sex, but my marriage is not about the sex. It’s about a great relationship with my wife. Someone that I enjoy being around, and we have fun together… in and out of the bedroom. If either one of us suddenly couldn’t perform sex anymore, there’s no doubt in my mind that we’d continue to have a great relationship together.
As a matter of fact, I’ll go one further and say that one good argument for waiting is that sex can hide a lot of OTHER incompatibilities in a relationship. Your girlfriend is a slob, but you look past it because the sex is awesome. Five, ten years down the road you’re just wishing she’d pick up after herself just ONCE.
That argument could be applied to anything. Really, it comes down to the maturity of the person in question as to whether or not one aspect of the relationship will blind them to its long-term prospects.
Cat Fight beat me to it, but I’ll re-iterate: I had no idea I liked bondage until I tried it. In fact, if you had asked me at 23 or so, I would have been quite adamant that I didn’t like it. I changed my mind once I actually experienced it and understood what it was all about. And in fact once I did experience it, I realized that that had been the thing that felt like it had been “missing” all this time.
You can, very broadly, have an idea what you like in bed without having experienced it. Imagination is not entirely useless. However, in a lot of cases people without experience simply don’t know what all of their options are, so they can’t know how they feel about those options. Another personal example: I had no idea how high my sex drive really is until I started experiencing it. It was, no joke, at least 10 times higher than I would have imagined.
Honestly, I think a lot of things are like that. I used to think I could imagine approximately how much chemotherapy hurt – at least get within the ballpark – I watched people go through it and die from it, after all. Then I actually experienced it. What I had imagined was only a bare shadow of the reality.
Well, here’s this fabulous thing: people are different. For me, physical affection (including sex and kink) is so thoroughly intertwined with love as to be basically inseparable. I love you (general you) by touching you, and I feel loved by being touched. If the sex is not working (other than for temporary, practical circumstances like illness or a week away on a business trip), then, for me, it feels like the love isn’t working. And that would make me miserable. And if it continued on that way over a long period of time, it would crush my spirit. (And I have been there, and it did make me miserable.)
I’ll go a step further and (slightly) disagree with Shot From Guns; sex is sacred to me. It is a spiritual-physical-emotional connection to another very special human being, that is very important to me as a spiritual-physical-emotional being. I just don’t tie my spirituality to legalisms or pieces of paper. Societal recognition is cool, it’s just not necessary. The only thing that matters is what’s between my partner and me. Our relationship may not end up in marriage. That has never meant that I didn’t love him NOW.
Also, I don’t feel that sex-for-fun is wrong as long as it’s handled honestly and honorably by everyone involved. I just happen to not be capable of that.
Well if they don’t know what they like, then there are bigger problems than simply being a virgin. When I was a virgin, I still knew the things that I was interested in trying, and I knew what turned me on. Of course, even if sex is discussed and likes/dislikes are known, there can still be incompatibility. However, a lot of issues with incompatibility are due to lack of communication, either before, after, or during…
And perhaps I am just unable to conceive someone waiting til marriage to even kiss another person. Then again, my first “real” kiss was when I was 11, and I also didn’t wait until marriage to have sex. My point is just that, simply because one doesn’t have sex doesn’t mean they don’t understand their bodies, their likes/dislikes, and know what turns them on and what they might be interested in trying.
True, you can’t really know all of the nuances of what you like/dislike until you experience them, but discussing what you know you like/dislike can still go a long way in figuring out compatibility. Honestly, even certain things I have liked with one partner, I have disliked with another. And things like sex drives can change over time, I know that mine certainly has.
In my personal opinion, I do think that couples should have sex before marriage. I don’t think marriage should be some sort of qualifier for being ready for something like that. My point is that communication goes a long way in figuring out compatibility. It just seems like a lot of people assume being a virgin means you’re completely out of tune with your body, your likes/dislikes, etc. and at least in my situation that was not the case. I knew what I was attracted to, what turned me on, what I was interested (and not interested) in trying, and I discussed most of these things with my partner before we jumped into bed. After that, experimenting took over and that’s how we figured out what work for both of us.
:eek: That could be rather embarassing in front of the priest and your entire family. A wedding everyone will remember!
I’ve never had an orgasm just from kissing the like, but my GF has (some lucky people have very sensitive areas around their neck). But that’s not cuddlng. Cuddling is something that you can do with your grandmother without having to change your actions at all.
And I think this is a good argument in favor of not waiting until marriage.
I totally agree with you – communication is vital, before, during, and after. There’s no point in my getting involved with someone who is decidedly not kinky, so I will talk about it beforehand. If the other person is not, of course there’s no need for me to have sex with them. There’s no need for me to get involved with them at all.
Exactly. I tend to think I was raised rather liberally as both of my parents had discussions with me and were both supportive of my decision to have sex before marriage as long as I was ready for it. I think they were also relieved to know that I would come to them and discuss those kinds of things. Sometimes I wonder what sorts of conversations other people have with their parents and/or their own kids about sex.
You are lucky, in that not every parent is up to the task. I got an excellent education in human reproductive biology. This is nothing like a comprehensive education in human sexual relationships.
Let’s just say I was at a serious disadvantage when I was first starting out. 
Yes, I consider myself to be very lucky that my parents were pretty open about those sorts of things. I got the biology talk when I was younger and first asking where babies came from and what sex was. It was later on, in my teens, that my parents and I had more comprehensive discussions about relationships, sex, self-respect, etc. etc.
I don’t think we disagree. It’s just a matter of running into problems with having enough vocabulary to describe the entire range of human sexuality. 
That’s what happens when we keep trying to force things into binary categories that are really more of a spectrum.