When does virginity and age become weird? (Offshoot of What's sexier)

In My Humble Opinion
121

Tell me about it! I’m glad I didn’t read this thread 15 years ago! :rolleyes:

I lost my virginity on my 26th birthday. I was aware that there was a chance the fellow I’m currently dating was a virgin. It didn’t strike me as odd. He’s very shy and a rather geeky type who doesn’t think he’s attractive to women (he is!) and, as a result, doesn’t date easily. He also spent several years in a rather remote area where there weren’t that many datable women, unless you were interested in Mormon ones who were interested in marriage.

Religious reasons were one of the main reasons I remained a virgin until I was engaged. We were deeply in love; he was my best friend; we’d promised each other we’d be together forever. It didn’t work out. On the other hand, anyone who knows me well knows my faith and morality matter to me. That doesn’t make me narrow-minded or bigotted. Of two of my closest friends, the ones I love and trust most, one is a Wiccan; the other is gay. I’ve never had sex outside of a committed relationship; I’ve also never had bad sex. I’m fairly sure there’s a correlation.

Low sex drive wasn’t the reason I waited so long, either. As it happens, I have a very high sex drive and am routinely multi-orgasmic. This means that in my early 20’s, I was also rather frustrated and it did get to the point where I was thinking about finding some likely-looking fellow, taking him back to my place, and finding out what I was missing. When I finally did, I enjoyed every minute (actually hour) of it, and had no regrets about waiting so long or about doing it. My first partner gave me the freedom to do whatever I want and explore. Other gentlemen have benefitted from that lesson. I’ve also been celibate for over a year and have no regrets about that, either.

Let me point out a couple of things that haven’t been raised yet. First of all, for women, there’s a slight logistical matter which is one of the reasons I delayed having sex – the possibility of becoming pregnant. I don’t want kids, and I don’t want to be in a position of having to consider having an abortion. I’m also rather shy and old-fashioned in places and I still get a bit embarrassed going to a doctor for birth control even though I’m not married. I even got embarrassed listing Depo-Provera as one of the meds I’m on when I went to the doctor yesterday.

Second, I was taught I was undatable and unlikeable. When I was in my 30’s, a coworker of mine said to me, “You’re kind of like a moped – you’d be fun to ride, but no one would want to admit it!” I’m also a geeky type who can get shy around the opposite sex. I was also at the bottom of the social ladder growing up. I thought dating and and being loved happened to other people until I found the right social circle. I did, as it happened, have problems, although I’ve worked a lot of them out over the years.

Let me explain to some of you why some of us are objecting to being characterized as weird because we lost our virginity later than you’re comfortable with. When I was a teenager back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, one of the things that was hurled at me on a daily basis was, “Are you a virgin?” The implication was that someone as fugly and weird as I was would never be able to get a date, not even a pity date. I saw the same insult hurled at young friend of mine in the same small town I grew up in a few years ago. The implications some people have made in this thread does push a button. That’s the wiring behind it.

Look, I’m not into promiscuity, even though I am into sex. I’ve lived my life the way I’ve chosen and I don’t regret waiting for the first man I had sex with or the one I’m currently having sex with (Man, do I wish that last was literally true. Yes, it would make it hard to type! :smiley: ). If you want to think me strange, so be it. I’ve been considered strange for far worse reasons!

CJ

122

Not too long ago I wouldn’t have been able to read this thread calmy. I’m nearly 27 and I’m still a virgin. It’s only recently that I really started to feel OK about that.

I would be interested to know how many of the people have actually tested their perceptions of virgins rigorously. Logistically and practically I can see how this might be difficult, but I think it is a good rhetorical point. I think virgins may be more common than many people think and that being a virgin at an older age is only a slightly useful warning sign (or perhaps almost completly useless, although I doubt that).

Why am I still a virgin? I’ve tried to figure that out myself. I seem to have a good sex drive, I masturbate regularly and fantasize about women. I am attracted to women and have crushes. On the other hand, I am generally a cautious person, sometimes over-cautious.

For much of my life I never thought I was particularly attractive. Generally speaking, I didn’t think I was ugly or anything, I just didn’t see the attractiveness. I also had a hard time reading non-verbal cues from people. Those two things combined make it hard to find a person to date because you assume that not that many people are going to be attracted to you and you can’t really test that assumption if you have a hard time reading cues.

I also didn’t pursue sex or relationships with girls, partly for the above-mentioned reasons, and partly because it sort of didn’t matter to me that much. Well actually it did, sort of, but really I had enough things to make me happy that missing out on sex wasn’t that big of a deal to me. I’ve been fairly emotionally self-sufficient for since high school at least (which is not to say I’ve been distant or cold with people, just not craving their attention).

As I said before, I didn’t really think of myself as attractive until quite recently. I think the reason for this was tied to the fact that I had never been aware of anyone being attracted to me. Since no one had tried to date me (as far as I knew) or had had sex with me, it seemed logical there must be some thing wrong with me physically or personality-wise. Slowly, in the last several years, I began to see that this isn’t true. I started to hear compliments on my appearance and my personality. I changed some of my behaviour patterns that were annoying (and I don’t miss them). I learned of someone with a secret crush on me, someone who I liked and found attractive, although I don’t think I had a crush on them and I learned about their crush well after they left the city was living in at the time.

Then, within the last year, I met someone who I found attractive and, it turns out, found me attractive too. For quite some time I didn’t think she found me attractive, but still she seemed to like me as a person. Indeed, she seemed to really like me as a person. Over time it slowly became clear that she was attracted to me physically and mentally and she showed it in various ways.

As a result of this (and the earlier groundwork I had laid), I began to see that I was in fact at least decently good looking and a nice personality. It’s strange, now I look in the mirror and see a handsome person where before I didn’t.

Not too long ago, I finally told my friend of my feelings for her and she confirmed that she also had feelings for me. The only problem was that she had a boyfriend and she still had feelings for him.

She only just broke up with him, not because of me (at least not directly) and we tried a little cuddling and making out. It was too soon, and it nearly capsized our friendship and put a damper on our possible romantic relationship. I’m still not sure how it has affected our friendship, and I don’t know whether there is a possibilty of any more physical intimacy.

I wasn’t ready for sex with her, partly because she wasn’t and partly because I also needed time. In hindsight, I don’t think we were ready for the making-out either.

As you probably gathered from what I’ve already written, I have no particular desire to remain a virgin. However, in a sense I chose to remain a virgin. I’m not very excited about meaningless sex, if I wanted that I’d just masturbate. I realize that meaningless sex is often more fun than masturbation, but it is more hazardous too.

Is there something wrong with me because I am a virgin? I don’t think so. I think there may be a whole bunch of things wrong with me that are connected in some way or another to my still being a virgin (either contributing to the cause of being a virgin or being an effect of it), but I don’t think that I have that many more things wrong with me than the average person who has had sex by my age. I may have slightly different problems, but many of them probably overlap too.

That’s the thing, I know lots of non-virgins of many ages and many many of them have minor to serious issues that can (and do) negatively impact any romantic relationship they might have. I wouldn’t say that not being a virgin was any indicator of whether they would make a good partner. I have to admit that remaining a virgin past the time considered “normal” by most people can be used to guess what sort of issues a person has, but it’s hardly foolproof and it isn’t an automatic sign that there’s something wrong with them.

I’m glad I’m a more confident virgin than I was in the past because some of these posts would have made me feel worse about myself in the past. Now I read them and try to see where the person is coming from. I don’t think any of the posters are particularly shallow or mean, I can see that from their posts. I think some posters may be a bit misguided, but no one offended me.

123

When applied to adult humans, particularly males, virgin has a pale, clammy, unpleasant connotation. Granted, a certain number of folks who are “that way” probably are so because they are pale, clammy, and unpleasant. But many more are surely warm-hearted, well-rounded indivuduals who aren’t all that bad to look at.

I propose the alternate term “CNBC” (celibate, not by choice).

124

Thats more or less my view too. I know alot of non virgins who are pretty screwed up people. Needy, emotionally abusive, untrustworthy, etc.

As for my story, I’m sure (sadly) some people know it since about a year ago this issue used to bother me alot more than it does now and I’d vent about it here. For me its due to shyness. Over the course of my life I can think of at least 10-15 women who wanted to be my girlfriend (ie not single dates as most of them already knew me), but due to introversion I never asked any of them out. Well introversion was the main reason. I never actually had the balls to ask a woman out until I was almost 25, so that is a major factor. I used to wonder why I didn’t date then I spent some time on a shyness board and saw that shyness was by and large guaranteed to result in a lack of dating. So that is mostly my reason. Now that I’m in college I can’t seem to find women to date me. Its funny, when they wanted me I didn’t do anything about it, now that I’m willing to do something about it they don’t want me. Ah well. I’m more or less comfortable with that fact nowadays though, as there is not much I’m willing and able to do about it.

125

Wow, who knew there was such contention? I haven’t been to this thread in a while.

I was trying to say that low sex drive is completely normal and that there is nothing wrong with that. These magazines are WRONG when they say “low sex drive” is a problem. A change in sex drive (or sleeping habits, etc) is a warning sign that you might have a problem.

In other words, I was agreeing with eleanorrigby that the information that’s out there is usually crap and that there isn’t anything wrong with you if you have a low sex drive. I have a very high sex drive. Nothing wrong with that either. It’s changes that are signs that something might be up.

continuity eror, we’re arguing the same point here. Sorry I wasn’t clearer.

Thanks to The Hook who got my meaning and tried valiantly to explain it better than I did. Thanks also to Master Control.

126

I’ve seen virgin used as an insult too, sadly. I grew up in an ultra-conservative church, and even there young adults would avoid the v-word. They’d say that they were “saving themselves” or “staying pure” or some other euphemism.

I agree with Aangelica on this: I would never reject someone out-of-hand for virginity (unless I was looking for some meaningless physical woo-woo), but it wouldn’t be a point in their favor, either. Teaching can be fun if you have an eager pupil, but IME you (the teacher) have to spend a good deal of time reassuring your v-word partner that you’re okay with his inexperience and that the first few fumbling tries aren’t going to drive you off.

OTOH, there was a great older lady in my church growing up who always told me that I needed to find a younger, inexperienced man so that I could “train him up right, like a puppy”. :cool:

I was (nearly) 18 my first time, mostly because, like Siege, I wanted to wait until I was emotionally prepared for the possible consequences and legally able to make my own decisions about my body.

[OT] FTR, I’m also an INTP, although I’ve never had a problem getting dates. Getting dates with the kind of guys I like, however, is another tale for another thread.[/OT]

127

A virgin at any age doesn’t strike me as ‘weird’. Sex is vastly important to some people, less (or not) important to others, and some folks like sex but only as part of a committed loving relationship. All perfectly valid attitudes, and none of them mark someone as ‘weird’, IMO.

Actually, now I think on it, the scenarios in which I can imagine virginity seeming weird are actually based on something *else * being weird and the virginity would be kind of incidental.

Like being in your 30s and still sponging off your parents as a chosen lifestyle.
Or being super-religious (weird to me, being as I’m kind of agnostic bordering on atheist).
Or wanting to ‘save’ themselves for marriage.
Or people who’ve moved out of home but still get their mother to do their clothes washing and stuff.

Any of which would make me go ‘yeesh, weird…’

But thinking on it, I can’t see any situation in which virginity on its own might be weird or creepy. Unusual, sure, but not off-putting.