The Virgin Diaries

This piece appeared as part of a series on your "number" - see the rest of the package here.

With so much talk about numbers, it can be easy to forget that some of us don’t have a number yet. These are the virgins, the girls who are waiting — waiting for marriage, waiting for the right guy, or just waiting for the opportunity to have sex. They seem to lurk in the background of the conversation about college sex, ignored by media that encourages our promiscuity and shut out of our discussions about our personal sex lives. But there are more virgins out there than you might expect, and their stories are interesting, as well.

Why They’re Waiting

Of the 100 girls that I interviewed, about 1 in 6 were virgins. These girls were waiting to have sex, but what exactly they were waiting for varied immensely.

“I’m a virgin because I just haven’t met the right person yet,” Selena*, an 18-year-old at the University of Michigan, said. “I’m not waiting for marriage necessarily, but if it happens that way, then I won’t be ashamed of it.”

Selena’s response was the most common answer I got from virgins — that they simply hadn’t met a guy that they wanted to “lose it” to yet.  Women that had this response tended to be younger — 18- or 19-year-olds, most likely college freshmen. The themes among their surveys were relationships and love, which not all of them had experienced yet. In their opinion, love is a necessary element in a sexual relationship.

“I’ve chosen to wait until I enter into a committed relationship with someone I love,” said Hayley*, an 18-year-old at the University of Michigan. “I just want to find that special guy, and how many 18-year-olds have really met the right guy already?”