We live in a society where it is standard to have your first kiss in middle school (maybe earlier now), to have your first boyfriend in high school and to lose your virginity by, if not in, college. I am the exception to this norm. I am twenty-one years old, and I am still a virgin. It is and it isn’t by choice. I am not throwing myself at people in order to “lose it,” but I am also not saving myself for marriage or for any other religious motives.
When I think about it, I tell myself that I’m just a “late bloomer.” That’s how things have always been for me. It’s frustrating when you feel like you’re growing up slower than all of your friends and you can’t figure out why. You ask yourself over and over again why you can’t just make yourself grow up. I’ve played that game enough times to know that you can’t make yourself grow up. Things happen when they’re supposed to, when it’s right.
That usually comforts you until your friends start talking about sex, which happens a lot, and you have nothing to contribute to the conversation. No funny stories, no advice. Just quietly listening, wondering if your friends think you’re weird, which obviously they don’t, but you feel like an outsider nonetheless.
Or it’s a Friday night, and all your friends say they just want to hook up with someone, a random, an ex-flame, a current prospect, and you think about how nice it would be, but you want more than a physical conquest. You can’t imagine hooking up with someone you just met, and you don’t have an ex-flame or a prospect serious enough to do that. You can’t fathom that.
If I wanted to, I could have lost my virginity freshman year, or anytime, really. Objectively, I’m pretty, so it’s not like it could never happen for me. Maybe this is the late bloomer in me, or maybe this is my wanting more than an empty hookup, but before I sleep with a guy, I want to get to know him, and I want him to get to know me. I’m not saying I need to be in love when I lose my virginity, but I want to feel comfortable and safe and respected, and I don’t want it to be meaningless. I have this inherent fear that when I finally do have sex with someone, I’ll somehow mess it up, or they’ll find out I’m a virgin and judge me. These are stupid fears, but nobody understands how hard it is to be a twenty-one year old virgin at Boston College.
It shouldn’t be embarrassing, but it is. The purpose of this article is to let anybody else out there who is still a virgin, no matter what your age or gender or reasons for waiting, it’s alright. I mull this over a lot in my head, and despite the pressure I feel at BC, I’m content knowing that it will happen when it’s supposed to. Just do you and then things will fall into place.