Up until the summer before sophomore year of high school, I had never been kissed and was terrified of penises. My first technical kiss was during a game of truth or dare with the boy I was crushing on for a few years, but what I consider my real first kiss was with my friend’s ex-boyfriend. Yes, I know, bad move on my part and it was doomed for failure from the beginning. At the time, no one had ever liked me and all I wanted was to be liked by guys. When my friend’s ex showed me the attention I always craved, I couldn’t resist. When I got to his house, what was meant to be my first romantic kiss turned into much more than I planned. We ended up having oral sex not even an hour after kissing for the first time. That same night he told me he loved me, yet ironically, he left me a few days later. Since then I’ve been correlating sexual acts with love, which began my difficult journey with sex and depression.
That incidence started my trust issues, and for a long time it made me afraid of sex. I had not given or received oral sex for at least two years before doing it again. I was not completely innocent in the meantime—I still kissed boys and let them touch all the erogenous zones, but I was terrified of repeating the past. Of course, once I performed oral again, it ended badly—there was no love confessions that time, but it still ended in me crying over a boy.
Even though I would do sexual things with boys, I always kept in mind that I wanted to lose my virginity to someone special. The boys I had done other sexual things with would always ask if we could have sex, and I always managed to turn down that offer, despite how strong my sexual desire was. My mother lost her virginity during her junior year of high school, and I always thought I wouldn’t be able to wait until then to do it too, but I ended up waiting until the beginning of freshman year of college.
Starting college, I was nearly exclusive with a boy my roommate set me up with. We went on several dates during the summer and even discussed dating once we started school. Finally, after 18 years, I couldn’t contain my sexual desires any longer. Knowing that this boy would later become my boyfriend, I lost my virginity to him on move-in day. It was painful, awkward, and not at all what I was expecting after 18 years of waiting. After we finished, we cuddled and I tried talking about deep topics with him, but he wouldn’t open up to me as much as I wanted him to. We discussed being exclusive and dating, but he was apprehensive about it. It wasn’t for another few weeks that he asked me to be his girlfriend.
After two more attempts at sex with my boyfriend, it finally happened successfully. It became pleasurable and didn’t hurt me physically anymore. I began to realize what all the hype was about, and I was no longer afraid of it because I was doing it with someone I cared about and who cared about me. However, after only two weeks of officially dating, my boyfriend broke up with me so he could be with other girls on campus. He no longer wanted monogamy, and he no longer wanted me. It absolutely crushed me and put me in a dark place. It was like the summer before sophomore year all over again—giving myself to a boy in such a personal way for the first time, and then being abandoned shortly afterwards.
I was depressed for a few weeks to nearly a few months after the breakup, but during the same week of the breakup, something happened. I was sitting alone in the dining hall and was approached by another freshman boy. He asked to sit with me, and we got to talking and really hit it off. We hung out later that night and kissed. I felt slightly uneasy about it since the breakup had only happened a few days prior, but I figured that if my ex could see other people, so could I. This new boy acted as a distraction for me, and a way of feeling cared about again. About a week after meeting him, we had sex. Time went on and we both had busy schedules, but it was only a matter of time before he abandoned me too. After he told me he didn’t want to see me anymore, I found another boy to distract myself. After that boy left, I found another, and another. In a matter of only three months in college, I had slept with seven guys. Each guy has their own unique story with me, and each meeting was very circumstantial. However, the one thing they all have in common is that I had sex with them not long after meeting them, and none of them wanted to be in a committed relationship with me.
For a while I did not understand why these boys kept hurting me. After I had sex with them, I felt bad about myself, and after they abandoned me, I felt even worse. The only way I could get over the pain was by finding a new boy to give me the attention I always wanted. I figured that boys wanted sex, so if I gave that to them, they would therefore want me. What I didn’t realize is that if a boy was so quick in asking me to have sex with them, that’s all they wanted and they could easily get it from other girls after doing it with me. My roommate would tell me the same thing after each boy hurt me, since she was the one who had to comfort me when I got back to the dorm in tears, but I never wanted to listen to her. I wanted attention, and I even wanted sex. After 18 years of waiting for it, I finally had it and it was fun. I didn’t want to give it up, but I also cared too emotionally about the boys I met to just have casual sex with them. Despite wanting sex, I wanted sex with someone who cared about me, and frankly, the boys I had sex with didn’t give a shit about me.
For a while, sex ruined how I talked to guys. Sex ruined my morals, and it ruined my happiness for some time. After seven guys, I finally realized that what I’ve been doing needs to stop, because it will only repeat in the future and make me even more depressed each time it happens. Wanting casual sex is fine, but what I needed to realize was that I didn’t want casual sex, I wanted the boys to fall in love with me. Though I went through more pain than I ever anticipated, there are still benefits from what happened—I learned what I wanted sexually, but more importantly, I learned what I needed emotionally. For some people, sex is just sex. But for me, sex is everything.