Back in high school, I use to think being a virgin was amazing… mostly because all of my friends were losing their virginity to jerks (and regretting it) and me remaining untouched. It made me feel somewhat special. I had promised myself and proudly told everyone else that I was waiting until marriage to have sex. The summer before my freshman year of college, my mom had pushed me to take birth control. Her reasoning was because, “people always do things they say they’re not going to do when they get to college.”
And boy was she right. My freshman year of college was when I started to become sexually active. I wasn’t exactly having sexual intercourse, but I was definitely engaging in some sexual activity. I didn’t feel bad about it… as long as I kept my promise about not having sex before I was married, I was alright. What wasn’t alright was the disappointment I had gotten from guys when they realized they would have to marry me in order to have sex with me. Some guys even stopped giving me the time of day when I would tell them I was waiting till marriage. For a while it made me feel embarrassed to be a virgin.
My virginity was definitely something that I had tried to hide whenever I got intimate with a guy, but my lack of experience and not knowing what to do or how to do it just screamed virgin. To lots of guys, they had found this cute. Suddenly I was back to being an open proud virgin. I only started to see guys that were okay with not having sex with me… guys who thought me being a virgin was cool. These guys actually took the time to get to know me as a person. In return, my feelings for these guys had grew stronger and stronger each day. But after a while I would receive pressure to lose it to these guys. It’s like my virginity wasn’t “cool” or “nice” anymore. Eventually I had to cut each of these guys off just to find another guy who would tell me my virginity was “cool and nice”, only for him to pressure me into having sex with him awhile later.
My last straw with these types of guys was when I had fallen head over heels for an older guy. The thought of losing my virginity before marriage had never came to mind until I had met this guy. He started off like every other guy… thinking my virginity was “cool and nice.” There were a couple times where we almost had sex, but it didn’t feel right and plus I wasn’t really mentally or physically ready for sex. The third time we almost did the deed, I told him I wasn’t ready and then a couple of days later he had cut me off because I wouldn’t have sex with him. Never in my life have I ever felt bad for not having sex with someone until him.
After that experience, I had started using my virginity status as tool to eliminate guys who just wanted me for sex. It made some guys disappear right away and it made some others stick around for a couple weeks only to realize that they couldn’t take my virginity away from me. Luckily, I’ve been in a three-year relationship with someone who has never pressured me into doing something I wasn’t ready to do and respects my virgin status.
-HCXO