m y . t h o u g h t s . o n . t h i n g s

7/28/04
I’m 23 and a virgin. Or, (though I don’t know exactly what’s meant by the term) a ‘technical one’, at least. And what’s weird is that up until recently I would never have had to make his honest distinction.

Up until recently, I had never gone farther than kissing. Well, ok, maybe once or twice I got drunk and ended up kind of bump and grinding with some guy at a club. But still, no clothes ever came off, I was never touched in any other places, I never touched any of those places on a guy.

I think it’s weird how difficult this essay is going to be to write, mostly because I still feel out of place discussing something as personal as this, as though these things aren’t supposed to be written or publicly talked about. Maybe that’s why I feel the need to write this right now. Because I have no one else to really discuss this with.

I’ll admit that I was raised pretty conservatively and not only taught that sex is best if saved for marriage only, but also taught..., well...not really taught anything else. I went to a private Christian school. I missed the whole sex education thing. My “sex talk” was in 5th grade when my parents gave me a book and told me that I had to read it – it was some Christian book on how to talk to your kids about sex. I’ll never forget the moment I read the paragraph explaining “the deed”. I was appalled. Well, more than appalled, I was as grossed out as a 10 yr. old can be. I was DISGUSTED. People did that??! A guy put that part into a girl??! And that was supposed to feel good??! By the age of 10, I had already had 3 younger sisters, and why I never thought about where those babies came from I have no idea…I guess I just always thought that God put them there or something.

I still remember that moment vividly. I think it was that moment that I first realized there was a thing called innocence, and that I had just lost some of it by becoming aware of the act that brought us all into the world.

Even growing older, I never completely understood what was so magical about sex...why did sex seem to rule some peoples lives? Why was it always in the movies? I always thought people in the movies looked as tough they were in pain while having sex. I could never understand what would be so great about it.

But as I got even older, as more and more people my age started experiencing sex for the first time, I became kind of proud of the fact that I was still a virgin, like I was untouched, special, as though I had something important to give to that one special guy somewhere in the future. I planned to wait for marriage, not so much for the religious reasons I had been taught, but more for the emotional satisfaction that waiting would bring. I didn’t want to cheapen sex. I didn’t want to ever have to bring into a bedroom thoughts of previous bedroom experiences and feel compelled to compare the two. I wanted to only know one guy and only have one guy know me.

So I had all my morals and standards and ideals all set, and all should’ve been fine and dandy and I would get married and live happily ever after, right? Yeah, I forgot to add in this really annoying stuff called feelings and emotions and weird physical longings that are naturally part of us.

This is all the stuff that’s confusing my mind and causing me to look at all this sex stuff from different angles right now…

Virginity. Is it seriously worth it to remain a virgin til marriage? Is the act of sex really that big of a deal? It’s just an act, a satisfaction of a human desire. In a weird way, it’s like food, or going to the bathroom, or sleeping. It’s a human longing. Yet, it can’t JUST be that, because why then would people make such a big deal about it all the time? Isn’t half the reason sex can be so amazing is because of the emotional and the intimate connection you and a partner can feel?

I remember being younger and in a sermon about abstinence, being told that we should set boundaries early because once you get turned on, stopping is as difficult as getting out of bed on one of those mornings when you keep hitting snooze over and over. I think that illustration is true.

Here I am, talking about sex like I know what I’m talking about! Like I know anything! I really don’t – that’s the reason that I’m writing this essay in the first place. I just know the feelings I’ve been experiencing recently.

It all seems so dirty to discuss, so animal-instinctish and irrational, but yet there’s something about feeling as though you know someone enough to allow them permission to your body. It feels good. It feels right. It feels natural.

All of this is so new to me. How do I describe what the newness of all these experiences are like? It’s interesting being touched in places that haven’t been touched before, or touching places I’ve never felt. It’s like an exploration, it’s curious. Yeah, I don’t know half of what I’m doing or what I’m “supposed” to do, and that sometimes embarrasses me and makes me feel inferior to the rest of the world who experience the same intimacies but with more experience. But this learning stage isn’t as awkward as I thought it would be at all.

Ironically, this whole learning stage is actually making me proud of the fact that there’s so much I haven’t done and have the potential to experience still. It almost gives me a reason to wish I hadn’t already experienced the few things I have. It’s the potential to learn, to explore, to discover. This potential is what I want to hold on to. I’m glad I didn’t begin experimenting with this weird world of sex at a younger age. If so, what would I have left to discover now? What would I have left to discover with whoever I do end up marrying?

I no longer think that virginity is a necessary thing to save til marriage. I really think that sex is just a physical longing that is best fulfilled when there is a strong and committed emotional connection between two people.
However, in looking towards the future, I also now realize that there has be something left unexplored so that there can still be new and exciting things to discover in the future.

My virginity may be closer to a technicality now, but I want to hang on to that technicality. I want to save what I’ve got for the future. It won’t be easy, it will be harder now then it was before I started experimenting with all of this. I don’t look forward to the struggle that will be going on in my mind in those particular moments of deliberation. But like my earlier example of the alarm clock, I’m just gonna have to get up...I know what I’ve got to do. Or rather, what I WANT to do. And personally wanting it is going to be the only thing that will be strong enough to keep me from doing it.

This essay is still really hard for me to willingly publish to the web, probably because of the extreme personal nature of the topic itself. Part of me wants to just delete it, and I may end up doing that eventually. But for now I'll keep it up and hopefully it explains what I'm trying to pass onto others by writing it. I think that first experiences and first explorations are exciting, but that you can only have a first time once - in anything, not just sex. It's the potential for exploration that should be guarded. And cherished. And taken slowly so that you can keep that excitement for longer and have something special left to share with someone you may not have met yet. You can't un-experience something already experienced.

last updated:
9/21/04