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The Burden of Being a Virgin
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Being a virgin can be a real drag. When all your girlfriends swap stories of passionate love making, scandalous screwing and one-night-standing, leaving you with nothing to contribute to the conversation, it’s easy to feel like you’re the odd woman out. It’s also easy to feel like you’re missing out. Combine the two and you might start to feel like you should just hurry up and lose your damn virginity already! After all, at the rate everyone’s sleeping around, sex can’t really be that big of a deal.
The truth of the matter is that it isn’t …. unless it is. And that’s something only you can determine for yourself.
Having decided to not sleep with my high school sweetheart, for no other reason than that intuitively I knew I wasn’t ready, I was the last of my college girlfriends to lose her virgin status. And, in the beginning, I was embarrassed about it. Somehow I had missed the memo, but I was certain that everyone in my freshman dorm (unless they were fairly religious, which I was not) came to school already “experienced.” It also seemed that everyone’s favorite drinking game was nine fingers, and the more fingers you folded down the cooler you were. So I would lie. Instead of holding my ground, and my fingers up, I confessed to sexual activities I indeed had never experienced.
Why? Simple: I was insecure and uncomfortable in my own skin. I once heard someone say that as kids we are desperate to fit in, then at some point we become desperate to be different. It was fair to say that I hadn’t made that empowering transition, yet. All I can say is thank god I only lied about it and didn’t go out actually and have sex with any one of the fraternity boys I was hooking up with at the time.
Lucky enough to be born with an intuition that knocks too loud to be ignored, I knew one thing: I would so not be okay with casually losing my virginity to someone who was not my boyfriend…. My. Saving. Grace.
Funny thing is, by my junior year, my virginity became a mark of distinction I wore proudly. I had done everything but, partied with the best of them and knew all of the lyrics to the most discriminating gangster rap songs. In short, I was a sort of phenomenon. Being asked to clear up a bet between guy friends was a common occurrence – few believed I was still a virgin. And I loved it.
In the end, I lost my virginity to a boyfriend who was less than stellar, the big moment wasn’t anything to write home about and the sex that followed was, to be honest, boring. But I was glad the whole ordeal was over. I was also glad I had waited. While the event I had waited so long to experience was less than sacred, the guy genuinely cared about me and I was more than ready to have sex. After hearing high school horror stories of lost virginities, I felt fortunate that I suffered no emotional fallout when it was finally my turn.
Looking back now, being a virgin during my first three years of college was actually a blessing in disguise. The fact that I had never had sex allowed for me to fool around with different guys without having to think about whether or not I was going to sleep with them. I just didn’t. Having never experienced the pleasures of sex, I was satisfied pushing the limits without having, or wanting, to go all the way. A freedom only innocence offers.
I’m not saying that once you’ve had sex, you need to sleep with every guy you make out with. But, for me (and I’m assuming for most), the novelty of sex has worn off with the more partners I’ve had. Once the clothes come off, sex seems rather inevitable. The power struggle between hormones and reason typically comes down to one question: Why not? Being a virgin was a definite not. Easy answer.
So don’t be in a huge hurry to catch up to your sexcapading girlfriends. Right now, being a virgin may feel like a heavy burden, but being sexually active is undoubtedly accompanied by much heavier consequences. Why not retain your innocence just a little bit longer?
Once it’s gone, it’s nearly impossible to get back.