The Virginity Project

Sunday service…..

This story speaks for itself. Its owner wrote me last summer to tell me about her search for love and companionship, a search that her family thought she shouldn’t make due to her sexuality. Luckily, Sadie* is a pioneer. I don’t suppose there are too many daughters of Christian Evangelist preachers who are prepared to go against the grain and stake the claim over the life they instinctively feel they should have.

 Which brings me to my next point. Lately this blog seems to have morphed into a one-woman mission to insist on the most basic of human rights. I can’t help it. Instinct should triumph over dogma. Marriage or not, gay or not, whatever or not, we cannot deny ourselves the most basic of needs. A sex life has to begin somewhere and that usually begins with the loss of virginity. Read on…

 Sadie. Born 1973. Lost virginity aged 35.

 ‘Hi Kate

I'm back again....finally with the rest of the story.

First of all a poem was what started some of this for me. It was the thought: ‘If I died today, what would I have most regretted I didn't do?’ And for me it started with kissing. I didn't want to die having never kissed someone. And then it progressed to ‘I don’t want to die having never been loved physically like that’.

As you know from my earlier story, I had no interest in sex with men because I'm gay. For years I wasn't able to seek out relationships with women because of my religious beliefs and because I kept trying to heal myself i.e. not like girls.

About two years ago I asked my counselor if he thought I was healthy in general and he said ‘yes’. I had been in counseling for years and I suddenly decided I was wasting my life trying to fix something that wasn't fixable. I finally started to accept myself and my love of women as something that just was.

The result of this is that I started dating for the first time in my life. I went out on dates or ‘friendship outings’ as I like to call them because a lot of these were just ‘get to know you’ events. I got to know myself a bit as well. I developed more confidence that someone would actually want to date me.

To skip ahead, a couple of months ago I met someone who I wanted much more than just a friendship date with. I was looking for someone who had a lot of the same religious things in common as me. We are both Christians, I can go to church and hold her hand, God and gratefulness is important to us both. Both of us would only like to be intimate in a committed relationship so soon we were dating.

I am still stunned that I lost my virginity. You asked ‘how does a lesbian lose her virginity?’ I think it's the first time you are fully naked and physical with someone. I asked my girlfriend and she said it's both oral sex and any type of penetration.

My strongest thoughts afterwards were: The church/Christians have totally lied to me. The church has made sex sound like crack. Something so powerful that you will be addicted. Something that is evil and then magically becomes good the moment a priest says something over you like ‘your married’. That is all a lie and I think it does a disservice to tell people or even hint at these things.

Sex and intimacy was sweet and playful. It was lovely. We were gentle and fun with each other. We talked a ton about it before. We talked about the areas of our bodies we felt insecure about. We talked about what we wanted and hoped for. What we had heard. And then we also talked during and after just checking in on how emotions and all were doing. It was really helpful and healing for me to talk like this. And she was so sweet. We are well matched sexually because we both have similar wants.

People told me I'd be scared, I wasn't. People told me they shook. I didn't. I had thought through this decision so much that I think when the time came I was just fully ready. I learned that I am an Aries lover. This is something I totally didn't know about myself until this. I thought all that stuff was junk. She said she was surprised I was a virgin because I didn't act like it. But I think the reason why is found in a poem by E.E. Cummings that says ‘the body has an intelligence of it's own.’ I did not need to train it. It knew what to do.

Our relationship is still going great. I do not feel any different. I do not feel guilt. I do get in some way why it was a great thing for me to have sex in a committed relationship. I think when I was younger I would have had some self-judgment due to the religious voices I'd heard through growing up. But here's the thing. Those same religious voices won't let me get married because I'm gay. So the best I can do right now in seeking to live the life I want is by keeping sex in a committed monogamous relationship.

I know I'm a rare breed. I was a virgin until just before my thirty-fifth birthday in order to figure this out. The decision to have a more spacious and wholistic understanding of sex than the church’s literal and confining view took me a long time.

The church has made being anti-sex it's own God. The church, especially the evangelical church in America judges the body as evil. It may not say this outright but it does come through. I think I've heard more about the evils of sexual temptation than any other topic. But in the end, sex for me was nothing to do with temptation. It was a choice to live instead of kill everything in me that was embodied.

Besides this, I have told three very open and accepting friends and it will stop there. But in needing to tell someone about all my years of working towards this and all the crap I had to figure out for myself, I wanted to tell my story somewhere. If I ever told my story in a Christian community I would be soundly renounced. I get that. But you know that just keeps the fear and lies about sex in play. 

One more thought. I am so glad I didn't force myself to date, marry and have sex with a man. I know another girl who did that. She has to drink alcohol to have sex with her husband. She stayed a virgin until she was married. And now she is basically stuck. I definitely am glad I didn't do the same as her just to ‘look good’ for the church.

 *Name changed to protect identity. Part one of ‘Sadie’s’ story was published on September 10 last year.

To have and to have not....

Sometimes a story’s interest lays not so much in what it does say as what it doesn’t. This is a curious little tale with some large holes. I was going to wait and post it once its author filled the gaps but I can’t hold back.

He raises a subject not often mentioned: the male urge to have sex with virgins. I was going to try and dress that up a bit but what’s the point? This is what I mean to say. Since the dawn of time, the virgin woman has held a certain allure. This is beyond the need for verifiable paternity so that the correct children inherit the correct wealth and it’s also beyond the concept of virginity as commodity, something to be traded via marriage for upward social mobility.

This is virginity as fetish. The idea that the virgin woman imbues us with something magical that cannot be gained elsewhere. Youth perhaps? Or even a cure for Aids? This may seem a preposterous idea, but in this day and age, children in some parts of the world are suffering under the tragic and misguided belief that sex with a virgin will cure you of AIDS.

Virginity is a powerful and potent symbol. As ever, I turn to Hanne Blank and her book ‘Virgin: The Untouched History’, for some clarity. She says this:

‘In eroticizing virginity, youth, physical nobility, ignorance, inexperience, fragility, and vulnerability are objectified from the perspective of someone who, by definition, is none of these things. The erotic charge of sex with a virgin rests on the interplay of the sexual aggression of an experienced partner and the sexual submission of a virginal one. It champions sex as a vehicle for completion and transformation, and it insists that a person who has sexual access to a woman automatically claims or colonizes her, body and soul.

Virgin territory. Perhaps that’s what its all about. Is it that deep down, man needs to plant his stake, so to speak, upon virgin soil, previously unsullied by anyone else? Who knows? The owner of our story certainly isn’t sure. ‘I am not a religious person’, he tells us, ‘but I may have been influenced by religious thinking’. He then finishes by telling us ‘my obsession with having ‘pure love’ is a detriment to my happiness and life in general’. This is a large statement with no conclusion – yet. Watch this space and let’s see if we can’t get to the bottom of one of The Virginity Project’s most perplexing challenges yet.

*‘Brady’. Age unknown.

'Hi Kate,

Wow, have you ever set up a good website. The topic of virginity has consumed my life. First of all, I am male. I abstained throughout high school, figuring that there was ‘one for everyone’. I soon changed my mind and thought that I would have to have sex because nobody seemed to have any morals whatsoever and that if I were to be seen as ‘cool’ by the ladies then I would have to lose my virginity. This logic does not make much sense as I write it. I didn't have it, but to have it, I had to have had it previously: the paradox of virginal thinking!

Anyways, my friend hooked me up with a ready and willing (drunk) girl at the bar one night, and we did it. Unfortunately, she was not expecting a one-night stand and ran off upset. I also did not feel that much better about myself for having done it. It really seemed like nothing had changed, besides perhaps feeling a bit more superior to another girl, my first serious girlfriend, who had just broken up with me.

Still, there was a yearning to have meaningful sex. The one-night stand didn't do much to make me feel like I'd accomplished anything besides thinking ‘Yes, I'm cool, girls. I've done it’. Then there was another paradox: I was desiring a virgin so much, but then thinking why had I decided to go ahead and lose my own virginity?

Since then, I've had a series of girlfriends, both serious and not, from near-engagements to one-night stands. Yet still, I long for a virgin. I believe it is the only way I can find pure, everlasting love, and form a pure, unbreakable bond with a girl. I am not even a religious person, although I may have been influenced by religious thinking. Where I got my beliefs from is a whole other question; some guys don't seem to think virginity is an issue at all.

My obsession, (as I will call it) with having ‘pure love’ is a detriment to my happiness and life in general. It's a depressing cloud that covers me. I try to find happiness in the girls that I'm with, yet I confront them, I challenge them, and make them feel guilty for what they have ‘done’. It makes me wonder if I can ever be happily married or love my wife the way I know I could. So, I'm waiting, sometimes to the point of hopelessness and despair, for the girl who will pledge herself and her love to me and make me feel like a whole, complete human being.'

*All names changed to protect identity.

Everything but the girl…

Perhaps you think that as a non practising Christian, I have something against god. Perhaps you think that I believe that people should throw caution to the wind and the rest of you be dammed. Actually I don’t. But I will tell you this: I am irritated beyond belief by the ways in which religion controls women.

Whoever invented the contraceptive pill was a genius. Could he, (for in a lovely twist of irony it was a he) ever have dreamt what a tidal wave of change would wash over a world that kept women chained to the cooker/home/bed simply because they couldn’t control their own fertility? I am oversimplifying the facts but this is what it really boils down to. Women used to need men and now they don’t. Except for the things that really count in life: love, companionship, warmth and protection. All the things that men need too.

We are all singing from the same song sheet, so why the fuss? Why do people persist in telling other people what to do and dress it up as something else? Its 2008 and women (and men for that matter), must be able to make basic choices for themselves without the burden of guilt.

Here is a consummate lesson in ‘owning your own sexuality’. No muss, no fuss, this is the story of a girl who asked the question, ‘who makes the decisions around here’?

Me, god, or the judgement of everyone else?

I think you know the answer.

Lynette, Southern California, USA (Born 1985)

I was the ‘everything-but-sex’ girl for a good six years of my sexual maturity. My first kiss came from a boy who pushed me up against a wall and stuck his tongue down my throat.....not all it was hyped up to be. He'd come over while my mom was at work and we'd make-out for hours. I'd let him put his hand up my shirt but that was the extent of it, after all, Jesus was watching.

One day he thought himself clever and slipped Mr. Happy over to the side of his shorts and I very accidentally came into contact with the most disgusting, wrinkly appendage I'd every felt. I was pretty much over it right then and there.

Boyfriend # 2. I'm sixteen now and everything-but-sex now includes my hands and his hands and a crazy, messy blur of clothes and mouths and ‘everything-but’. I asked if he was ready. I was scolded for even bringing it up and we continued on as if nothing had happened. I got to hold on to my v-card and assume the Christian mould and he got to continue being a weenie.

For years I pulled out the 'waiting till marriage' speech every time someone asked, when secretly, it was merely by chance that I hadn't blown it at sixteen. It became this crazy, inner struggle between what the church had told me was right and what I really felt. This continued until I was twenty. Enter Mike. Four years older than me and very much not a virgin. Beautiful piece of man. Incredible, charming and seductive. I knew he was a bad idea the second I laid eyes on him.

I let him take me to dinner. After a month of make-out sessions with me saying ‘no, no’ and him saying ‘I won't, just let me *stay* here’, I finally gave it. I'd like to believe I ‘gave in’, but truly he had one foot in the door already.

It was amazing. I went home that night and stared at myself in the mirror for an hour. I felt like something in me had shifted and like it should have shown on the outside...it didn't. But I had been changed; I had taken charge of something that for so long had been controlled by something other than myself. And it brought me closer to the thing I had feared for so long, that maybe God's not so concerned with whether or not I'm wed before I'm bedded. Maybe it's about being aware of myself and things that I'll stand for. My happiness, my confidence, my self-respect came from being that much closer to understanding the inner workings of myself.

God still loves me, and now so do I. And seriously, everything-but? It all came down to owning my own sexuality and allowing it to grow within me without being told how to do it.

Laugh? I almost spilt boiling water all over my....

I have struggled to make you laugh at times. Heck, I have struggled to make myself laugh at times. It’s been a challenge. Virginity loss isn’t all fun and games. But it is a bittersweet combination of comedy and drama. And therein lays the fun. I have searched high and low for that ‘laugh out loud, you could not make it up’ story and I think I may just have found it.

Granted, it’s a lot to do with perception. I don’t think the owner of this story thought it was funny at the time. But time, as they say, is a great healer. It even heals scars. Scars caused by the application of boiling hot water. I shouldn’t laugh, but I did. Read on – and weep...courtesy of the excellent hownottogetlaid.com...

Going to California….

There are lots of things you could say about this story. You could comment on the fact that its author is technically a minor. You could also point out the last line - the smartly penned assertion that her virginity has ‘got lost in the mail’, but mostly what I love about this story is the way that even though I don’t live in California and even though I am no longer seventeen, this young woman has allowed me to get right underneath the skin of her life. Intentionally or not, Aimee builds intrigue and suspense right from the first word she writes. It’s never clear which way this story will go. It still isn’t.

Reading her words puts me straight into the shoes of a seventeen-year old world. I can hear the slam of shuttered porch doors on warm dusty streets and I can feel the late night walks around quiet neighbourhoods and the first kiss from someone you love. Aimee has shown us an episode of her life but one way or another, the story will continue to be told whether we have a subscription or not.

Aimee. Born 1991. Virginity loss TBC.

‘I'm only seventeen years old but I grew up fast. I was invited to take courses at Stanford University in California when I was in 4th grade. I graduated high school at the age of sixteen and I am now a full time student while I save up for University.

I met my boyfriend at my job just a month and a half after my sixteenth birthday. He was actually one of the assistant managers and he had just been transferred to our location. I was instantly attracted to him but never acted on it because, well, he was technically my boss and older than me. We worked together for four months before he was promoted to general manager and yet another location.

I was hanging out with my best friend and we decided to invite him. We were all hanging out at her house and he said he wanted to get something out of his car to show us, (it was his old school ID and it didn’t look anything like him). He asked if I wanted to help him and I said sure. When we were at his car he said, ‘Aimee, I really want to tell you something, but you can't tell Mary-Beth.’ Mary-Beth being my best friend. I of course said I wouldn't tell her and then he said he was head over heels for her.

Of course I was hurt, but what was I to expect? Mary-Beth was nineteen, almost twenty, much closer to his age than me. I said I wouldn't tell her and I agreed to help him. If I couldn't be with him, I wanted to at least be his friend. We became really close. We talked everyday on the phone and hung out at least every other day.

Then while we were walking at about eleven o’clock at night, (he worked late and not in town so we would hang out once he got off), we started talking and he was telling me how I was his best friend and he could talk to me about anything and he was really comfortable around me.

At this point I liked him a lot, I had gotten to know him and he was so sweet and amazing. I'm not to let my feelings be known to someone because I fear rejection among other things. I didn't want to ruin our friendship by telling him how I felt. But before I could tell my mouth no, I heard these words pop out of me, ‘What if I were older?’ I just stopped walking and froze. I couldn't believe what I had just said!

Alex stopped walking also and looked at me. All he said was, ‘What did you say?’ I couldn't pretend like I didn't say it, so I just said, ‘What if I were older? What if I were eighteen?’ He didn't say anything for a moment and I felt myself freaking out. He walked closer to me since we were standing a good ten feet away from each other. He looked into my eyes and said, ‘You would be Mary-Beth’.

He leaned down and tilted my chin up with his index finger and kissed me. It was only my second kiss ever. It was the most amazing moment. We had only been friends for three weeks and all of a sudden we were kissing. We talked for at least two hours about the situation and had come up with the only logical solution. We would remain friends until my eighteenth birthday then we would date. We weren't sure if we could resist the temptation of each other’s bodies so we had to have boundaries. Since I was a minor and he was not, he could get in a lot of trouble.

But even being just friends, it didn't quite work out. We were basically dating, and eventually we just said we were. He then asked me if I would be his girlfriend. I of course said yes. I had never had a boyfriend before. Unless you count the whole ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ thing in 5th grade where you sit together at lunch.

It was amazing. He was so sweet and wonderful, and nice. He would do little things that would make me smile. He would open the car door for me, he would walk closest to the cars when we were walking, he would randomly surprise me with a rose.

He said ‘I love you’ first, and about a week later I said it to him. I had never said it before and well, I didn't really know how to. Since I only had had one other kiss before him I obviously hadn't done any other type of sexual interaction with another person. But he was really sweet about all of it and I found myself exploring his body and allowing him to explore mine.

We didn't take the physical stuff very slow. Well, all the stuff leading up to actual sexual intercourse. Within a week I was comfortable enough to have my top off, but it took about three weeks until I was comfortable enough to even have him touch below the belt, but it took me a few days more to let him look. It all was fun and new experiences for me.

After dating for two months, I had decided I was ready to lose my virginity to him. I told him and he asked me all sorts of questions so we could decide if I was emotionally ready or if my hormones were just telling me to do it. After figuring out why I wanted to and things like that we both agreed that it was something I was ready to do.

But once we go to the actual act, I got extremely nervous and tightened up. Needless to say, your body won't let anything in when your muscles have closed the opening! He was really sweet about it though, telling me it was okay and that he will wait until we are ninety if that's what I need. We just layed in bed naked and held each other.

I lived with my mother, and only three months after we began dating, Alex moved in. We tried to have sex every once in awhile but it always hurt too bad. It's now five months after he moved in and six months after our initial try, and we still have yet to have sex. So even though I'm still a virgin, I find myself not feeling like one some of the time because of my relationship and what we have done. But I definitely see myself losing my virginity to Alex. He is the man I hope to marry one day and the only man I wish to sleep with.

Hopefully soon will we be able to do the deed, I can't wait to share the experience with him. Even though he is not a virgin, and hasn't been for many years, he has remained supportive and does not pressure me in any way. My ‘virginity’ may still be intact but my heart has been given away, and the gift of my virginity might have just temporarily been lost in the mail

Sincerely,
Aimee,
California, USA’

Through the past darkly....

Coming as they do, at a point in our lives when we are ‘unformed’, free from the adult shaped shackles of ‘holding back’ or ‘being sensible’, the teenage years leave us free to throw ourselves fully at our first sexual experiences with no holds barred. Heart and all.

In response to Donnie’s story, I wrote back and told him that I will never forget the first time that someone really hurt me. Not that it matters now, but I can still recall its smell, taste and feeling. For Donnie, this bittersweet event collided with another ‘first time’ – the first time he had sex. Ouch. Like many of you, he expresses his feelings clearly. Furthermore, with hindsight, he has learnt to appreciate the past. Good or bad, all our experiences have their parts to play. This is as powerful a story as you will ever hope to hear…

‘If I pause for even a second, I won't send this to you, so I am just going to send it as I wrote it before I have a chance to change my mind:

It was ten years ago this month that I lost my virginity and the experience has left me with memories at once beautiful and bitter.

I was in college, working at a bookstore where it was my job to catalogue all their books for sale on their website. I had a key and often worked late at night and this meant that I and the girl I loved had a place where we could go and be away from the dormitories and our roommates. To say that I loved her would be a pale word for a feeling of radiant brilliance. I savored her. Every angle, every facet of her mind and her words and her eyes seemed to infuse me with an energy that I had never experienced before. When I was with her I felt that blessings were falling around me in a circle, shielding us both from a grey and chilly world.

One night, late in the dark store, after talking about Joseph Conrad novels, we kissed more and more deeply, and everything began to spin around me; all the square angles of the books and shelves blurred like a cartoon as I removed the lace from the curves of her body. It was hard to believe she was real—that anything could be so beautiful. Of course I had seen naked women before in pictures, and that had somehow infused the whole idea with a degree of unreality that now seemed to surround us.

We were laying on the floor between shelves of old books, and it all seemed like magic rather than reality; like music rather than sounds. I remember how her heat surprised me. I remember how her legs felt when they moved up around my ribs. I remember something she whispered to me—a whisper I sometimes still hear at night. I remember when I climaxed, the feeling rising up in me in a rush of heat: not like the feeling it had been when I was alone.

I remember playing with her hair afterwards, as we lay together panting and hot. And most of all I remember the feeling much later, as the sun was rising and we left the store. She was wearing my coat. And everything in the world was different. I noticed it instantly—as though the world had changed color; as though everyone had been speaking in a foreign accent and now suddenly switched to my own. I felt connected with the earth and the trees and the animals around me, and, of course, with her. It was truly a revelation.

I felt redeemed; saved somehow from an emptiness of which I had once had only a vague notion. In the ensuing weeks, as we made love more and more, I felt as though I had discovered a spiritual salvation of which religion had always seemed a bland imposter. I had never been a religious person, although I had appreciated religion's emotional aspirations. Now I was part of those aspirations.

It was only weeks later that it ended for us, under peculiarly painful circumstances. We tried briefly to salvage what had been, but it did not work. I was faithful; she was not. My heart was truly broken, as it has never been before or since. I fell into a depression and a year later decided to kill myself. I lay on my bed holding a knife and staring at it. I put it to my skin, but did nothing else. I won't go into what happened next, or describe how my desperate attempts to salvage what she and I had were rebutted with two painful betrayals. Suffice to say that I put my life together, and in the decade that has passed since I have made a successful and happy life, one of which I am deeply proud; one which makes me so glad I did not take my life as I so seriously considered then.

Six or seven years ago I saw met up with her again at a restaurant on the East Coast. She was with someone else, and after our lunch, I was able finally and at last to let her go. At home, I threw away my mementoes of her. Since then I have found a woman I love with all my heart and this summer will be our five-year anniversary.

My college girlfriend has married, and I hope she has found a life of tranquility, and that her husband fills her heart, as evidently I could not. Although the pain she caused me can never be washed away, and can never allow us to be friends, I am still intensely grateful for what she gave me, and I am able now to look back on that night and the other nights with magnanimity and fondness.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking of her and I am reminded of lines from my favorite poem, Tennyson's ‘Ulysses’: ‘I am part of all that I have met; / Yet all experience is an arch where through / Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades / For ever and for ever when I move.’

I told her then that I would always love her, and, for better or for worse, it seems to be true.'

Donnie, from the United States

More than a feeling?

It is only when you attempt to write about a person without mentioning their gender that you realise what a difference it makes. Gender informs and guides our every move. But does it matter when it comes to virginity loss? And are we ‘losing’ the same thing - if anything at all?

In the style of ‘Memento’, there is only one way to tell this story and that’s backwards. Its owner withholds basic detail but under gentle questioning, the layers unravel to reveal the full picture – and gender, of our storyteller.

Sam. Born 1988. Lost virginity aged 19.

‘I'm a youngster, born in 1988 in New York City. I lost my virginity on November 4th, 2007. I haven't had too much time to think about what I lost or gained but I'll explain regardless.

We were both drunk and I invited her over to my place because I was less drunk and there is no way she would have made it home at that time of night. I asked her to turn away while I put on my pyjamas because I didn't feel like walking down the hall to change. I gave her pyjama pants to change into because she asked me to and I let her crawl into bed first and wondered if I should sleep on the floor but she left me space so I crawled in under the covers. I turned off the lights and snuggled up close to her. I said something about feeling naughty and we started kissing.

I wrapped my leg around her and felt her hands all across my back and up my shirt. She kissed my neck and got on top of me. She asked me if it was OK and I said ‘yes.’ We slowly worked our clothing off and she kissed my chest and ran her hands between my thighs. She knew what she was doing. She asked me to tell her if it hurt but all I could do was gasp for breath. We took turns with oral sex and as we grinded against each other, I wondered which one of my neighbours could hear the pounding against the wall. We lay there for an hour or two afterward talking and then I fell asleep. I woke up early in the morning and she said she couldn't sleep so I walked her out.

I have to say that the sex itself was great but I'm sad that afterwards our flirting and kissing and cuddling has decreased. I think about how I don't think I satisfied her and I'm terrified of asking her whether or not I did. I know she's afraid of a relationship because she got out of an abusive relationship like 6 months ago. I also felt some guilt afterward thanks to my stupid catholic conscience.’

At this juncture, I had to write and ask ‘Sam’* the question: are you a man or a woman?

‘I'm really glad that you wrote back and I'm glad that you enjoyed my story. I purposely left out the fact that I'm female because I sometimes think it isn't really important. I completely forgot that my email address reveals my name. I guess there is much more to the story.

It all started at a party we had at my school's Queer Student Union. Alcohol was involved again and it was the first time I really paid attention to her. We were talking and our faces got closer and we embraced. For weeks after we acted like little kids. I asked her for a nickel and she'd tease me asking ‘What do I get in return?’ She asked me to help her get the DVD player to work and I would do the same, receiving kisses on the neck that made me weak and whimper. I took the train with her a couple of times and we held hands. It was cute. We'd talk about anything and everything.

One night we were both sober and we made out for a wonderfully long period of time until I remembered that my best friend was going to bring me my laptop. We got up just as I said that and my best friend walked in. It was an awkward moment but an interesting way to introduce her to my best friend.

The night of November 3rd we went to my friend's birthday party. At first we both said we didn't want to get drunk but my friend is a bastard and she never gives up the opportunity to shove a shot down your throat. Lots of drama developed and the police were on their way so those of us who are under-aged decided to leave before we got into more trouble. We walked to the train station, one thing led to another and you know the rest of the story.

We did speak about it afterwards, but only on the Internet. She asked me if I liked it and she said she enjoyed it. She especially liked the sounds I made and how I trembled all over. Last week I asked her what the heck was going on between us. I needed to know whether it was just a flirtation or whether we could be more than just friends who ‘hook up.’ She told me she was confused and that made me angry because I can't continue to get more attached without knowing what I'm getting myself into. I am trying to forget but I see her everyday and she smiles and it hurts.’

Finally, I asked ‘Sam’ how she would define the loss of her virginity. And what is it that we lose…

‘That's a really complicated question and the only thing I can really say is that I associate virginity with innocence and that I do think it is physical; however, it also involves the act of surrendering yourself. We are taught from childhood to never give up our bodies without asking for the world in return. In my loss of virginity, I fought this ideal in my heart and mind. I paid attention to the now and what I wanted instead of paying attention to what people told me to do.

I do think that having virginity is harder than not because at least now I don't have the ideal in my head fucking with me. I know what sex is and it doesn't seem as overwhelming as it did before. As for culture, I am a Dominican American. Latin American families don't generally talk about sex. It's just a subject we sort of ignore. My sister has a three-month rule before she has sex with anyone she is dating. I kind of believe in waiting but I got caught up in the moment.

What did I leave behind…my innocence? I don’t think so. I still feel fairly innocent. I'm young and I made a decision to share my body with someone. I'll always have doubts on whether I was too young or too drunk but it's done with and the only thing I know is that for now, I feel bad about the results but I definitely want to have more sex in the future because it's quite the feeling.’

*All names changed to protect identity.

In god we trust?

Your stories

Once again, the message rings home. Virginity is a hot topic, and it always will be. I’m no agony aunt, but it gets harder not to chuck my ten pence worth in when you get emails like this. If I could also post the response from the contributor’s brother, an email that exhorts the lady in question to stay chaste for the remainder of her days, (she is 34), you would really get the point.

Sadie writes, that, ‘figuring out what to do with my virginity has been harder than coming out in many ways’. And this, from the daughter of an evangelical pastor. For better or worse, for many Brits, the loss of virginity has become the barometer of social acceptance, a way in which to blend in with the crowd. Stateside, the story is quite different. Virginity and its loss is couched in a new language. Politicians talk about ‘abstinence’ and pastors speak of ‘purity’. But in the end, it all boils down to one simple question. Is it right to ask a person not to lose their virginity?

Sadie. Born 1973.

‘So I just found your blog because I wished that I could read about other people’s virginity loss stories. Finding it was really helpful.

What do you think of this?

All my close friends were actually virgins when they got married. My friend Tami didn't even kiss her boyfriend until he became her fiancé. My brother didn't kiss his wife until their wedding day. He was a virgin. This is the environment I grew up in.

And me? Well, I kissed someone for the first time this year at age thirty-four and I am still a virgin. Why? Because I never cared much if I kissed a boy and all my friends were good Christians. And being gay doesn't really go down well in the evangelical community. It took me until this year to, ‘come out’ and go on a date. And I still haven't lost my virginity because my head is so messed up about it. And also because my family and community thinks that since I'm gay, I have to stay celibate.

But I've noticed that the women I know around here, the ‘good’ Christian women who stayed single and virgins all seem dead inside. I think one or two of them may be gay and so they did the celibacy thing and they died inside. Can you be fully alive and celibate? I do not know, but it sure seems like killing that part of yourself kills another part of oneself as well.

I grew up mostly in Minnesota, USA, in the home of an evangelical pastor and a stay-at-home mom. I remember having one conversation about sex in late elementary school while getting my hair cut. Both my parents sat me down and explained what sex was. Love, and the man entering the woman. I thought it was the most disgusting thing I had ever heard and I felt really uncomfortable. After that, all I heard for the most part was how we are so tempted to sin and how important virginity was until you are married and how very careful I had to be around boys, (which was never any issue for me because I never liked them). For protestant evangelical Christians, sex is the ultimate sin.

I still hold to my Christian ideals and all but... I don't know which happened first, but somewhere in the last couple years, I saw ‘The Vagina Monologues’. And afterwards I thought, I don't even know where mine is, (metaphorically speaking). And I don't want to die without ever kissing someone. I don't want this to be my life. I want to be embodied. I need to at least figure out how to be OK enough to feel ‘turned on’, without guilt. Somewhere in there, I stopped hating myself if I masturbated and I decided to let my body just be. This was OK for me, because I still wasn't having sex so it was a safe first step. One that was just a tiny bit more spacious. I just figured that God made my body and now I just want to know it a bit too.

I just wanted to tell some anonymous person out in cyber space how messed up all this virginity and losing it stuff is in the Christian community. Figuring out what to do with my virginity has been harder than coming out in some ways. And coming out is hard because I am a pastor’s kid. The girl that I kissed said her friends always tell her not to date virgins because we are too sensitive. Ug. So Christians in my community are freaked out by me because I am gay and people outside of my community won't date me because I am a virgin.

Two things help right now. For the first time ever, I am meeting other solid good Christian people who are gay and who respect the bible, but read it differently. And that has helped a TON. I also started just trusting myself and knowing myself enough to say that this is me and this is what I want.

Virginity sucks!’

Going for the summit...

Your stories

‘Hippie commune’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘virginity loss’. Five words I didn’t expect to hear in one sentence. This is an interesting little story. I like the picture that Amira paints. It’s almost akin to an Everest expedition. The protagonist and her lover picking their way through the snow clad forest, everything they need for their adventure packed up on their backs. ‘Pyjama’s, (heaven forbid you forget the pyjama’s), condoms, spermicide and lubricant’. Whoever said that today’s teens were irresponsible?

Amira*. Born in 1990. Lost virginity aged 17.

‘The community wasn't exactly where I grew up, but within the past several years, I have spent a lot of time there and adopted a lot of their values. They have always treated me like family, like my opinion matters, something I never really received at home.

Home was a different story, but strangely enough, the decision to have sex wasn't very difficult for me, despite the Muslim values of chastity being forced upon me since I was young. In Islam, you are forbidden even to kiss before marriage, which implies the primitive practice of arranged marriage. I am very opposed to arranged marriage. One time when I was young, my father even told me that when I was older, they would place an ‘ad’ in a Muslim magazine to find me a husband. But despite my father being a strict Muslim, when I was fourteen, I finally moved away from those beliefs and found the courage to tell him. He doesn't like it, but I think he accepts it for now, hoping that I will go back.

Of course my story isn't at all perfect, as most first times rarely are, but even if the event itself wasn't, the partner couldn't have been more perfect.

We had been trying to plan a time for us to have sex and because we had never done it, we didn't know how easy it would be to find a spot. My boyfriend was from Germany and he was staying for a year with the community. He had a room in the ‘Main house’, which is where everyone eats their meals and hangs out. Finally, one of the people who lives there went out of town and said that we could stay at his house. The family's houses are spread out all over the property. Coincidentally, this man was also our teacher at the alternative school which was also on the farm's property.

The day came and we ate dinner with the community and waited for them to leave so that we could head up to the house unseen. We packed all the items we would need: pyjamas, toothbrushes, condoms, spermicide and lubricant. As we left to go out into the February weather, we were hit by a cold gust of wind. It was freezing. Enough to have the same effect as sandpaper on our cheeks. We walked against the wind, step after step and it got deeper and deeper as we made our way into the fields. It was so dark that we occasionally went off the path into a knee deep, if not deeper, patch of snow.

We made it to the house unscathed, except for runny noses and pink cheeks. The house which is always heated by a wood stove, was just about as freezing as outside, minus the wind. So he started a fire as I am completely inept at such practical things. We cuddled a bit on the couch, both nervous as the fire began heating the house. Finally we decided we were ready and we brushed our teeth together before heading upstairs.

How odd that our first time was in our teacher's bed. We got out our condoms, spermicide, and lubricant and left them to the side. We both undressed, ready to get into bed together. I remember we both left on our thick wool socks because it was still relatively cold. I put in spermicide to begin with because at that time I wasn't on birth control.

We kissed, licked, sucked, and did many things that we had already done before. He was erect, but I still remained tight; I wasn't loose or lubricated yet. We decided to try the lubricant and that helped as he applied it. We had another minor issue with the condoms which wouldn't fit very well; they were Trojans. He said that they didn't have this kind in Germany. It also led to a running joke about how American condoms are too small for the ‘grande’ German. We managed to fit one out the best we could and we figured it would be alright since we had two contraceptives. We tried missionary, but it didn't seem very effective. Every time he would start to come in, it was almost as if he would just be thrown out, not to mention it was also quite painful. He suggested that I go on top and I did. But the pain was just as immense. Eventually he was in me, but both of us were cringing in pain; me from being stretched, him from because constricted.

We decided to give up for the night. Maybe too soon, but it felt like we had been trying a while and a wave of sleepiness hit us. We cuddled awhile longer, said ‘I love you’ some more, and fell asleep spooning. Of course, we ended up trying and trying again on later occasions until we got it right, and it led to some satisfying sex, both emotionally and physically.

In my opinion, I don't think you have to wait for marriage. Of course some people want to, some people choose to do so for religious reasons and that is perfectly respectable, but I don't think you have to. We didn't know how long we would be together because he had to return to Germany, and he left just about a month ago. If you have someone you really love, who adores you as much as you do them, and you feel ready, I would say go for it. I did. My point is that you never know when is the next time you are going to be in love. Perhaps it will come easily, perhaps it will take awhile, but you never know. I loved him, I still love him, and more than anything, I am happy that it was him I chose to give it to and the fact that he chose me as well.

I think it's an important decision, but to me, the importance is not marriage, it is love’.

*All names changed to protect identity.

The other side of the coin…

Your stories

This is what I mean when I talk about hormones…you can’t get away from ‘em. It doesn’t matter how many abstinence programmes you teach or cheap bits of jewellery you flog. People want to have sex. It’s primal instinct.

‘He who does not does better’. So wrote Paul, colleague of Christ and author of I Corinthians. People have been worrying about ‘primal instinct’ since the beginning of time. Marriage was the compromise. Quite apart from anything else, a family’s fortune could rest or fall on the safe keeping of a daughter’s virginity, so everybody was happy. To a degree. I don’t imagine that being female and biblical was a picnic in the park. I digress; my point is that we don’t live in biblical times. We don’t even live in Victorian times. For better or worse, sex has become a leisure pursuit, something we can do for no other reason than to please ourselves. How wonderful! The pay-off? STDS, the risk of unwanted pregnancy and a big old journey as most of us go off on the hunt for ‘the one’.

I flagged up my thoughts on this last week and I’m sticking to them. Life is not perfect. Loving the wrong people, making mistakes and moving on are all part of life’s rich pattern. As Sally has found, applying hard and fast rules to the maelstrom that is your teenage years does not work. We grow, we change. That’s life.

When do I think a woman should lose her virginity? A masseur at the Chinese Clinic on Camden high street asked me this question not forty minutes ago. I had just had one of those ten minute massages that makes you wish you possessed the power to make time stand still. I didn’t miss a beat. ‘When she meets the right person’. It really is that simple.

Sally. Age 22. Lost virginity aged 22.

‘I would like all of this to be confidential.... but I would like to tell you my story because, first of all, I would like readers to read it, and secondly, because writing this will probably be therapeutic for me....

I lost my virginity two weeks ago with my boyfriend who I have been with for a little over a year. I must first tell you that I am Catholic and have always firmly believed in waiting until I was married to have sex. My boyfriend and I actually both believed this, until recently, our love for one another has just come to the point that we wanted to show each other that love in the ultimate and most beautiful way.

My belief in chastity came along when I voluntarily became involved in my church's youth group at age 16. The whole concept really appealed to me, because I felt I was worth waiting for, especially for that special someone! The whole idea of chastity is to remain completely chaste. Unfortunately, though, we all fall into sin, and yes, I did do 'everything but.' There would be times in my teenage years when I didn't have a boyfriend and I was completely chaste, and that felt great. But, there were also other times when I had a boyfriend and we did things, and that felt great too! So, I didn't really know where I stood six months ago when I was ready to lose my virginity with my boyfriend. He was also a virgin too, I don't remember if I told you that, but, that made it even more special.

The first time we had sex it hurt me really bad, and it was a little awkward, so we pretty much got our hopes up about our "first sexual experience." We don't regret it, but I have felt a little empty because since we have been having sex for a few weeks, we haven't been to church and I feel like I am going against all I ever stood for. It may sound strange, but I don't regret the sex, in fact, I want to keep having sex with my boyfriend, but I also want to go back to church and return to my faithful lifestyle....

I am feeling so confused because I am extremely satisfied and overjoyed from having sex with my boyfriend, yet so sad and empty because I haven't been to church and have lost the connection and relationship I once had with Christ.

I want other young Christian women to know that even if they have lost their virginity before they were married, that there is hope to re-connect with their faith again and that it is completely normal to have these mixed up feelings of satisfaction and regret combined.

I feel as though, if you have been with someone for a long enough time and you know that you will spend the rest of your life with them and you are having sex, you aren't doing anything really wrong. I still don't know if I necessarily believe in pre marital sex, but our circumstance has made me feel a little differently about individual "first sexual experience."

I am American, as you guessed, and I am from New England.

In Christ,
Sally'