The Virginity Project

Get fighting fit...

You are a creative bunch out there in the digital ether. ‘Regner’ from Denmark sent me this charming if highly poignant collection of thoughts and stories about virginity. Namely his own. It got me to thinking in another Carrie Bradshaw moment of contemplation that virginity loss is the conduit. The tunnel through which we drive so much of our anxiety, our sadness and our frustration with the way that life just doesn’t pan out the way we want it sometimes.

In many ways this story isn’t really about virginity loss. It’s part of it - the tangible part of a life that its owner doesn’t feel is quite up to scratch, but it’s not the whole story. This is the story of someone who has not yet grasped a sense of his own power. Put differently, he lacks confidence.

Confidence. Ten letters that pack a punch. If you want to define something indefinable, confidence makes a great example. What does it look like? Where do you get it? And how do you keep it? Big questions that require big answers and I’m not sure I am qualified to help but I will say this: we don’t have to be helpless.

The most powerful thing that a human being can do is to take action. We can’t make people fancy us more or grow taller or better looking, at least not on the outside. And therein lies the clue. Forget about the things that you can’t do much about and start working on the things that you can. Forget about labels like virgin or non-virgin and start defining life on your own terms.

Think of it like this. When a captain takes hold of the wheel and begins the long slow turn to take his ship in another direction, a tiny shift of ten degrees might not look like much but here’s the thing. His boat will end up in a totally different port. It’s the small things that make the difference.

Have a haircut, go on a diet, learn to dance or all of the above. Question your thoughts. Even one a day. Are the rest of the world really ‘so happy and in love’? Or is that just the way you chose to see them? Or what they tell you?

‘You can’t count other people’s money’ as somebody once said to me. Making assumptions about other people’s lives is just that – making assumptions.

Confidence comes from steering your own ship. A crisis of my own saw me take myself to my local gym a few years back. And I don’t mean Holmes Place. I mean the All Stars Gym on Harrow Road. It’s a starkly lit brick building with a boxing ring, a bell and a lot of large muscly black men knocking seven bells out of each other’s shadows. It was just what the doctor ordered. I didn’t go more than four times but it signified an important moment in my life – the moment I took control and decided to fight, quite literally, for what I wanted. And I found out this: the right energy will attract more of the same.

I shall step away from the pulpit now but hear this Regner. I always change people’s names to protect their anonymity. Consequently I find myself looking on web sites like this for new names to give to people. How would I know what a popular men’s name in Denmark is? Today I chose Regner because aptly, it means ‘wise warrier’.

Regner, if you are brave enough to tell the world your story then you have the strength to change it. Go forth and conquer (yourself) young man. I know you can do it.

'Hi Kate

You’ve written that you receive a lot of stories from late virgins. I am myself a 24-year old Danish ‘super-virgin’: I have never had sex, never been kissed, never held hands and it goes without saying that I’ve never had a girlfriend. This is my story and some of my thoughts on being a virgin for way too long time.

The Origins of Sex-lessness

I was brought up as a only child by my parents in a rural area. We were living outside of the village so there were few other kids that I could play with. When I was six years old and went to school I realised that my parents were different. It was a typical rural area where people were craftsmen or farmers. My parents on the other hand can be described as intellectual hippies – my childhood home was filled with books on philosophy, classical music and Buddha-statues.

They had little in common with the locals and little interaction with them. I am happy for all the things that I’ve learned from my parents and for the amount of cultural capital I’ve received but I wish that I could have avoided the negative consequences of being the strange nerdy kid who liked to read and hated football.

My company was good enough for my classmates when they were copying my homework but they would never invite me over or do anything else to include me. Needless to say there were a lot of social skills that I didn’t learn.

Things were bad but they got worse once I got old enough to realise that girls were very interesting. As any normal kid would do, I fell in love with Trine, a girl from my class. I think she also had a crush on me. In the afternoons, she used to walk a dog and it often happened by ‘accident’ that I met her on my way home from school.

I was completely obsessed with Trine. When I today read some of the diaries and poems I wrote during that period I am shocked at how creepy I was. But I never said a single word about my crush. Being the strange kid with no confidence, the task of expressing interest in a girl was a monumental challenge. Eventually her interest in me died out and she found other guys to be with.

But people are not stupid. Everybody was able to see that I was madly in love with her and as everybody who has ever been in a schoolyard would know, ‘strange fat kid being in love with someone’ is the best material a bully could ever wish for. I was ridiculed for being in love with Trine and I soon learned to associate love with humiliation and ridicule.

The years passed and I got to high school. I still had no confidence but gradually I gained a little and I got a few friends. But I was still unable to get a girlfriend. During my high school years, I only developed a crush on one girl, Luca. I met her at a high school party and I really don’t know how it happened but we managed to arrange a date. The days from the party to the date were the best days of my life. I was ecstatic about the fact that Luca had chosen me over all the other guys and that my long period of loneliness and unsatisfied desire finally seemed to be drawing to an end.

But then came the date. I arrived at the cinema with a spirit of hopeful anxiety and left with the same feeling the Polish cavalry must have had after having attacked German tanks with lances during World War 11. It was a complete disaster. It showed up that we were incompatible and had nothing in common. Our conversation consisted almost entirely of embarrassing silence and she soon became more interested in her cell phone than me.

This did nothing but reinforcing me in the belief that getting a girlfriend and getting rid of my virginity was a hopeless endeavour.

Time passed on and I graduated from high school. Until then I had comforted myself by the fact that I was not the only virgin and it is perfectly normal for some people to loose their virginity a little later. But being nineteen and on my way to university I could no longer use that excuse.

I moved away from home to go to law school. It was wonderful to get all that new freedom and meeting all the nice and intelligent people at the university. I was filled with hope – nobody knew me and I would be able to redefine myself as an ordinary outgoing guy with a completely normal relationship to the opposite sex. The gender ratio at law school was also in my favour with 60% of the students being female.

I got more confidence and became happier but I failed to make any real progress with the ladies. During my university years I have only been on dates with two girls and it didn’t work out. The first one came and visited me at home and I cooked her some dinner. The date was a nice experience for me since it learned me that a date can be a relaxed, down to earth thing but unfortunately there was no real spark between us and there never was a second date.

A while after, I had a date with Rikke. She was interested in me and I enjoyed the experience of having a girl wanting to be with me but I simply didn’t have any attraction to her. I stopped the thing after three dates.

How Not To Lose Your Virginity

Getting a girlfriend is at the top of my list of priorities but whenever I am in the vicinity of an attractive girl I run into a mental barrier. I am afraid of the entire situation, afraid of having to relate to another person in this completely new and unfamiliar way. I really want to flirt with her but my mind freezes and I’m completely unable to come up with anything to say so I just sit there in quiet desperation and watch some other guy taking her.

I simply don’t believe that I’m able to get a girlfriend. The girls at the university intimidates me – they are so pretty, so confident and so much in control of their lives. I feel that I’ve got nothing to offer them, at least not something that other guys cannot give them.

My body image doesn’t help me achieving my goal of getting a girlfriend. I have never been into sports or exercise and I love good food so it is no wonder that I’m somewhat obese and out of shape. To me it seems I have found a very effective way to preserve virginity. All you need to stay a virgin is fear of your preferred sex, lack of belief in your own personal qualities and a poor body image.

Inside The Virgin’s Head

Being a virgin after your teens is not a preferable situation, especially if you’re a man. Virginity is something one has to hide as if it was some terrible crime. Most people view virgins as pathetic losers who should just make more of an effort.

Being a virgin makes me feel inadequate and less a man than my peers. It is if there is a hole inside me where all the wonderful feelings of love and sexual desire should have been and this empty hole hurts. The physical pressure can be alleviated but I have found nothing that can compensate for the lack of emotional connection.

My virginity has also leads me to having some very ugly emotions from time to time. Misogyny is dangerously close and I would be lying if I were saying that there have never been moments where I have blamed my situation on the female sex. Luckily that disgusting feeling disappears quickly. Envy and virginity often goes hand in hand for me. When I see a couple kissing or hear people talk about their relationships, I ask myself what I have done not to deserve that.

Why isn’t it me being so happy and so in love? When I see what I can’t have it feels like an ice pick is being driven through my chest. I know that I ought to be happy on the behalf of those who are actually experiencing love, but I just want it to be my turn to be sitting at a park bench kissing.

I have read all the self-help books I could get my hands on and flooded every relevant Internet board and advice column in an attempt to figuring out how to defeat virginity. But nobody seems to have a clue about
how to do it. Telling people to wait and let things happen by themselves offers no help at all.

My description can seem depressing, and being a virgin when everybody else are having normal sex lives is depressing - but luckily life consists of more than sexuality and romance and I don’t go around feeling bad about my virginity all day long. I have great friends with whom I have fun and a loving family. I can appreciate the beauty in art, literature and music and I like being at university. Actually I would have nothing to complain about if it wasn’t for my virginity.

Yours sincerely

Regner’

Tori – Part Two

Discovering that true intimacy means being mentally naked – just as much as it involves the physical shedding of clothes was one of the great revelations of my life. Perhaps that is why this story resonates and also why, after all the wonderful stories I have been sent, this is an all time favourite.

Some of us spend years searching for someone we can be naked with. Tori has gone in at the top. Ok, soul searching was involved, religion had its say too but she got there in the end. I don’t think I am ruining the story by telling you that it was worth the wait.

The moment….

We joke that sex was my twentieth birthday present. It was actually a month and a day after that we had sex, but it was around my birthday that we set about exploring in earnest.

I'm not sure what changed. I knew from the beginning that if things worked out between G and I, we would have sex at some point. I worried about timing, about starting this before we were sure that I could cope with being in a relationship with him, let alone sex. But I woke up on my birthday, and, without fanfare or angst, it seemed right. Now was as good a time as any. I spent a large part of my twentieth birthday learning to give a hand job. It was only when someone rang me at four in the afternoon that I remembered that it was in fact my birthday.

I had never been touched before. I was - am still - very tense. At first, what should have been pleasure responses registered as pain. All the sensitive nerves in my vulva exploded in sharp stabbing fire. He was so gentle and patient with me, backing off until I was ready to try again. Time, patience, and the pleasure responses balanced out the pain. G encouraged me to touch myself before he attempted to finger me. He lay there and coaxed me and encouraged me and reminded me that there was no way to get it wrong, as long as it felt good.

I relaxed enough that he could slide his finger inside of me. The muscles around the outside were tight and painful, but inside... I had no idea of what to expect and was overwhelmed. I tried to curl up into a ball around these new sensations and cried ‘what is this, what is this?’ Those first few times, even before the pain receded, were the most intense. I had no time to worry about what was going to happen next, I lost myself in the moment. I didn't notice when my hymen broke because - for the first time, that day, there was no pain at all when he touched me.

We stuck with that for a while. As a matter of honour, he maintained that we were going no further before the end of semester, when I would have a chance to catch my breath and make sure everything was ok. Everything was ok. The half-expected reality check never happened. Neither of us came to our senses and recovered from our insanity.

Sex itself took several false starts. The first try, I freaked out at the last moment. G had apparently expected this, but I was confused and taken aback. For a large part, at that point I just wanted to get past the first time, to have it out of the way so that I didn't have to worry about the unknown. But that unknown scared me enough that I just couldn't do it.

I don't know what was different the next time but we started messing around a bit with different positions, on the basis that if we were going to have false starts we might as well have some variety to them. Somewhere, one of them worked.

We had to stop and start again a bit the first time. I remember feeling mostly confused, having to process a bunch of new sensations. The physical intimacy, the discomfort, new and (mostly) good feelings. It hurt - even now, a month or so later, the moment of penetration is still uncomfortable for me, but I didn't care. We had sex again quite soon afterwards, this time with me on top. It was that second time that the whole sex thing clicked for me. G tells me I had my mouth hanging open in a most unladylike manner, as I lost track of everything around me, even him beneath me.

When I came back to earth I freaked out a little, surprised by the intensity that had taken me. G gave me space to myself for a while and I sat on his stairs while he pottered around, and took stock. I think I had to make sure that I hadn't in fact lost anything, that I was still the same person. Which I was, and am. Virginity loss hasn't changed a lot of things. I still don't know what I'm doing half the time; I'm still getting comfortable with myself, and sex - and G. I'm still easily overwhelmed or frightened by it all.

That's ok, though, because this isn't really about first time sex. It's about G, and I, and having a relationship and sex, which is loving and safe and honouring to both of us. Which also happens to be awesome sex. Even when it's Bad Sex, when we're uncoordinated and tired and nothing quite works, it's still awesome - gentle and tender and patient and funny. It doesn't matter how long it takes to work it all out - right now it feels like we have all the time in the world.

I have been so incredibly lucky to find G. People spend half their lives reading chick lit and waiting for something like this to come along. This is the sort of relationship the True Love Waits society tells you is 'worth the wait'. And it is, no arguments. If I thought they were right, that premarital abstinence was the only way to have a relationship like this, I'd sign the card right away. Clearly, their prescribed method of achieving this isn't the only route, though. It doesn't matter if G and I are only together for a year, or three or thirty. What matters is that it is true and honest and loving, right now.

I'd like to say this is all I've ever hoped for, but to be honest this is nothing like what I'd hoped for. I've been a cynical person, with little tolerance for pipe dreams, regardless of whether it's chick lit or the church who are offering them. If I expected anything at all, it was a comfortable friendship which would drift slowly into a relationship and commitment. Somewhere along the line there'd be sex. But G happened along, and all I can say is that if I ever settle for second best, I'll know what I'm missing.

Afterwards

‘I just wonder’, you asked me Kate, ‘if real love is that much of a strong emotion that it forces us - albeit in a very pleasant way, to re-assess everything we thought we knew’...?

‘Real Love’ has caused me to reassess many things. Not the things I thought I knew, but the things I worried about not knowing. How would I know when I found ‘a sexual relationship which enriches you as an individual’? What, exactly, did that consist of? What would it look like?

Maybe, had G. and I not had this silly instant connection, all those questions would still be difficult. But I knew this in the same way that I knew I loved him. I knew it, because I knew it. I can't describe how I know it, but hopefully I have described to others what that knowledge feels like.

To return to ‘losing’ my virginity. They tell you that your virginity is the greatest gift you can give your partner, but I cannot feel that I have given away anything. Oh, G. is damn special, and has every reason to feel so, but there are many things I have given him – love, trust and instruction on the fine art of constructing a paragraph.

When it comes to sex, it is he who has given, and I who have received. G. turned up in my life and gave me a safe space in which to explore. He gave me no pressure, and no boundaries to fear. I had slammed the door shut on an uncontrolled wilderness that I could not understand. G. turned that into a room full of playpen balls and told me I could do what I liked with them.

In twenty years time, my virginity will be only a memory, but G has given me something which will last my lifetime: my body, all wrapped up with a metaphorical bow on it, and a free demonstration, of the ‘look what it can do’ variety. I still have a lot to learn, a lot to explore... but I'm not doing it alone.

Tori

I probably should save this post for Valentines Day, but heck, I can’t wait.

On the surface of things, this might appear to be a story about religion and how it affects the choices that people make. But I disagree. This is a story about love and how it affects the choices that people make.

Tori may be a Christian - or a vegetarian - or possibly even a two headed, purple-spotted alien, but it makes no difference. This is a woman who knows that she wants something - she isn’t sure what that something is but she is prepared to wait until she finds it.

I may not be religious in the traditional sense but even I had to say, ‘Tori, I believe that God would think you were a nutcase if you had passed up this chance’.

Love doesn’t come along every day. Grab it while you can.

The background…

‘You, my love, are no longer a virgin’, he says to me, his eyes wavering from my face to the bloody finger he has pulled out of me. I must look worried, because he smiles. In the medieval sense, that is.

For some reason I feel bereft. I can't understand it. The hymen has no inherent value. I didn't even know where it was, or if I still had one. But now it's gone and I can't get it back. I feel exposed. I curl onto my side and hide in sleep. His arms are still around me when I wake.

Last month I had sex for the first time. We had sex for the first time together. And the second and the third and then I lost count. I can be a little single-minded when I discover a New Thing. Fortunately, G seems to find this both adorable and flattering, so everyone is happy.

The terminology surrounding virginity is flawed. We talk about losing virginity, or giving it away. G prefers sharing, which I have to say is a much better term, but it still doesn't quite express what I am feeling. I have not lost anything, or given anything away. I am in no way less. If I lost anything, it was at that point, weeks ago, when my hymen broke courtesy of ‘outercourse’. I was overwhelmed, and inexplicably shaken up and I came home and wrote the little word sketch above. Something I had never been aware of was gone. But that loss did not mean I was no longer a virgin. It was merely a step, a stage in the journey.

G and I fell head over heels for each other. I met him four months ago and in a stroke of rather embarrassing irony, I noticed him at first only because he was with his very striking girlfriend. For some time, I remembered him only as the-guy-who's-dating-Striking-Girl. He came along to an extra-curricular group I'm in, and he and Striking Girlfriend started hanging out. G and I must have had a few conversations, nothing memorable, but during which we found out two facts which have since become a very interesting factor in our relationship: he is a vocal, steadfast and often angry atheist, and I a committed, though respectably left-wing Christian.

At some point I found out that Striking Girlfriend had gone away for a few weeks and G was feeling deprived of social interaction. I decided, out of the goodness of my heart, that we should take him under our wing and provide him with social interaction while she was away.

Weeks went past in a blur of late-night conversations. I found that I could talk to G candidly about my faith, which is very unusual. I don't talk about faith - theology, yes, but not the more personal side of it. Have you ever met someone and almost instantly known them? Fallen into them? The kind of instant connection that powers the chick flick industry? He walked into my life and I instantly trusted him.

The point when I realised that I couldn't think of anything that I would not be able to talk about with G was the point I realised that I could have sex with him. I found myself on the telephone to him at some weird hour of the night, telling him the story I had wanted to tell you when I last wrote. I mentioned then that abstinence education did nothing to prepare me for that confusing state of being, when your body and mind both want someone desperately, and yet both are overloaded with new sensations and desperately want out.

That was where I had ended up with my last partner - a state of total confusion. I thought that writing to you might help, but I was unable to put in words what was bothering me. Anyway, here I was talking to G, and it all came spilling out. This is the kind of person I want to sleep with announced my brain. Which was a little scary, given that he was still technically taken at the time and I was doing a great job of convincing myself I wasn't interested in him anyway.

Things kind of cart wheeled out of control; I realised I was interested in him about five minutes before a bunch of friends ambushed me and pointed out that I was glowing in his presence. For reasons that aren't any of my business, and which I take on trust were not directly related to me, G and Striking Girlfriend broke up.

Much angst ensued as he sorted out various things in his life. Somewhere in there, a friend of mine, prone to thinking she knows everything about everyone - and sadly she often does - announced that if I dated G, I would end up sleeping with him. I remember laughing, because at that point it didn't look like we'd get the chance to get that far. But the idea itself didn't bother me; I simply accepted it as true.

My partner before G was the first time I had experienced real desire and it had scared me. I didn't know what I was feeling, or how to deal with it. That particular relationship tailed off, which was all for the better, but I remained confused. I had caught a sideways glimpse of the vast unexplored territory within, and I didn't know what to do about it. The door didn't fit back quite as well as it had.

It was at this point that I first wrote to you. It helped, a great deal, because I was able to pin down a few basic principles. But what I really wanted to say, to someone – anyone - was that I was scared. The idea that I might have sex, the feeling of having to make sexual choices, was suddenly in my life, and no one, not my family nor my friends nor my church, was giving any classes on making those decisions, at least not to nineteen year olds who are, for all intents and purposes, adults. It wasn't until I met G, and found myself able to be completely open with him, that I found someone to say that to.

‘You get to make the decisions’, he maintains. This could be just typical male abrogation of responsibility, but I prefer to think he's being Gentlemanly. We took things as I was ready for them. There was that first kiss, which slid into making out, which slid into sleeping - actually sleeping - together. One of the nicest things you can do with another person is simply to curl up in one another's arms without any question of sex. People look at me funny (or used to), when I'd say that I wasn't having sex, and meanwhile I had my boyfriends stay over without batting an eyelid. But for my part, I've always known I couldn't have sex with someone without knowing that I trusted them enough to sleep by their side.

Next I learnt to recognise the expression on G's face that goes with a particularly delicious thought. At first, he was reluctant to tell me about them, assuming - reasonably enough - that it would squick me out to hear that he'd started daydreaming about how I might taste or some such. I expected me to be squicked out by these things. Instead, I found myself amused by his embarrassment and neutral about the mental images produced.

Then they would sneak up on me a few days later and part of my brain would go ‘hmmm... that could be fun.’ Once I'd noticed that this was a recurring pattern, I explained to G. that it was his duty to contribute to my store of mental images, since I lacked the experience or the sexual imagination to come up with many for myself. This duty he took upon himself without complaint, with the result that everything we've done so far, I've had plenty of time to think and talk about in advance. And we still have a store of these mental images to explore when we get the chance.

....to be continued – tomorrow....

Happy Sunday....

Its always a good day when one wakes up to find this type of email in one’s inbox. These are the moments that The Virginity Project lives for. Here it is…

‘Hi Kate.

In July, I wrote to you with some thoughts on sex, virginity and faith. You published it on your blog. Well, I'm now twenty and my life has been turned upside down. I have met a flaming atheist and fallen madly in love. I intend to sleep with him. In fact, I am in the process of losing my virginity to him right now and it is utterly unexpected - but delightful.

If you're interested, I can write you a reflection or two during this fascinating process. My outlook has changed quite a lot and having made a public statement, I feel I ought to make it again, with more practical evidence this time.'

Tori*

Am I interested? Er…just a bit. Last summer, ‘Tori’ wrote to explain her thoughts and feelings on the subject of virginity loss. Specifically hers. Tori is a committed Christian. Allow me to refresh your memory…

‘My choices about sex are religious choices, however, they are also personal, emotional and practical choices. I handed my virginity pledge in blank, because I object to that sort of manipulation and because I didn't feel like I was in any position to make that decision as a never been kissed fourteen year old.

I am single right now, but I have chosen in my relationships not to have sexual intercourse, and also not to engage in some of the many intimate forms of ‘outercourse’ (what a great word!). I intend to continue in ‘abstinence’, (also a problem word for me), perhaps until marriage and certainly until I find myself in a committed adult relationship with a long-term future.’

That time has come. Life has taken a turn for the unexpected. Better still, Tori intends to share it with us. Watch this space. I am editing as fast as my fingers will allow me!

* All names changed to protect identity

Turkish delight?

Your stories

Some months ago I performed what I can only describe as ‘speed interviewing’. Via my blog, a man got in touch. He wanted to tell me about his first time. I was delighted because it involved a prostitute - a story I had been seeking for some time.

He was busy and so was I but in between the birth of children – (his), and a busy workload, (mine), he raced down to London and as we huddled behind the glass doors of my agency meeting room, he told me and my tape recorder all about his first time. It was just the tale I wanted to hear.

The word ‘prostitute’ has negative connotations but there was nothing negative about this story. It was full of bravery and hope. He painted a visceral picture of the confidence this experience gave him. His first ‘non-paying’ experience followed swiftly afterwards.

Fast-forward and here is the other side of the coin. A dark little tale from my new correspondent in Turkey. Two different stories, two different cultures. Even though, as Zeki* tells it, ‘everyone in Turkey wants to live like celebrities do’. Sound familiar?

Zeki. Born 1979. Lost virginity aged 15

‘I'd like to tell you how I lost my virginity. I was exactly fifteen years old when I lost it. Me and one of my friends used to hear about prostitute house here in Turkey and one day we decided to visit there but we didn’t intend to have sex because we were shy but we suddenly decided to have sex because we had no gfs. It was the most excited moment of our lives. That’s all I can tell you,
Take care’

What, I replied, was a gfs?

‘Hi Kate, ‘gfs’ means girlfriends. I meant in the past, not many people could be in relationships because of some district rules by family. In the past times of Turkey, when you have a GF, you have to hide it from her family and if you take her virginity you got a big trouble because you had to marry her in the end!

That’s why my generation used to go to prostitute houses to pay and have sex! But I must tell you one of my friends story about this house. The women who work in prostitute house usually behave the men in a very bad way during sex. They force you to finish as quickly as you can even though you are paying.

One of my friend was very shy and attempted to have sex with a woman and she behaved him in a shit way. She said, ‘You got a lil dick and if you marry someone you will never ever be able to make your wife happy’. In the end, he couldn’t forget this years. He never told this story to any of his friends and he decided to go to prostitute house and kill the woman who told him those things. He injured her very badly with a knife. We read about it in the newspapers.

But now Turkey is definitely different. Everything is changing, especially relationships. The people don’t need marriage to have sex and in my opinion, the reason is that TV changes people’s life style. Everyone wants to live like celebrities do. Turkish people want to live in richness so much! It’s everyone’s dream here except me. All I need is a happy life, not a rich life. Money is nothing if you can’t find happiness.

Maybe you have some clues why I always have regret for losing my virginity with a prostitute. Do you know I haven’t done any sexual things with someone for five years? You should be able to guess how hard it is for a man but I have a promise to myself. I won’t have sex till I find the right person. I want to feel like a virgin again.

We will see at the end of the day. Sorry I gotta end here as I am very sleepy Kat.’

*All names changed to protect identity.

The fat of the land...

Your stories

Anyone who has ever worked with me, or perhaps even just passed me on the street, will know that there’s a fat person in me just waiting to get out. I like to eat. To this end, work life is proving rewarding on so many levels. People book meetings and they book catering. Do they eat it? No they don’t. Fear not, the fox is here. My new life is an endless round of sandwiches, cakes, sushi and pleasingly crunchy Japanese rice crackers. Lucky for me, I have the metabolism of a whippet with which to take this extra ballast on board.

Of course, this is nothing to do with anything in particular, it is merely the gentle runway into a post about something that people frequently relate to food - sex. Earlier in the week, we heard from Sally, a Roman Catholic from New England who was lamenting the loss of her ‘connection to Christ’. Despite being uplifted at the loss of her virginity and the subsequent beginning of her sex life, she had felt unable to return to church since the deed had been done. Needless to say, Sally is not married.

In reply, I am posting an email sent to me recently from a lady in Australia. This is not a direct response to Sally’s plight, but she makes some salient points about the issues with which Sally is wrestling. To my mind, she delivers her sharpest punch with this line. Sexuality begins long before intercourse.

Toni. Born 1988. Not yet lost virginity.

I have problems with the focus on virginity in discourse about sexuality, particularly in religious discourse. How is it more holy to be at any stage of sexual intimacy? Where do you draw the line? What is a ‘sexual relationship’ anyway? I'm coming to the conclusion that any romantic relationship between adults, and most between adolescents, will be a sexual relationship. It doesn't have to be an intimate one.

I was at a conference last weekend where we had several really good and practical conversations about premarital sex and sex in general. It was all unplanned - the conference was a ‘radical discipleship’ conference. We talked about social justice, faith communities and political activism, but at the end of the weekend, we were also very concerned about sex.

I don't think it's something we talk about enough in the church. So I'm going to do my bit for open conversation, and write something for The Virginity Project.

To begin with, me. I'm nineteen, I live in Australia and I'm a Christian. I went to a small community Christian school where the dominant Christian culture is politically and socially conservative. I consider myself a virgin, although I'm growing increasingly uncomfortable with the term. I have chosen in my relationships not to have sexual intercourse, and also not to engage in some of the more intimate forms of, ‘outer course’, (what a great word!). I intend to continue in, ‘abstinence’, (also a problem word for me), perhaps until marriage and certainly not until I find myself in a committed adult relationship with a long-term future.

My choices about sex are religious choices. However, it's important to understand that I don't make a distinction between ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ choices. To live as a person of faith requires that you live your whole life as a religious choice. My choices about sex are also personal, emotional and practical. They aren't made simply because "the bible tells me so". And they aren't made because my school showed a video of an American prancing around and screaming about teenage pregnancy and sticky-tape .

I handed my virginity pledge in blank, because I object to that sort of manipulation and I didn't feel like I was in any position to make that decision as a never-been-kissed-before, fourteen year old. Most importantly, they're not choices made by my Religious Brain repressing other parts of me.

I don't remember reading much about sex which can be attributed to Jesus himself. He told an adulterous woman not to sin again, but it's worth noting that on that occasion, he was the dangerous liberal, preventing the ‘religious right’ of the day from stoning her. I don't think we can know Jesus' mind on sex quite as easily as some people say we can. The greatest commandment, he said, is to ‘love one another as I have loved you.’ It's a useful line. The Christian life must be loving. To me, that means more than just being in love with your partner. It means engaging in sexual relationships which enrich you as individuals and your relationship. It means not knowingly engaging in sexual activities which will cause harm, (emotional, spiritual, physical), to yourself or your partner. It also means not harming third parties, which is a complicated area - if my fellow Christians were distressed by my sexual life, does that mean I shouldn't have one? I'm not sure, and I don't think laying down a hard and fast rule will help anyone in deciding that.

My decision is personal. It's one based on my relationships and the development of my sexuality so far. I want time to explore that, without rushing madly to ‘fourth base’. What an awful way to think about sex- it's not a list of objectives, it's about intimacy. I'm still changing at a rate of knots, I don't feel I can talk with any certainty about who I will be and who I will love in the future.

Abstinence education tells you that the primary focus is on not having sexual intercourse, and on overriding the physical desire to do so. It teaches you that there is a division between body and mind, and that you need to call the latter in against the former. It doesn't prepare you - or at least, it never prepared me - for that confusing state of being, when your body and mind both want someone desperately, and yet both are overloaded with new sensations and desperately want out.

We desire our partners, and it seems daft to me to pretend we can cut that off and then magically call it into being on the honeymoon. There are conservative Christians who will tell you that you shouldn't do anything which will start to turn you on. I think that's a little on the pointless side. They are right when they say that sexuality starts long before intercourse.

Having never received secular sex education, I don't know how they deal with it, but we in the church certainly need to do better by our fellows, in open conversation about sex and how we deal with sexuality.

One day my prince will come...

On first appearances, it might look like I am adding fuel to the fire of those who believe we should be encouraging teenage ‘abstinence’. When Siphesihle* first had sex with a man that she loved, she ‘wished that she had never violated her body before’. This story is powerful confirmation of the fact that first love can be an experience worth waiting for.

I stand firm, however. We don’t live in happy land and this is the real world. Would that first heady cocktail of love shaken with sex have packed quite the same punch had she not kissed a few frogs along the way? It’s all part of the process. I don’t wish to minimize Siphesihle’s experience. On the contrary, her words have left a powerful imprint. I simply think that as human beings, we must embrace every experience that life throws our way. One way or another, learning what we don’t like will only serve to teach us what we do.

Siphesihle echoes the sentiments of Jim Mason*, a young man I interviewed last year: ‘The sex that I have with my girlfriend is totally different to the first time. For a start, I’m much better at it, but it’s more emotional as well. I would have liked to have given my virginity to my girlfriend, but the way I see it, it is my girlfriend that I actually lost it to. I think you can make it up, just be blind to it and let yourself think whatever you like.’

The first occurrence of penetrative sex is frequently the experience we refer to when we talk about ‘losing our virginity’. But it’s a formality in comparison to the experience that these young people speak of. Technical virginity loss is the practise run, a hurdle leapt in order to get to the good stuff. First love, combined with sex, is something precious.

Your stories

Siphesihle*. Aged 21. Lost virginity aged 18.

'I occasionally have a peek at your website and today I decided to write. Virginity is sacred in Zulu culture and they still practise virginity testing, where a large group of girls will go through a special ceremony and be tested by your elders. They basically check whether your hymen is still intact. If not, they will shame you in front of your village. I, however, grew up in the city and was not exposed to these practises, but virginity was still a big thing. Home life was very religious and my dad practised a lot of Zulu traditions. Friends of family even promised their daughters cars and the like if they kept their virginity till marriage. My father was like that.

My mother was different. She worked as a counsellor for young people. This meant that she was more aware than most parents are about what really goes on in our society. Sex was something easily spoken about in our house and because of that, I was never really interested in it. I saw it as something I'd do once I was old enough to deal with its consequences. But like every teenager, I experimented with alternatives like oral sex and dry humping and that was enough for me. I held out till I was eighteen years old.

I was the odd one out because all my close friends had lost theirs. I was proud, but it wasn't a big deal because no one in my group really respected me for it. They just called me a cock blocker. It's not that I didn't like guys, in fact I loved them. It's just that I knew I wasn't ready. I think a large part of me keeping my virginity till I did, was for my mom. I didn't want to put her through what some of my friends had put their parents through. My mom encouraged me to keep my virginity but she didn't force that on me.

I eventually lost my virginity after high school, to no one extremely special, although at that time, I thought he was. No regrets though. After that, I became just like my friends, sleeping around and laughing at ‘frigid’ people. Sex became a way for me to be noticed and it was fun to be seen as this promiscuous, sexy, party girl. And then I met David.

When we first had sex, there was a rawness about the act. As if we were both doing it for the first time. The right time. He stroked me, kissed me all over and looked into my eyes. It had never been like that before. I had never had someone to protect me and look after me. Someone that cared about me and not just what was in between my legs.

See, I'd never really enjoyed sex. A lot of guys think I'm sexy, so I used to do it just for the hell of it. But after that rainy Monday in November, I vowed never to sell myself again. It was so pure, that I wish I'd never violated my body before. I wanted him to have all of me. I've actually forgotten my past experiences. My body knows no other touch except his and he feels the same. A year and a half later, he still makes my clit tick at the mere thought of him. He's caring, loving and protects me.

Have you ever watched a really old couple in their seventies? They probably don't have sex as much as they used to but you can still see the love in their eyes. The way he opens the door for her. The smile on her face when she serves him tea. Their love is at its most pure state. I want to grow old with David. I want to lose my virginity to him over and over again.'

*All names changed to protect identity.