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’