When is the right time to lose your virginity?

Virginity is a strange concept. What is it really? If a definition had to be assigned, the words used would be of the type “someone who has never had sex”. It also conjures up images of purity and innocence. But is it more complicated than that?

As a straight teenager, I remember that a great deal of emphasis was placed on sexual intercourse. It was thought that he had not had “sex” until he had sex. When I did, at the age of 17, I had shared many different intimate and personal sexual acts with boyfriends, just not penetration. However, they still considered me a virgin. He was certainly not innocent.

Taking all of the above into consideration, it may seem a bit hypocritical that after a month of dating my first serious boyfriend, I refused to have sex and thus lost my virginity. He was not one to give up easily and he persisted in his cause. He told me that he had already lost his virginity to his previous girlfriend; in fact, he hadn’t, he was a virgin too. Had he known this, he might have succumbed earlier. It would have felt like a new company that we were undertaking together. It was obvious that his male ego had to be reinforced by this lie. He needed me to think that he was the experienced one. After three months I relented and the date was set.

As I became an adult, and to this day, I came to view SEX as all sexual acts, not simply intercourse. This also adapts to whatever form your sexuality takes. Many times in a relationship I have chosen not to participate in penetration. Don’t get me wrong, I love making love, but there are many other ideas that a couple can have in a satisfying way. I’d rather explore all the options than just have sex. With this in mind, did I lose my virginity long before I had sex?

A few weeks ago I received an email from a 41-year-old man who is technically still a virgin. He described it as incredibly frustrating, lonely, and overwhelming. He is a normal guy who has involuntarily managed to keep his virginity for an abnormal time. You feel like this lack of intimacy is literally strangling most other areas of your life. Most of us view losing our virginity as a rite of passage. Becoming an adult. But how you Do you feel if you missed that window of opportunity? As the years passed, would it become increasingly difficult to change her virginal condition?