Awhile back, the smart and thoughtful Liz (you’ll remember her wedding and her post on self catering a desert reception) mentioned in East Side Bride’s comments that she’d waited to have sex till her wedding night. And I was surprised. Not surprised because I don’t know people who have waited (I know lots), but surprised because that didn’t quite fit in with my mental file of what I knew of Liz. And if I’ve learned one thing in my thirty years of life, it is that when someone really surprises you with a belief, you should ask them about it. Because they will *always* have something really thoughtful to say, because guess what? If they are stepping out of what you expect from them, they’ve really thought it through, and they will make you look at your own decisions in a new light. So, right away I wanted to get a drink with Liz and get her to dish…. but…. I don’t know Liz in real life (yet)….. and I’m actually not that nosy. So. When Liz popped up in the comments on APW and offered to write a post about it, I insisted that she do it now, now, now.
Before we get into this, I want to state, for the record, that I have really complicated feelings on this subject. As much as readers like to regularly accuse me of spending my life in a liberal bubble, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I (we – David and I grew up in the same town) grew up in a really conservative area, and the vast majority of my counterparts in high school gave lip service to waiting till they were married to have sex. What ended up playing out was less pleasant. As sex became THE forbidden fruit, people became more and more focused on it. We saw a lot of our friends pregnant at 16, and a lot of our friends married at 18. Most of the time, things didn’t end well. Goodness knows that can happen when you’re not waiting, and that waiting can be a wonderful thing, but for us, growing up? It didn’t always play out that way. So, given my long and personal life experiences with this, it’s a complicated subject for me. Not bad complicated, just complicated.
So of course I was dying to discuss all this with Liz, and (no surprise here) I was thrilled and fascinated by what Liz wrote. She wrote a WHOLE lot of things I agree with, but modern women are not supposed to say. She gave really good advice to people who are choosing to wait (and frankly, good advice on this subject is hard to come by). She wrote things that made me think, and laugh. Best, her story had a happy ending. For me, personally, that’s redemptive and amazing. So, here is Liz, on waiting to get laid. Because Liz is awesome, she told me, “I’ll try not to make it TOO raunchy.” And she almost succeeded.
….
I’m so excited and nervous about writing this post. After I suggested it, I tried to chicken out, but Meg is a persuasive lady (have you noticed?). When people would find out that I was a virgin, or that Josh and I weren’t sleeping together (I know, right? How does that even come up in conversation? I can’t for the life of me remember…) I was met with a ton of questions/warnings. You guys think unrequested wedding advice is crossing the line? Try sex advice. Yeah. Here are some of the things I heard which turned out to be very untrue… (and, uh, sorry in advance. I really like lists and bullet points.)
1. Waiting puts a lot of pressure on your wedding night. False. Well, ok. I could see how this could be the case for some. Josh and I sorta worried about it. We also knew that we’d probably be exhausted, maybe grumpy, maybe a leetle sloshed after the wedding. So Josh suggested we just have no expectations for the wedding night- we would have all week of our honeymoon to have sex. Let’s not rush and cram it into that night. I gotta say, this definitely removed that pressure of The Sex Time. It was genius. I would really advise anyone else who’s waiting to set this standard- not just to remove the pressure, but so that you can ease into getting to know one another’s bodies (even if that sounds like a middle school health class video). Josh had never seen me in less than a bathing suit, and touched anything between my neck and my knees before we got married. “Normal” couples move gradually, right? You don’t just tear around all of the bases in one night (usually). Same can go for Waiters (as in those-that-wait… not those-that-serve-at-restaurants).
2. It’s gonna be awkward. Umm. No. Josh and I were already experts at enjoying spending time together- and believe it or not, we pretty much already knew the basics of, um, what goes where… I think this is probably only true for people who expect it to be like movie sex, and then try to force some fake, sultry, smoky crap. One of the APW brides once suggested that the wedding day be treated like any other day- just be yourself. Laugh if something’s funny. Don’t put on some false self. Same is so very true for sex, isn’t it? It’s much more of an intimate moment if it’s two people, totally exposed and being themselves together.
3. You need practice. Meh. Not really. Like I said above, we kinda figured out how things work. Beyond that, sure, sex gets better the more you do it. But trust me, the first night wasn’t awful.
4. You need to know if you’re compatible/if he’s “the one.” I hafta wonder at using sex as a barometer for that sort of thing. And it’s kind of like kissing, isn’t it? Your first kiss may or may not be awesome, but you get better at kissing as you kiss each other more. You become attune to one another. Whether or not he’s awesome in bed in the first round doesn’t determine how good you can be together- and I’m guessing if your chemistry is fantastic enough that you wanna marry the guy, you’ll do just fine. (Also, who do I have him to compare to…? It’s the best sex I’ve ever had.)
5. So you think you’ll go to hell if you have sex? Not even close.
So if that’s not why I waited, then why, right? If not to avoid the fiery pits of hell, what could it be?
1. Sex effs with your mind. Honestly. Who can say that having sex has made them more capable of thinking clearly and making good decisions? It complicates things.
2. Sex links people. I don’t know how to put this in a forward-thinking, logical-sounding way. But, sex ties people together in this near-mystical way, doesn’t it? How many of us have clung to no-good-people because of how attached we felt as a result of being physical with them (or is that just me)*? This directly ties into the above- it just complicates things.
3. Finding the “right” person. This one’s the key, obv. There’s something so undeniably romantic about having only had sex with just one person. Finding the right person to sleep with or marry- that takes time. And clear-headed thought. So these folks who say they’re “waiting” to have sex, and then hurry up and get married because they can’t keep it in their pants any longer- that kind of defeats the purpose, to me. Sex is important. Take your time in figuring out who you want to be there to share that experience.
4. Self control. I probably couldn’t tell you how much respect I have for Josh as a result of the self-control he displayed in the 3 years we dated. Did I know he wanted to do it? Hell yeah- sometimes it’s obvious, if youknowwhatI’msayin. But his commitment to waiting was a sign of his love for me… not in the cheesy, “true love waits” sense. But in the sense that setting a good foundation for our marriage was more important to him than a physiological impulse (and I’m not saying it wasn’t a struggle for me… have I TOLD you how hot this man is?). Being able to control your downstairs bits demonstrates the kind of maturity necessary to pick a spouse… ya dig?
5. Growing together. Getting used to doing it is one more intense way in which we’re growing together. I get to experience this whole new world, and I get to have a husband by my side as I figure it out. Awesome.
6. Romance. Can I just reiterate how amazingly romantic I think it is? It’s like Heloise and Abelard. Doesn’t the fact that they couldn’t even touch each other almost confirm for you that their love was the deepest kind?**
Because we were waiting, we needed to sort of… set ourselves up for success. Spending 3 years with a sexy man and not touching him. That, um, takes work.
1. Short engagement. Know how I just told you not to rush into getting married just to have sex? Yeah. This is different. Once you decide that you do want to get married, don’t set some 2 year long engagement. That, my friends, is called TORTURE. “Yay, we’re going to have sex together! …but NOT YET.” Womp womp.
2. Lots of sex talks. I think we probably talked about sex pre-marriage more than people who aren’t waiting. Sex is kind of a big chunk of married life… if we’re already discussing if we want to have kids and where we want to live, it only makes sense to talk about what sex is gonna be like. (there are pretty clear limits to this… “Oh, baby, I can’t wait to do this to your that…” not really the best route to go if you plan on waiting.) We talked about likes and dislikes. I know you’re wondering how I could know what I like or not, since I’ve never tried. I think there are some things you don’t need to experience to know. For example, I don’t need to try having Josh choke me while he’s doing his thing to know that I’m not a fan of the “play rape” sex. Nope.
3. More sex talks. We also set parameters and discussed expectations. If there’s anything that’s detrimental to a relationship, it’s unvoiced expectations. I told him what I expected sex to be like, what I was hoping for, and he did the same. There was nothing that was more healthy for our sex-life… and I would recommend it for everyone, married or not, waiting or not.
And now. We’re married. And doing it. And life is good. Some of the important things I’ve gleaned through our ongoing learning process include…
1. Recognizing that sex is a delicate thing. It’s one part of our lives that impacts so much else. If we haven’t had sex in awhile, you can probably tell by the way we talk to and treat each other- that’s not an old cliché, I think everyone would agree it’s true. It’s the physical representation of everything that marriage means to us- so if the sex is bad, something’s off here. What do I mean by that? In sex, we’re entirely vulnerable and exposed, flaws and all- and yet when we look at each other, we’re overwhelmingly attracted (isn’t that a beautiful idea?). Sex at its healthiest is when two people are entirely focused on one another- sex isn’t about physical urges (not entirely at least) or body parts… it’s about paying attention to one another’s wants in a very personal and special way. Because of this, sex is that place in marriage where we have the most propensity to appreciate one another, and the largest capacity to hurt one another. It’s so, so easy to feel slighted or ignored or manipulated or unfulfilled or mistreated in sex. It’s a very delicate matter.
2. Open honesty. If he wants it, he needs to tell me. If I feel like he’s going at it in a roundabout way, I feel manipulated. (How many of us have dated guys with little manipulating ways of conning us into sex? “But it can do serious damage if I don’t…”) If I don’t want it, I need to tell him. If we both have the understanding that the other person is going to be honest without insult, there’s no need to feel guilty or try to hint. This kind of honesty may sound unsexy (“Hey- wanna do it tonight?” versus donning lingerie and sprawling across the bed), but I recognize that it’s just a stage in learning about each other. Like all other things in our relationship, if we do it enough, I’ll get to a point where I can (mostly) intuit what’s going on. But even then, communication is going to be so essential. Isn’t it with everything in marriage?
3. Team spirit. Like I said above, sex in its purest form is not about what I get out of it, but what I can do for the other person. (If he’s spending all of his energy trying to please me, and I’m exerting all of mine to try to please him… we both end up… satisfied, I guess? Can I say that, Meg?***) So sometimes, I need to take one for the team and just do it when I don’t feel like it. Sounds tres unsexy, no? But if that’s what sex is about at its core (spending all of my energy for what he wants), then I’m definitely in the spirit. (FYI: “I’ll do whatever you want me to, baby” is NOT unsexy.) Other times, when I have a migraine or am in a bad mood, he can lovingly (without being begrudging) drop it. (we’ve talked on here about how the roles are sometimes reversed- I’m not trying to catalogue or generalize, just speaking from my own experience)
So um. There you have it. Probably the most awkward post on APW yet. I’m not sure exactly how to wrap it up- maybe, “Go have some great sex, you guys!” I know you’re thinking, “Wait a second. You were a virgin until 6 months ago. How are YOU going to tell ME how to have great sex, amateur?” I can’t. But I can share what I’ve learned on a now-unconventional and bumpy road. And hoping to help Meg open the floor for others to do the same. Ready? GO.
….
And before I open the comments, I’m going to remind EVERYONE to stay civil and not judge each other. Both Liz and I shared some personal thoughts, ideas, and experiences here. Neither of our ideas or life experiences have to be shared by you, but the should be respected (and if you see them not being respected, report those comments please). I’m going to take it a step farther and say, if you’re talking about your personal experience, try not to universalize. Waiting, not waiting, or heck, waiting till after marriage for polyamory was right for you? RAD. Just don’t tell us we *all* need to do it.
And now, let’s talk about sex (baby).
*Not just you, Liz.
**Liz asked me if this was cheesy, and I was like, “Yesss… a little. But you can say it anyway.)
*** Yes.
Intro photo by Emily Takes Photos.
YES!! FINALLY! I’ve been forced out of my lurking on APW to finally comment and say, this is why I LOVE this site. I am also waiting, (having had sex and got really hurt by the relationship falling apart further down the line I put the brakes on and said I was waiting from then on in) and am so happy to hear from another, normal, well adjusted bride who chose to wait. I’m not a conservative evangelical or wanting to bible bash anyone, I just chose to wait. I love mutual respect for anyone’s lifestyle choices, and it has felt within the indie weddingblogosphere to me that this (as in, waiting) is pretty much the only lifestyle choice that doesn’t seem to be seen as a legitimate one. (Possibly a sweeping overgeneralisation but just my gut feeling.) I’ve been accused of being a fundementalist christian (I am christian but fall WAY to the left of the spectrum- no homophobia or women-in-leadership issues here thank you), of marrying my OH purely because I want to have sex with him, (as if I would be that stupid) and of being a repressed, old-fashioned antifeminist. Recognition that people can just choose to NOT have sex in the same way that people can choose TO do it is IMO long overdue.
Thank You SO much Meg and Liz, reading this has truly made my day!
June 3, 2010 4:51 am
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I totally agree! Before this post, I felt like my fiance and I were the only couple in the world that had waited to only be with each other, for non-religious-y reasons. It seems like waiting just isn’t supported (or maybe just not talked about) like other lifestyle choices are, both in popular media and in blogs. This post has brought me out of my practical-wedding hiding spot! Thank you so much for representing brides and people of all different viewpoints and choices!
June 3, 2010 12:49 pm
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Thanks, Meg, for having this entire post on the main page without a click through. I don’t mind clicking through to get to the rest of a post, but this made the reading experience a little better. Maybe the newest post can always be fully on the main page? That was nice.
And thanks Liz, for speaking up and being a thoughtful, intelligent person. Like Meg, I come from a pretty conservative area, and growing up, everyone ages 12-17 in my church did True Love Waits. We all filled out our cards, laid them on the altar, put on rings, and some of us even meant it, but honestly– our parents were watching. I never meant a bit of it, and not waiting worked fine for me. But I saw some people go after sex like it was forbidden fruit, and it was messy. Sixteen-year-olds trading partners in cars in the church parking lot messy, choir loft sex at fifteen messy. Eight months pregnant and already married at high school graduation messy. People need to hear things like this. They need to know how sex will tie you to someone, how it doesn’t always look like it does in the movies, how it’s about focusing on each other and not yourselves, and how you have to be able to relax and laugh if something happens that’s not expected. They need to know that jumping in too early just so they can say they did it, or because it feels good physically, will hurt, and that waiting till you’re ready will be better in the long run.
Note I said till you’re ready, not till you’re married. I didn’t wait for marriage. And I’m okay with that. I had sex with people that I cared about, and decided before anything happened that if things didn’t work out– I wasn’t a delusional teenager, I knew I probably wasn’t going to marry my highschool sweetheart– that I would leave the relationship with no regrets. And knowing that made it easier when my heart was broken, because I let my experiences become a part of who I was, instead of wishing they hadn’t happened. And now that I’m with Zack, I’m glad I made that decision, because he was sexually active far earlier than I was and talking about what we learned about ourselves from other partners has helped us get to know one another. It’s all abut attitude. If either of us were ashamed that we had sex with people before one another, our relationship would be terribly off-balance. Like Liz said, it’s all about honesty.
Plus, we were totally a one night stand that just never quit happening. How can I regret that?
June 3, 2010 5:25 am
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“Plus, we were totally a one night stand that just never quit happening. How can I regret that?”
there are not enough “exactly” buttons in the world to express how much I love this :)
June 3, 2010 6:58 am
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I was a one-night-stand that never quit too! My fiancee and I joke that we’re never going to be able to tell our kids about our first date, b/c it involves booze, sex, and a house-party so big I had to roust somebody out of my bed so I could get my girl into it. I didn’t meet this person and think she was going to be The Love of My Life. There was no lightning-bolt moment, where I KNEW this person was it the moment I saw her. It was just a series of small moments, and waking up one day and hearing that voice inside me tell me I was happier than I’d ever been, and it was because of this woman. (You know, I feel like we need a post about this, b/c I’m seeing lots of ONS folks in the comments.)
Enough about me; Liz, that was a really great post. I’ve had the experience of being bowled. The hell. Over. by learning that friends had decided to wait. Like, I hadn’t realized that after age 20 or so it was even still an issue for people; I felt like I waited f o r e v e r and I was 18 when I “lost it”. Somehow I just assumed that everyone in my mid-20′s urban, liberal circle was (and should be) just like me. (Which is utter crap, as you know.)
I’ve definitely been uncomfortable talking about sex with my friends that waited (which if you know me is very weird, since I’m super sex-positive) and I just want to say thanks for a post that gave me some insight into Waiters, and probably made for better communication w/ my Waiter friends.
June 3, 2010 7:43 am
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Another one night stand that never quit here! I didn’t know there were so many of us! Do people just not talk about it? I usually don’t have a problem fessing up to it. I usually joke that I must suck at them because I “failed” my first and only attempt.
I’m also another one that grew up in a conservative small town where “waiting” was the norm. Ironically, I one of the ones that probably waited the longest despite having the least amount of religion and the most comprehensive sex ed. (Thanks mom.) It’s interesting the way things turn out.
Like Lauren said, I believe waiting until you’re ready is extraordinarily important.
June 3, 2010 8:37 am
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Me Too! Our boozy one night stand never quit either!
June 3, 2010 11:47 am
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Haha I love these! While we weren’t a ONS (we’d been on a couple dates), it was boozy and unromantic and honestly fueled more by the fact that I just wanted to get losing my virginity over with than any “this is the one” lightening bolt.
And yet, here we are, 4 years later and 2 weeks from being married. Can’t say I’d do it the same way if I could go back in time, but since I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out I’m perfectly fine with it!
June 3, 2010 12:26 pm
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Another one here! Like you CAITSTCLAIR, my singular attempt at being a sexually footloose and fancyfree woman failed, and a long-term relationship ensued. The kiddies won’t have to know the WHOLE truth . . . ;)
June 4, 2010 7:38 am
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I <3 this. "A series of smalll moments…a voice inside me telling me I'm happier than I've ever been." Sigh.
June 3, 2010 9:20 am
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Cheers for Team ONS! I almost didn’t confession-post about mine yesterday bc I thought I’d be the only one.
And um, yeah, what to tell the kids? Mommy and Daddy were drunk and dancing like white people in a crowded bar and fell in lust over a bunch of Bud Lights and Justin Timberlake? Such a sweet story…
Meg, I’m going to second that maybe we need a ONS post too…
June 4, 2010 11:17 am
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Mommy was trying to fix her roommate up with Daddy and she accidentally forgot to come back from his bedroom to her own one night. Whoops? Yeah, we’ll worry about that when they’re older.. possibly never.
June 4, 2010 3:07 pm
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Aaaaah! Me too! :D ONS at a house party with all manner of debaucherous goodness going on. Neither one of us was in our right frame of mind, but he was going back overseas in two days (No, really.) and we figured it was a pretty cool idea. Plus there was a giant beanbag chair in the house and damned if I wasn’t going to make use of it.
No idea what we will tell our children.
I have never understood waiting, myself.
August 2, 2011 10:09 pm
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I wish I could say exactly SEVERAL times in a row.
June 3, 2010 11:33 am
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Oh, you know what? I thought my now-partner was going to be a one night stand, he thought I was a keeper from the start. Awkward! I thought he was really, really nice, but that nothing would come of it so I might as well make the most of him (as it were) that one night.
I actually got kind of creeped out when he rang me the very next day to set up a date.
June 17, 2010 5:32 pm
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I’m also a lurker. I read APW religiously (every day, more than every day – like checking constantly for new posts), but rarely comment. I have had sex. With my fiance, and previously. But I just have to say EXACTLY to you, Liz. You are a cool, cool chick and I totally dig your point of view. Well done!
June 3, 2010 5:30 am
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So I’m not the only one who has had sex with only one man my entire life! We didn’t wait until marriage (though it was months before we first slept together). We met at 19, were engaged four months later, and were married at 21. Have been together more than two decades.
My view of sex and marriage has changed quite a bit over the years, though. I think I was a great deal more puritannical (or maybe Victorian?) about it when I was nineteen. Sex was a holy thing. You had it with the sort of man with whom you could imagine having children. I didn’t come from a fundamentalist background, but my parents, both northeasterners, were rather conservative about this, particularly where women were concerned. Your virtue, especially, was tied up in your virginity.
When I met Dr. X, my husband, he was very much like me, with one difference: he had made the mistake, during the first year of college, of getting entangled with an unsuitable (for him) girl who was very bright but had serious psychological problems. He was quite miserable and feeling rather guilty about having lived with her the previous summer, believing, as I did, that sex was emotionally and all but legally binding. The process of disentangling from her was, predictably, ugly, and he’d vowed that next time it would be for keeps.
So the morning after we’d spent our first night together (and it was sweet), he proposed. I accepted. Granted, we *were* euphoric and infatuated, so it seemed the only logical conclusion, but it could have gone terribly wrong. (Agreed: sex effs with your mind.) We were young, and silly, and melodramatic, and very lucky. Oh, and I was terrified of getting pregnant. We married six months after graduation, after an engagement of about eighteen months.
Over the years the whole business of sex and waiting has really ceased to matter so much to me. I have nieces now, and I am less concerned about when in a relationship they decide to have sex (assuming they are of a reasonable age) than with whom they decide to have it (someone who, at the very least, treats them with respect) and whether they’re taking proper precautions. But Liz has an excellent point: you don’t need to have sex to know whether you’ve got chemistry, and if you love each other and care about each other’s needs, you’ll figure it out eventually. So while I probably wouldn’t advise them to wait until marriage, I certainly wouldn’t consider it a mistake.
I have to wonder, though: if our culture hadn’t made sex into this near-mystical thing that links people inexorably together, would we be a little less hung up about it? There’s far too much emphasis put on the “first time,” which tends to be somewhat of a letdown as a result of combined inexperience and inflated expectations. X, who has always seemed to me profoundly ethical, was dealing with the guilty repercussions from that first relationship well into the first year of our marriage, and although I took it very seriously at the time, I am now certain it wasn’t nearly the grave offense he thought it was. The world didn’t end because he didn’t marry a woman with whom he’d slept, or even set up housekeeping for a summer. She went on to lead her unfolding trainwreck of a life elsewhere, and he was not caught up in it by a misplaced sense of honor and duty.
As for the ever after kind of sex, in the early days we used to find amusing a maxim of George Bernard Shaw, which we repeated often to each other: “Marriage is popular because it combines maximum temptation with maximum opportunity.” As we have no children, it still applies.
June 7, 2010 2:12 pm
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when i made my point about sex tying people- i was referring to the negative entanglements. in the sense that we often stick it out with guys that aren’t worth it, because we feel so close to them because of our physical experiences with them.
i totally agree that too much emphasis is placed on virginity and, first times, etc. and as a culture, we’re oversexed simply because one time long ago in our very prudish history we made sex into this no-no, dirty word, secret thing. people can’t get enough of secret, can’t-do-that-or-talk-about-it type things.
lots of good points
June 11, 2010 7:37 am
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I agree too!
I’m engaged now and we’re planning on getting married next summer. My fiance and I did not wait until we were married, but we waited two and a half years into the relationship and we’re at over six now. We are each other’s first and only. It’s made it very easy for us as far as hurt feelings and the like would go and I don’t regret the decision to wait at all. I’m glad it gave us time to be sure of each other, our intentions, and feelings. It meant a lot to me that he was willing to wait with me (and encouraged that waiting like I did). If we were older and didn’t have to deal with waiting for graduate school to be over to be married we may have waited til marriage. However, waiting 7 years just seemed a bit over-the-top for us.
June 18, 2011 2:13 pm
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I didn’t wait until marriage, but my husband and I have both only had sex with each other, which I think is completely awesome and romantic and part of our story that I love (although not something I actually tell people). We waited until about 18 months into our relationship (when I was about 95% sure this was the man I was going to marry) to have sex. We were both in our mid-twenties when that happened. I never regretted waiting until I was 24, and I have never regretted having sex when we did. It was right for us.
June 3, 2010 5:34 am
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Delurking here for the first time!
I guess I fall somewhere in between. I’m getting married in September, and my fiance and I lost our virginity to each other a year into our relationship (we’ve been together for five years now, engaged for 3 1/2, and living together for two). I was 20. I grew up in a religious household, and thought I would wait until marriage, especially after seeing all the pregnant girls at my high school. I changed my mind, but I definitely think having that expectation helped me to make sure I waited until I was ready.
No matter when you think you’re ready to have sex with your partner, trust and communication is key. Thank you Liz (and Meg) for a great post. It was great to see this kind of conversation outside its normal religious parameters.
June 3, 2010 7:04 am
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My FH (not fiance yet, exactly, but FH nonetheless) and I lost our virginity to each other, too. (Although a lot earlier in the process– like 2 months after we started dating! We’ve been together for almost 4 years now.) I grew up in a religious family, but never assumed I’d wait until marriage– more like until I was in a long-term relationship with the right guy.
When it first became clear to me that “my first” would be “my only,” I was a little anxious– was I missing out on something? But soon I realized that our sex life is this tremendous journey that we share, and we were so lucky to meet up at the beginning, and that is much more valuable to me than notches on bedposts or any of that. Also, it doesn’t hurt that he is (by my completely subjective standards) an amazing lay.
June 3, 2010 9:53 am
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My FH was my first, too (and I was his). It was drunken and basically a one night stand. And then we didn’t talk for 6.5 years. And we both had lots of partners in between (double digits for both of us). Then we reconnected on facebook and gradually realized that our 18 year old intoxicated selves were onto something. :) It would be a sweet story, if it weren’t so drunken and disorderly.
That being said, I’m very glad I had those partners in the middle. They taught me a lot and I was definitely not ready to be in a lasting relationship at 18. I’m not sure that I am now, at 25! But I’m a lot less freaked out by it. I learned a lot from most of those other partners (both sexually and emotionally) and don’t regret any of them. Liz’s post about why she chose to wait is refreshing, though. I’m glad that she explained a point of view on the topic not centered around a religious philosophy to which I certainly do not subscribe. So bravo for her doing what’s right for her.
June 3, 2010 11:46 am
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Other than the part where we waited for over a year, this is one big fat “Exactly!”
A great post, Liz. It’s really interesting to hear some of the reasons Waiters have for waiting. I definitely have a lot of respect for anyone who is able to control their “urges”.
June 3, 2010 3:42 pm
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And again APW blows my mind.
I am 100% guilty of assuming the only people who wait for sex are conservative religious types… and having known a fair few people who married very young for that reason and are now not in the greatest situations I had some serious reservations about the fabulousness of that idea. So much of this makes so much sense, thank you for opening my mind just a little more.
It’s probably not something that would have worked for me (for what its worth, didn’t wait. Didn’t wait to the point that I usually don’t tell people how little time we waited) but I won’t be so quick to judge from now on.
June 3, 2010 5:36 am
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Thank you so much for writing this! We are not waiting nor ever considered waiting, but either way, your sex in marriage advice is fantastic. Thanks for sharing.
June 3, 2010 5:43 am
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Thank you for this intelligent and thoughtful post, Liz!
And I will admit, I am one of those who have accused Meg of being a liberal bubbler (albeit in a loving, “You’re one of ME!” way, not in a snide “You know NOTHING of the world” way, sorry if it came off weird).
Anyway, thank you for presenting a thoughtful and intelligent discussion of your personal choices that doesn’t denigrate those of other people. I have seen WAY too many discussions of this issue in which the conversation devolves into other-people-bashing from both sides.
I will also admit that I have had a knee-jerk negative bias against people who choose to wait on sex, mostly because I automatically associate it with bible-thumpers and the whole “Purity” movement (shudder). I may not agree point for point with regards to my own experience (though that’s the point of posts like these, I think) but thank you heartily for punching my negative bias in the kidneys. I needed it.
I do have a general question for Liz and Team Practical. Almost all of the waiting till marriage discussions I have ever heard/seen are in regards to heterosexual relationships, maybe because of the strong conservative Christian association people make. Has anyone seen/had any discussions about this that are focused on GLBTQ relationships? How are the issues different, or are they?
June 3, 2010 5:45 am
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The issues are different for some GLBTQ people, because for most same sex couples, marriage in the traditional sense isn’t an option. Waiting until marriage just isn’t a practical decision when you might be stuck waiting forever.
You can still wait until you’re in a serious relationship, or until you are committed to someone, but that isn’t the same as marriage.
Most of the discussions I’ve seen or been a part of about same sex couples waiting until marriage dismiss the idea as ludicrous and unfair. I’m sure that in a place where same sex marriage is legal the attitude would be different. Same goes with people who have a strong personal or religious investment in waiting until marriage.
June 3, 2010 11:21 am
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I’m a girl marrying a girl, and I think this is more complicated than just the legal marriage part. As, I just admitted above, we were a one night stand that grew into a long relationship. Ginger is the only girl I’ve ever even kissed. And, while I could have waited longer to go all the way, I don’t see how (I personally) could have waited till the wedding. I realized I had same sex feelings in college when I had my first girl crush. At the time, it was really confusing, and I don’t think I could have labeled myself “queer” and started a long term relationship with a girl a few months later, without investigating the sex bit. I think for a lot of queer people, coming out and experiencing same-sex sex for the first time are kind of all intertwined together. Not saying a gay couple couldn’t wait, but often we tend to want to explore our sexuality during the coming out process at some point before committing to marriage.
June 3, 2010 12:02 pm
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yep, and sometimes it goes the same way for straight people! I’m a girl who for various reasons didn’t really date boys in high school but always knew I was straight. along comes my best girl friend to my house one day senior year, to express her undying love for me. it broke my heart to tell her I couldn’t return the feelings, but I thought that would be the end of it. she didn’t accept no, she couldn’t understand how I could possibly know I couldn’t be gay, since I’d never even had a boyfriend (she identified herself as bi at the time, to her I seemed inflexible). so I decided to give it a shot, to see if there was a spark.. months and months and months of pain and hurt and confusion. but I found out for sure that I was straight, and it definitely allowed me to feel a ton of empathy for the LGBTQ community, who are constantly doubted.
point is, I totally understand sex being integral to the coming out/finding yourself process.
June 3, 2010 1:00 pm
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I was thinking less of actually being legally recognized as married before sex, and more of what we think of when we think “marriage.” When I was first realizing I was gay, I started to think that marriage wouldn’t be on the table for me. I was basically wrong, because I didn’t have a very nuanced understanding of what marriage is. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, my understanding of what marriage is has changed dramatically. I guess the model I had for marriage when I was younger excluded me, and eventually I realized that I could make my own model. But I didn’t start thinking seriously about marriage until years after I decided waiting wasn’t worth it, when I decided I felt ready to actually get married.
Then again, I knew I was gay waaaaay before I came out or was in a relationship, and I knew I didn’t plan on waiting until marriage even before that.
June 3, 2010 1:12 pm
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Great point Lydia! At first, I thought I was straight and would wait for a long term, post-high school relationship. Then, I started coming out as bi, and it took me awhile to realize I COULD get married and have a queer family. Like apart from legality, that getting married and having a family was even an option for me with a same sex partner. By then I had made my decision on whether to wait to have sex till marriage or not. Definitely another important angle on the complexities of waiting till marriage for the LGBTQ community.
June 3, 2010 5:01 pm
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“When I was first realizing I was gay, I started to think that marriage wouldn’t be on the table for me. I was basically wrong, because I didn’t have a very nuanced understanding of what marriage is. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, my understanding of what marriage is has changed dramatically. I guess the model I had for marriage when I was younger excluded me, and eventually I realized that I could make my own model.”
This is why I feel really blessed to be getting married/ a newlywed in the throws of the marriage equality movement. Because I really truly 100% believe that marriage equality benefits *everyone* not just people who are currently denied legal marriage rights. This re-definition and re-understanding and re-making of marriage and family life is so beneficial to us all, I think. It certainly is for me. I think watching and knowing gay married couples was part of what made me feel I could take the leap in the first place. Because I could totally get on board with what they were doing, even if some straight models of marriage freaked me the f*ck out.
June 3, 2010 5:32 pm
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I’m sure this comment was not meant to be offensive, but can we possibly avoid terms like “Bible thumpers” as a way to talk about religious groups? The category of “Christian” is an enormous and diverse one, and using this kind of terminology really erases difference, clumping everyone who self-identifies with that religion under a label with extremely negative connotations.
Is that cool?
June 3, 2010 5:59 pm
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LMB- i’m gonna speak just for myself here, but when i hear the term “bible thumper” i think of a specific brand of christianity- not an all-encompassing christian circle, but those select few in-your-face-types.
June 3, 2010 7:00 pm
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Fair enough Liz – I understand that people often use the term in that way, to describe a much smaller group of people. I still find it to be a disrespectful term, since it relies on a negative stereotype. I know a lot of people who would probably be considered “Bible thumpers,” and I disagree with some (a lot?) of their politics, but using terms like that makes it too easy to dismiss them entirely, rather than recognize that their belief systems also contain good and truth along with the things that I might not like so much. And that they as people are individuals who hold these things dear to their hearts and who should be respected.
Anyway, this is probably getting a little too off-topic, as the original post (which was a wonderful read) was SO not about this!
June 3, 2010 7:10 pm
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agreed. derogatory labels are a no-no, anyhow.
June 3, 2010 9:27 pm
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I thought I’d add my perspective to the queer waiting thing. Personally I knew I was gay before I even started dating, though I can definitely see how sex might help a person who is unsure gain some clarity. In my case, not being able to get married did play some part in it, marriage didn’t want me so I didn’t want it. Waiting for it never occurred to me.
The more relevant issue for me as a lesbian when it came to losing the Big V, was that it was practically guilt free. At the time, I genuinely felt like all the reasons *not* to didn’t really apply to me.
My religious friends talked about their purity vows and remember thinking ‘if they’re right I’m going to hell anyway so what have I got to lose?’. There was obviously no risk of getting pregnant, my family was totally accepting of my sexuality so there was no guilt there. My high school had a very comprehensive sex education program… if you were heterosexual. It was a big deal at the time *how* progressive it was, but it still made no mention of queer sexual health outside of mentioning gay male sex being a risk factor for HIV/AIDS. I know better now, but I didn’t think lesbians really got STDs, and regardless, we were definitely both virgins. I can sort of relate to older women who talk about the guilt free sex when the pill first appeared, pre-AIDS. And I have to mention that it definitely occurred to me was that what was ‘sex’ for me was what what my straight friends considered little more than a harmless make out session. The *worst* I could do (as a naive teenager) was their guilt free ‘everything but’, I figured that meant that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. And I definitely loved my girlfriend at the time, we’d been dating a while… I felt like I’d ticked all the boxes. I still do really, I have no regrets.
I think maybe having to consciously examine my sexuality in my early teens meant I was pretty comfortable with the idea. Being gay was a huge part of my identity, and it was being attracted to women -physically as well as emotionally- that made me gay. I had reconciled that a fair while before I was in a situation to contemplate actually *having* sex. So sex didn’t feel (to me) as big a deal as it seemed to feel to a lot of my straight friends. I was definitely ready for it when it did happen and I’m glad that I was with someone in a similar emotional place at the time, but beyond that, losing my virginity just didn’t feel like a huge thing.
June 4, 2010 12:00 am
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I didn’t wait for marriage, but I am in a GLBTQ relationship with someone who grew up with that expectation so maybe I can help answer that question.
There are a few issues that are different.
1) GLBTQ sex isn’t sanctioned by most religious groups. So even if you wait for marriage it still isn’t approved of.
2) For many people, you figure out you are GLBTQ (and where you are in that spectrum) through a process of sexual trial and error. You can still wait for marriage, or have sex, make the discover and then wait to have it again, but I think it is more rare.
3) Many GLBTQ people cannot get married (either civil or religious). So that means waiting til you are in a committed relationship.
4) If you are GLB and both cisgendered you can’t get pregnant. And for some people who are waiting because of social pressure (and not personal conviction) pregnancy is one of the public signifiers that you broke your promise.
June 4, 2010 8:34 am
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Having gone through the coming out process myself and currently being married to a woman, I would be shocked if there are any LGBTQ folks who choose to wait until marraige/life-commitment. I mean, every queer person I’ve ever met had to do a lot of answering the question (asked by themselves and others) “but how do you KNOW?” and enjoying sex with partners of the same sex pretty much has to be a part of that answer. I can imagine a different world in which teens could be sure even without doin’ the deed, because straight folks don’t feel the need to have hetero-sex in order to be sure that they’re not gay — but for now… I don’t think you’ll be running across any wait-til-marriage gays out there.
June 7, 2010 9:10 am
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I think one of the biggest factors in needing to explore before you’re sure is that as a society we are only starting to acknowledge and encourage/discourage same-sex relationships openly. As a kid who grew up surrounded by relatively normal “hetero” culture, I certainly didn’t even consider the possibility that I could like other girls until my teen years when the internet opened up a whole new world of sexual topics that my parents would have been horrified to talk about with me. (Interestingly, there was a gay couple in the town where I spent most of my childhood; they were never talked about or looked down on (at least in front of me) and when I was young I always just assumed that they were friends who lived together, or brothers). That lack of knowledge meant that I felt like I had to do a lot more experimenting and self-examination before I could be sure of my feelings (it doesn’t help that the teen years, when many people fully come into awareness of their sexuality, are full of reminders that you’re just a hormonal mess and that you’ll “grow out of it”).
So while most of my friends were discussing how much they liked a certain male actor’s rear, I was trying to sort out why I -didn’t- like said actor’s rear, and if that was normal… and when college came around I fell into a perfect storm of curiosity, a willing queer friend, and a lot of time alone in the dorms. If I hadn’t kissed her I wouldn’t have identified as bi, but “bi-curious”, emphasizing that I was attracted to girls but hadn’t done anything with them. I think that the “curious” tag shouldn’t even have to apply, but it’s another indicator that yes, we are expected to “test the waters”, so to speak – to make sure that we really are attracted to someone in the physical sense before we apply the label.
August 27, 2010 11:29 am
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I just love this site. If you’re waiting, allow me to give you a few field notes from someone who’s virginity has been gone for 20 years (yikes!). The one thing I know for sure about sex is that it’s is equally as important and as unimportant as you’ve probably been told. Yes, it matters. No, not all that much. Yes, it can be a mystical bonding experience. But it might not be. Just relax, enjoy, and try not to put too much stock into it. What is required for a good sex life is pretty much what’s required for a good life, full stop. Reasonable expectations, and a wide-open mind. If you’ve got that, you’re golden.
June 3, 2010 5:52 am
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Excellent point! Thanks.
June 3, 2010 7:29 am
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seasoned experience <3
in my limited experience, it's been like anything else in our relationship. sometimes it's magical. sometimes it's not. and you can never plan or tell which nights are gonna be which.
June 3, 2010 7:02 pm
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We have, you know, done it. Our wedding is in August. We’ve had many conversations that sounded like, “what if our sex sucked- could we marry each other?” and “what if we didn’t have sex until we got married- what if sex sucked?” And through those conversations we were really happy we did have sex with each other. BUT!
Liz’s post really opened up my eyes to waiting. It’s like learning to communicate in a relationship- you learn each others styles, how to groove, what not do do and what to do. You grow together and you learn. So thanks, Liz!
And as a couple who is having sex before marriage and has had sex with other people in previous relationships, we’re still having fun learning what the each other likes and we we even trying new things. I know some people who have waited and really look down at my choice to have sex before marriage. Just saying b/c I feel like I have to: I don’t think having sex before your married with your fiance or anyone else ruins sex for the rest of your life. I think it two people are meant to truly connect- whether they’ve waited or not- they will. And the sex will be off the hook.
June 3, 2010 5:53 am
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Goodness. Just want to rephrase that last bit- some people have judged me for having sex before marriage and I just want people (who are feeling judged for having premarital sex) to know that if you have had sex before marriage (whether you regret it or not) it will NOT take away from sex with your partner after marriage.
June 3, 2010 5:57 am
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I think it’s like anything in a relationship. Previous experiences alter and affect your current one, including in sex. Sex can/will still be good with your spouse, but having had sex before may change the experience all the same.
I had sex with the guy I dated for five years and was going to marry. Then we broke up and a few months later I was married to my husband. Unexpected? Yes!
Do I regret having sex with my husband before we were married? No. The other guy? Yes. For a variety of reasons too long to explain here it added a bunch of baggage to the sexual lives of my husband and I. But you know, we have trials and baggage from other things too. As many here have said, it really just depends on your ability to communicate.
June 3, 2010 11:14 am
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Dear god no. I hope no one EVER feels bad about having sex before marriage. I wouldn’t want you to extrapolate that from the post, and I don’t think Liz would either. I’m very sex positive, and honestly, part of the reason I ran this post is that Liz is also very sex positive, she just made different life choices.
June 3, 2010 5:35 pm
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Definitely glad this was posted because lately I’ve been thinking about sex and how it influences/strengthens/stresses/pressures our relationships. Like Liz said, you can see it on people’s faces if they’ve done the deed or not.
And I’ve especially been thinking a lot about wedding night sex, which I totally don’t think we’re going to have because I’ll either be way too tipsy or way too exhausted. I mean, c’mon, does everyone really knock the boots after 48 hours of worrying, bouquet making, dress steaming, mimosa drinking??? :)
June 3, 2010 6:31 pm
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PEOPLE! No, more and more people are telling me that they are not planning to have sex on their wedding night because they have all these party priorities. I don’t know why I keep saying this (clearly I should have put it in my wedding grad post), but prioritize, people! Sex with your partner should go way way way at the top of your wedding day list. Like:
1. Love
2. Joy
3. Bliss
4. Say Vows
5. GET LAID. Married laid people! I just got married and I’m all blissed out laid! We’re tired, but damn, laid! Getchaselves laid.
6. Party party party
7. All the little stuff, because the rest of it’s little stuff.
(scene)
June 3, 2010 6:51 pm
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this may be the very best comment ever. and one that i will definitely be keeping in mind in a few months… ifyouknowwhatimean ;)
June 3, 2010 6:56 pm
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what to say here, angie, dear.
umm. yes. we decided that neither of us would be bummed if we didn’t have sexy time on wedding night. we didn’t want that pressure.
we left the bar, our last stop on the wedding-train, at 3am. needed to catch a flight at 5am.
and we tore each other’s clothes off and got down to business in our few spare minutes.
so. tired or not. it can be done. jussayin.
(but as a “waiter” it was really nice to remove the pressure of some magical wedding night by agreeing that it may or may not happen)
June 3, 2010 7:08 pm
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To take the pressure off of our first time we agreed that neither of us would be disappointed if we didn’t have sex the wedding night. But we were definitely going to get naked and enjoy and see what happened next. Sex happened. :D
June 3, 2010 8:49 pm
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Meg, You know, it may not be so bad to squeeze a little #5 in between the ceremony and the reception. ;)
Liz, Thanks :) I just don’t want to be hugely disappointed if it doesn’t happen, yaknow?
June 4, 2010 4:24 am
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We’re waiting (and Catholic too, but I’d hate it if people thought that was the whole reason why we were waiting!) and we may not have sex on our wedding night because we’re practicing natural family planning and I think I will probably be fertile at that time and we are not ready for children yet. We have discussed this possibility and are very much looking forward to getting naked together on that night and waiting for our infertile phase to consumate our marriage!
Just wanted to add this to the discussion on the issue :)
June 4, 2010 4:51 am
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I totally agree that sex on your wedding day should be so high on the list that it’s not even *on* the list. It’s a given. We knew we would stay up late, have friends back to our suite to continue the party, and be exhausted, so we had wedding morning sex (haha, obviously I wasn’t a Waiter!) It was the best decision for us because that’s where it fit into the day. It would be so sad if you didn’t get laid on your wedding day!
June 4, 2010 8:19 am
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aaaaahh ok while I agree in theory that wedding day sex is a good priority, since I’ve already announced in my grad post that we didn’t do it, I feel obliged to step up for the masses of non-sex-havers and say that we did not have sex on our wedding night and we did not die! it was not so sad! for some (many? most?), it may be different, it may be more significant for you to do it right away. but as with Everything else, you should set your own priorities! the first time we had married sex it still had the glitter on it because it was the first time we’d done it since we got married. I don’t think we missed out on anything because it didn’t happen between the sunrises of March 20th and 21st.
June 4, 2010 12:53 pm
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I do agree with you Meg but, if, like me, you happen to get your period on the way to the church, 4 days early, it may be that no matter how much you want to have sex on your wedding day, it just isn’t going to happen. I know you can have sex whilst having a period, but not, if, like me, you have various gynae problems which makes it too painful to contemplate.
So, with all the best will in the world, it may be that you just can’t. And you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it. Sex a week later is still lovely.
And yes, I know people will say, but why didn’t you take the pill back to back. Well, I can’t take that kind of pill, so I take one every day (mini pill) which means I can’t avoid periods. They come when they come. And sometimes that times is when you’re in the car with your father on the way to the church to get married. Wearing a white dress.
June 5, 2010 2:56 am
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rachel- ME TOO. and i DID take the pill back to back. and the damn thing still came on my wedding day and ruined my spanx.
June 5, 2010 5:09 am
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I DEFINITELY had party priorities on my wedding night and I don’t regret it one bit. We’ve been having sex for years and years — but having a party with all of our nearest and dearest — that had never happened before and probably never will again. I am 100% not sad that we didn’t have sex on our wedding night — I mean… that’s what the honeymoon was for!
June 7, 2010 9:03 am
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On our wedding night, sex was verboten because I had just had a D&C because of a miscarriage a week earlier.
But even if we’d been able to, we were sleeping on the pullout sofa bed in the basement and we were exhausted from the day and from having my husband’s parents with us for A WEEK WITH THEIR CONSTANT DEMANDS, so it wouldn’t have happened anyhow.
We didn’t care. We were just happy to be married.
June 8, 2010 4:38 am
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This was a freaking amazing post. This issue rarely makes it into the blogosphere, much less in such a mature, well-stated way. Though my family was never part of the Evangelical right, they would go to various Christian churches and my middle school years happened to be spent at an unusual Southern Baptist church (unusual insofar as they were liberal by SBC standards, moderate by most church standards). And like most SBC churches they ingrained the no sex policy until marriage into the youth’s heads. We left there when I was in 7th grade, so I have no idea how well is stuck with others. But that was the origin of my idea, but over time it evolved. I didn’t think people having sex were going to hell, I just didn’t think it was right with me. And as I continued to get older I would refine my views, many very similar to Liz.
My best friend is a minister and we were roommates while in grad school, and we were both amazed at how many divinity school people would meet, start dating, get engaged, and married, all within a year. We had strong suspicions to explain the phenomena (cough, *sex*, cough) and I hope that being a bit older than some of the other rush-to-marriage folks had a better foundation than those who had rushed in earlier (say, right after high school).
So, there are probably some people beginning to wonder how old I finally was when I did have sex. Umm, 29. With my current fiance (though we weren’t engaged at the time). We’d been dating for about 10 or 11 months, and it was just the right time. He was willing to wait until we were married though, which was important to me because when we started dating I didn’t know if I would ever feel ready to the deed before our wedding because even though I’m mentally very accepting of people having sex, I wasn’t sure if I would feel any guilt or other feelings about my having sex before marriage. But I didn’t. :)
Ok, this is turning to a novel, so I just wanted to say thanks for posting this. And as for as Emi’s question goes, the only thing I have heard about waiting and the LBBTQ community has been from Christian conservatives. They say that since heterosexual couples have to wait, that homosexual couples should wait too. But since the conservatives don’t believe in LGBTQ weddings, they’d get to wait forever. So I’ve heard (conservative) people say that homosexuality (being attracted to a non-hetero partner) is not a sin , but acting on it (i.e. having sex with a non-hetero partner) is a sin.
June 3, 2010 6:11 am
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I’ve heard that “acting on it” bit too, and it makes me gag. Your comment rocked, though. :)
June 3, 2010 7:08 am
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Thanks, Jolynn!
June 4, 2010 8:02 am
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This sounds a lot like my life. Except I attended a Southern Baptist church school from K3 to 12th grade. And of course the expectation is that none of the students are having sex. (yeah, right!) But of course people were. And the thing is, the school had this policy that you could get in trouble not just by breaking rules in the explicitly written handbook, but you could also be disciplined for anything, done on or off-campus, which they found inappropriate. So, pre-marital sex, pregnancy, admitted homosexuality, drinking, drugs, dancing, etc. were all “fair” grounds for expulsion.
So, as you can imagine, people kept their sexual activity under wraps. Except that there was always at least one girl every year who got pregnant. (in a school where grades 6-12 was only about 500 students all-together)
For me though, the biggest problem with the SB’s stance on sex is that, at least in my experience, it went beyond innocence to ignorance. They seemed to prefer the “sink or swim” method of sex ed. Meaning, no one ever tells you anything about how sex works, or how it makes you feel, or anything because the only thing you need to know is that’s dirty/evil and you need to stay away from it. Then they throw two virgins together on their wedding night and see what happens. And what happens isn’t pretty.
We aren’t waiting until after we get married, but we waited for each other, which was the right decision for us. And we waited a little over a year before we had sex. Sometimes, I wish we had waited longer, because sex DOES mess with your mind. ‘Well, duh!’ you say. But I think a lot of people are really unaware of just how much things change. And I can’t imagine trying to get to know each other that first year with sex looming in the picture.
June 3, 2010 7:25 am
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sarah beth- so true. not just in christian circles, but in general, we guard all girls from sexual knowledge- and then thrust sexy pictures (by which we define “beautiful”) at them, and wonder why so many girls are sexually damaged, emotionally abused, etc. nothing is explained, nothing is understood, but girls want to be “pretty” so they misunderstand that this means “sexually appealing,” and don’t know what they’re in for.
June 3, 2010 7:18 pm
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This depiction of “beauty” in the media is something that I’ve always had trouble getting to grips with. For full disclosure, I’m a guy considering popping the question soon, hence me here on wedding blogs. Girls are definitely affected by not being provided by a healthy view of what is beautiful, but this same thing goes for us guys. It gets to the point where some think that it is almost inappropriate to not be having premarital sex. I am a waiter, as is my girlfriend and we have been waiting for more than 3 years, largely for the reasons in this article. The media definitely makes this a challenging thing to do.
June 11, 2010 6:04 am
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definitely flip sides of the coin for either gender. women are whores if they don’t protect their virginity. men aren’t men if they can’t get laid. (we even reference “the night he became a man…” in movies, etc all the effing time)
and it sucks. because it puts us at odds, doesn’t it?
June 11, 2010 7:44 am
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Finally! Thank you for this post. So true, so good.
June 3, 2010 6:13 am
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Woohoo! Can I just say that I love the diversity on APW? And thanks to Meg for being willing to share!
My husband and I waited until the wedding night as well. In our case, it was because of religious beliefs. I was always taught as a kid that you should wait until marriage, and although I was able to examine that belief as I grew older and more experienced, all of the evidence seemed to support it. Like Liz said, sex complicates things, binds people, makes BABIES for pete’s sake. I wasn’t ready for all of that. Josh and I dated for about 3.5 years before we got married, and spending all that time NOT having sex made us better communicators. If he got upset when I stopped us while messing around (he wholeheartedly agreed to wait, but I was usually the enforcer if you know what I mean), it just taught us to talk it out. We got really good at talking about sex.
When it came to our wedding night, we were still a little scared. We ordered a pizza and watched tv before we could work up the nerve. And then? The first several times were really painful for me and awkward for us both. We laughed and got through it and just kept trying.
The more sex we have, the more I completely, totally agree with the sentiment of waiting. I can’t imagine having gone through this experience with someone other than my husband — not the specific man (although I do love him), but specifically the husband status. Being able to go through this really big, lifestyle-changing, emotionally charged process with him has been wonderful. I couldn’t imagine doing it with someone who I don’t trust or who doesn’t love me unconditionally.
I understand why people have sex before marriage. I also understand that there is trust and love within non-marriage relationships. But I agree with Liz that it’s incredibly romantic to have only had one partner, and that your promised life partner has been present in your entire sexual journey. Plus it really is the best sex of your life!
June 3, 2010 6:19 am
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Hi Michelle, just wanted to say as someone who’s still a bit scared (after lots of talking with and reassurances from the FH) of the “it’s going to hurt” part, your comment makes me feel much better. Laugh, get through it, and keep trying. Noted. :)
June 3, 2010 8:36 am
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If you are worried about it hurting the first time, there are several things you can do about it. I’ve known of women who had their doctor cut their hymen before their marriage. I’ve known of women who used a set of progressively bigger “stretchers” before their marriage that they got from their doctor. And it also helps to know that a man who loves you will not want to purposefully hurt you. In the book “The Act of Marriage” they suggest that the guy can put some lubrication on his fingers and help stretch you out before sex too when you first start. Having lubrication on hand isn’t a bad idea anyway just in case you need it, as a lot of people do.
Being afraid it will hurt can make you tense up too much and then it probably will hurt. And it seems just like how women love to tell horror stories about child birth rather than the good ones, they love to tell horror stories about how much their first sexual experience hurt as well.
But definitely keep in mind that he won’t want to hurt you on purpose.
June 3, 2010 10:31 am
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Yes. Lube lube lube. Lube is the best invention ever. Seriously.
June 3, 2010 12:09 pm
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(Another longtime lurker!)
I am really glad that this point was brought up. I, like many other posters, loved reading Liz’s incredibly interesting point of view! And while I’m super excited for Liz that her first (few) experiences were pleasant (congrats, lady!), it’s not like that for everyone. My first time (with my now-fiance) was very painful, and even after two years with him, we’re still… how do I put this delicately?… quite a tight fit. It doesn’t hurt anymore, but it’s still tight, and it does pose some limits — so the pain concern may not necessarily be averted completely by lube and doctors and “stretchers,” although mazel tov if it is!
Not trying to scare anyone, of course, just trying to bold-double-underline that everyone’s experience is different, and that Liz’s experiences may not be yours. Just something to keep in mind!
June 3, 2010 12:42 pm
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I had a burning problem with KY Sensitive lube on my wedding night, so it didn’t go the best. Sometimes we could have sex with out lube and other times it was painful. Some ladies on a Christian women’s message board mentioned using Coconut oil as a lube. It’s wonderful. I found it at Whole foods. It of course can’t be used with condoms.
June 3, 2010 6:51 pm
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Yes, and not that crappy KY Jelly. Get something good quality from a nice female friendly sex shop. I’ve used Bliss Lube and Better Sex Essentials and some others that I can’t remember the names of.
If you need a great women friendly sex shop these guys are amazing. I really trust their shop: http://www.womynsware.com/Home/Health/Lubes
June 3, 2010 8:56 pm
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Coconut oil…this WILL BE my lube of choice on the big night;) Gosh, just for the smell alone!
June 7, 2010 5:02 pm
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Thanks, Ms. Giggles! One of my married lady friends gave me a book that recommended some stretching exercises, so I’ve been doing those. So far it’s been pretty ok – there hasn’t been any pain. It’s more like, er, parking a car than anything else (sorry if that’s waaaay TMI) in terms of getting used to the sensation. So… *fingers crossed*! And yes, FH has been incredibly reassuring in our talks about this.
Can I also just say how fantastic it is to be able to bring up issues like virginity or fear of intercourse in such a safe space?
June 3, 2010 1:02 pm
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biggest pieces of advice:
1. go slow. your body will basically be going “this is awesome, but WTF is going on down there?”
2. Practice, practice, practice. Not that you need to be told, but it makes everything better.
3. Finally, and I cannot emphasize this enough: TELL HIM AS SOON AS IT HURTS. Because, as my eternally patient FH has pointed out to me (several times), if you’re not happy, he’s not happy. And he’ll REALLY be not happy if he doesn’t learn that you were in pain until after the fact. the whole enduring stoic thing is not a good idea (as I said, FH has had to explain this to me several times. I am a lucky girl, but also kind of an idiot).
June 3, 2010 7:18 pm
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hm. i’m sorry that i gave the impression that it didn’t hurt. i’m a foot shorter and about 100 lbs lighter. and those figures pretty accurately depict our proportions… uh… elsewhere.
it did hurt. but not enough to ruin it. and it hurt for a bit thereafter- and still does, from time to time. but josh was sensitive to that. he was very aware, very gentle, very careful. and i was vocal about when we needed to stop and move onto other activities.
but, lady. it hurting did NOT (did not not not) make it suck. i’m a wuss. a major pansy. and i was ok. it was still a happy moment.
other activities and the certain products ladies have mentioned, definitely help. foreplay is called FOREplay for a reason. getting things rolling for you first will help immensely.
June 3, 2010 7:27 pm
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We ordered a pizza and watched tv before we could work up the nerve.
My mom tells me that I was conceived on their honeymoon between “Gunsmoke” and the pizza arriving.
June 8, 2010 4:52 am
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I just (4 hours ago) came across APW. Love it to bits already (thanks Meg), and largely because of the huge diversity of views presented here, such as this wonderful post (thanks Liz), and this comment (thanks Michelle). As a deeply religious Muslim, but one with very liberal ideals, its hard to find a space to fit into within the Muslim community or within the liberal one, especially when you’re planning to have a traditional-but-not, Pakistani-Canadian, kooky-be-true-to-yourself-yet-please-the-parents wedding. But, I guess the point is, as my guy tells me, not to find a place to fit into, but to make one where you not only fit, but fit perfectly.
Anyways, long ramble aside, it was great to read Michelle’s comment. Waiting to have sex (or in our case, do anything at all) is hard, and it gets harder when people assume that because SOME of our reasons stem from religion, that means that a) we haven’t thought them out, b) we wait out of fear of going to hell, and c) we dislike/condemn all those people who make different lifestyle choices than ours. Just wanted to say, that while all three of these may be true of some people who are religious and wait because of it, it isn’t true for all ;)
Personally, while I’ve never had sex before, I’ve done a bit of fooling around, which I honestly regret now. I’ve realized that, for me, doing those things with guys I wasn’t going to spend my life with ruined the intimacy and special-ness of those things. Now, I can’t wait till we’re married so I can share a whole lot of firsts with my husband.
Although, not gonna lie, having experienced sexual chemistry with the-jerk-who-broke-my-heart, and the-eternal-flirt-who-led-me-on, I’m super worried…now that I know what it feels like, what if I don’t have it with the-amazing-man-who-I’m-in-love-with-and-who-adores-me?
June 15, 2010 9:45 pm
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Sexual chemistry can be “encouraged”, if not forced. Communication is part of that. :)
When I started dating at 16 the “chemistry” was all nerves. Everything was new and because of this I was always nervous – and nervousness can stimulate arousal. Thrill-seekers tend to recreate those patterns of anticipation and arousal all the time. The rest of us just get it once in a while, and it wears off… and then relationships fall apart because they’ve “lost their spark”.
Well, they all do. If you think of your love as a fire, you get the spark and the flames at first but what’s left when the flames are gone? If the relationship was built on a solid base and allowed to burn slowly you’ll have a lot of warm, glowing coals, which can easily re-kindle flames if you feed them carefully and consistently. When people complain that the passion is gone it’s usually because they’ve quit feeding the fire through communication, respect and appreciation for their partner, and trying new things once in a while (not just in the bedroom, either – you can have the same kind of sex every night, and it’ll be good if you are always working on improving your relationship through shared experiences in other areas!). You might have had something shocking and new and arousing with the last two guys but with your husband you’ll have something warm and comforting that will last a lifetime, and that’s the kind of chemistry you’ll really enjoy :)
August 27, 2010 11:48 am
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Both Meg and Liz are amazing and brave and thoughtful (and so NOT awkward, Liz!). I appreciate he really grown up discussion that is emerging. Waiting…never crossed my mind. For a ton of reasons, some very good (for me), some pretty shallow (for me). Now that we’re engaged, FH and I, with all the love, don’t have the best sex life- it’s a rare sticking point of communication, sharing, and negotiation in an otherwise fantastic relationship. Thank goodness that my age and specific set of experiences puts me more in the mind of Laura, where it is has become ONE factor in our relationship/ journey towards marriage, so the whole thing. And we can work on it. Or not. Right now. Or later. Our commitment (just ours, no judgment) had many mansions…
Now, as to what Liz actually SAID about sex, and waiting. I had to think after I read the post, because my issues (I’m a “yeah, but…” person to the nth degree) kept interfering with Liz’ beautiful words. So I’ll cop to that, in case others who read are feeling subtly judged by not having made (or been able to make) the decision to wait. IT AIN’T THE POST- if you’re like me, it’s your own “oh, shoot” moment of realizing you HAD a choice (whether you waited with everyone or just with your intended), and guess what…you still do. If, like me, this causes an uncomfortable exposed feeling, you may consider having this discussion with your partner, not attached to the outcome as such, but to your experience of broaching the subject, and thinking about why you may have had that exposed feeling. Is there some stuff in Liz’s words, that you can use?
Again, thanks. This was a limb, and Meg and Liz, you handled dancing on that limb beautifully.
June 3, 2010 6:22 am
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Tamara, just wanted thank you also for the bravery to admit that you don’t have the world’s greatest sex life. Particularly in conversations like these, where people have a tendency to get defensive of their own choices, those who didn’t wait are entirely reluctant to admit that it hasn’t led to the greatest sex the world has ever seen. I think it’s brave to admit that sex ebbs and flows, it’s not always great, and sometimes we need to work (as Liz points out) on all the communication that should surround it.
June 3, 2010 7:33 am
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This is a wonderful, thoughtful post!! For most of my teen years I was of the belief that I was going to wait until marriage, I never really thought about it, I never really had that belief forced upon me by my church, it was just something I thought I would do. When I went to university I found myself having conversations with people about it on more than one occasion. They would ask me why I was waiting and I realized I had no real reason. So my belief transformed into not necessarily waiting until marriage, just that I was waiting until I found someone I was comfortable enough to share that with. So for me, I’ve had sex with one other person before my fiance and for him it’s the same. I don’t regret losing my virginity to someone else at all and while the relationship didn’t work out, he was actually a wonderful first experience.
It’s so fantastic that we have a place where we can talk about humping like bunnies or waiting until marriage or somewhere in between and be reminded that it’s our choice and whatever we choose is a-ok.
June 3, 2010 6:26 am
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Sarah, I had a very similar experience. Raised Catholic (although fairly liberal) and with a healthy feminist disdain of all the wanting-to-please-boys bullshit that can drag girls into sex before they are ready, I always thought in the back of my mind I would wait for marriage. Like you, it wasn’t until I heard people articulating this belief back to me (thinking I was committed to waiting) that I realized I really wasn’t. It seemed to me that I’d be choosing a partner on the basis of their sexual practices if I held out for someone who was willing to wait, and I realized I’d be prioritizing a belief that wasn’t all that important to me.
(I should say, it’s clear that Liz and many of the other waiters commenting here chose their partner on a number of good and wise factors, not just the lack of sexin’–but as a student at a liberal university that’s how I saw my choices at the time. You mean I can choose from EVERYONE or I can choose from the very small, conservative religious community who I disagree with on most other issues? No thanks.)
Another factor in my decision not to wait–and here we go with the TMI–was getting involved in an S/M relationship with a boyfriend before I had had sex, and thinking to myself “oh, it’s fine, at least it’s not progressing ‘the bases.’” Um. NO! Like Liz said, sex binds you, whether it’s genital or what have you. I realized that was really some magical thinking on my part.
Though I didn’t end up waiting till marriage, I sure am glad I ended up waiting as long as I did. I ended up first having sex (I hate the concept of “virginity”) at age 24 with a long term boyfriend who, although something of a disaster in other ways, was very patient, gentle and positive. At this point, after plenty of ensuing drama (and now, years later, being in a different and very happy relationship) having sex with him is about the only thing I DON’T regret.
I really just want to affirm the choices of everyone who is sharing here. Waiters face judgment and invisibility and non-waiters can also face flak from family, religious or cultural factors. Making thoughtful choices and owning them is one of our biggest tasks in becoming adult, and one of the hardest.
June 4, 2010 11:00 am
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your comment really spoke to me (other than the S/M). I too, was raised in a fairly religious/conservative family (although, wow has that changed!) and thought I’d wait too. And then I realized my reasons for waiting were all tied up with other people’s expectations of myself, not what I actually wanted. Although the *idea* of having one partner sounded nice it would also mean canceling out some otherwise great experiences and people, something I just didn’t want to look back on and regret. But that’s my personal choice. I wanted to experience it ALL and if that meant sex then that too, but in the right time, with the right person.
The guy I dated and first had sex with (agreed on the “virginity” thing) was a kind, funny, awesome and patient guy. I am glad we are still good friends today. And it did mess with my head, and it has, but not so much that I couldn’t get over it and even embrace that part of the human experience as well.
Now I’m in a great relationship with a guy that I love and that I love having all sorts of sex with. One of the most remarkable things to me is just HOW MUCH HE LOVES MY BODY. It makes me feel beautiful and incredibly sexy and that is something I love as I move along the line toward other parts of the human experience.
June 15, 2010 1:21 pm
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oh, let me clarify. Your experiences sounded a lot like mine. I wasn’t involved in an s/m relationship, is all I meant. Not that consenting adults who are interested in that shouldn’t be involved in them, just that your experience, except for that, sounded a lot like mine. :)
June 15, 2010 1:24 pm
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Thank you, thank you. You’ve done it again, Meg (and Liz). I couldn’t figure out at first why this post stuck with me so strongly. I had sex at 16 (albeit with my now husband, but I think I was so hot to trot at the time that finding him early was just some good-ass luck).
But then I realized it’s because this post is true to the Meg Mantra: you took a subject that is often highly romanticized (often to its detriment) and looked at the practical application and implications of the subject.
I married my high school sweetheart. We’ve only ever known sex with each other. And countless times I’m either me with cynicism or romanticism. “you’ll
June 3, 2010 6:30 am
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Thanks Maddie and Meg (and Liz, for the great post) for: “Sex is no place for generalizations.” As someone who has not waited and has been having sex with her boyfriend for the three years of their relationship, I often struggle with not feeling sexual enough. I base my idea of what constitues “enough” on what I see all around me, on what I hear people talk about, on my friends’ experiences. I have a really difficult time forcing my mind to accept that maybe I’m not quite as sexual as others but that doesn’t mean that I’m less desirable or less… whole? It sounds silly, but that’s how it feels. Like I’m less than whole because I don’t crave sex like some others.
I think communication is very important as well, like Liz said. Though my boyfriend and I have been having sex for years, we still talk about it pretty much every time beforehand. Like, “you wanna get freaky?” Ha, and it’s half joking and half serious because it still makes me feel a bit uneasy. My friends say it’s unromantic, but if it works for us then it works for us.
Thanks so much for this post. It was fantastic to hear about this topic from someone who’s not all SEX SEX SEX and actually discussed real life a la migraines and bad moods. Thanks again!
June 3, 2010 1:48 pm
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Thank you, thank you. You’ve done it again, Meg (and Liz). I couldn’t figure out at first why this post stuck with me so strongly. I had sex at 16 (albeit with my now husband, but I think I was so hot to trot at the time that finding him early was just some good-ass luck).
But then I realized it’s because this post is true to the Meg Mantra: you took a subject that is often highly romanticized (often to its detriment) and looked at the practical application and implications of the subject.
I married my high school sweetheart. We’ve only ever known sex with each other. And countless times I’m either me with cynicism or romanticism. You’ll
June 3, 2010 6:31 am
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Thank you, thank you. You’ve done it again, Meg (and Liz). I couldn’t figure out at first why this post stuck with me so strongly. I had sex at 16 (albeit with my now husband, but I think I was so hot to trot at the time that finding him early was just some good-ass luck).
But then I realized it’s because this post is true to the Meg Mantra: you took a subject that is often highly romanticized (often to its detriment) and looked at the practical application and implications of the subject.
I married my high school sweetheart. We’ve only ever known sex with each other. And countless times I’m met with either cynicism or romanticism. I am forced to stand for something without my consent. Few people ever take the time to think about the myriad reasons that we choose to do what’s right for us. I echo the “comments policy”. Sex is no place for generalizations. Bravo both of you.
June 3, 2010 6:34 am
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This is a great discussion of a very delicate issue. It’s making me examine my decisions in a whole new light. Thank you for this, Liz and Meg.
June 3, 2010 6:37 am
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Oh boo. Sorry guys. My blackberry thought it would be funny to post my comment three times (and only once in completion). Please feel free to delete. Nobody needs to hear how I lost my virginity three times in a row.
June 3, 2010 6:38 am
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thought you were just trying to drive the point home. ;)
June 3, 2010 7:34 pm
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Liz, thank you a million times over for writing this. My husband and I were in a similar position– I was a virgin and he wasn’t (though he’d only had one partner before me… I think it might have been more complicated if he’d been used to sex being a casual part of a relationship because our viewpoints may have been too different). We ultimately didn’t wait till we were married, but we did wait (five years!) till we were engaged and I felt ready. I feel no regrets about the way things played out and am so glad we made the decisions, and had the discussions, that we did.
It’s refreshing to see this viewpoint articulated so clearly online. There seems to be such an artificial divide between “wacky Bible thumpers” and “liberal, liberated women,” which dominates the discussion. And for so many of us who are living in the middle of this issue, it’s so much more nuanced than that.
June 3, 2010 6:38 am
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I think this can be a particularly complicated situation (and is in fact where my FH and I are). When one person has *experience* and the other does not, expectations can be very different and if it is compounded with the common problem of poor communication around sexual issues (What can I say? I grew up in a very inhibited part of the country. It rubbed off.) it can make for some bumps along the road. Ultimately we have waited (although not the extent that Liz did), but along the way there have been times when we have wanted to move at very different paces. We have worked our way through.
Whether we will wait all the way to the wedding, only time will tell. Like Liz, for me the decision to wait is not driven by religion although it is influenced by attitudes formed growing up in a very religious part of the country. In large part my reasons echo Liz’s (and have ever since I first started thinking about it back in high school), but my logic actually only took me as far as I should wait until I am engaged and then reassess. I was deeply concerned about the ways in which sex could bind you together. While it is obviously a poor idea to get married impetuously (particularly when very young) just so you can have sex, it is an equally poor idea to get yourself in the situation where you marry someone because you accidentally got pregnant. At this point, whether we start having sex now or three months from now won’t really change any of our decisions or have a big impact on our life one way or the other. And while we are not planning to have children for several years, even if we were to have and *accident* whether that happened now or three months from now would not change any major life decisions (although they would both impact our plans for the future).
Unlike Liz, I am still concerned about putting a lot of pressure on the wedding night and while I think that she has good advice for how to reduce that, it is somewhat compounded by our personal situation of not having a lot of time after the wedding. In light of my feeling that, for us, the difference between sex now and sex after the wedding is not going to have a huge impact on the big things, we may decide to not quite wait all the way or then again we may wait. We’ll figure it out in good time. (kinda like the names issue which is still pending as well)
June 3, 2010 7:42 am
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yes. the experience divide can be worrisome.
i was honest with josh that i was afraid of messing up, doing something wrong. i laughingly suggested we watch instructional videos.
we’re very open about, “no, do it this way, instead…” during sex. which helps me a lot. because i know if i’m doing something wrong, it’s not going unsaid, which is a relief.
and a lot of those experience fears i recognized were my own issues- tied up in my own fears of being compared to other women (seriously, i thought i’d grow out of that crap after high school- what makes us so competitive?!). so much of it was stuff i needed to work through personally.
June 3, 2010 7:41 pm
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This was a terrific post, Liz. My fiance and I didn’t wait, but my best friend and her husband did, and she took vast amounts of crap for it. People assumed that she and her hubby were crazy religious fundamentalists (they’re not), that they were only getting married so they could Do It (they’d been together 5 years), and that they’d end up miserable together because the sex couldn’t possibly be any good (um … no). And while there are resources for couples who chose not to have sex before marriage, a lot of them are tied up in being judgmental/threatening about the choice (“if you have sex before marriage you will go to hell” kind of stuff), which isn’t all that helpful to someone like my friend. It’s great to hear a thoughtful, romantic, non-judgmental explanation of the decision to wait. I think you and Meg helped a lot of couples today.
June 3, 2010 6:39 am
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From another Liz, another perspective…
My fiance and I began as a one night stand. We had both had multiple partners, some serious relationships, some not-so-serious, but the ONS was a first for both of us. The sex was, and is, fantastic. 10 days after we met, I realized I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. 18 days after we met, he told me he loved me. There was no pumping of the brakes with us.
But that being said, many of the things Liz said resonate with me and despite our different experiences, I found myself saying, Yeah, totally. Because the things that make sex with my fiance the best we’ve ever had are the same–honesty, communication, trust, team spirit.
June 3, 2010 6:42 am
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this was my experience too. Lovers first, friends later! Doesn’t work for everyone, but knowing myself and my fiance like I know do, I totally get why it worked out for us.
Still a great post; relevant and wise regardless of differing experiences.
June 3, 2010 1:15 pm
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I love this post. While my fiance and I did not even come close to waiting for marriage, or even for marriage plans, my most significant prior relationship did not include sex (well, there was…activity, but not “all the way” as the kids once said), pretty much for all the reasons why not that Liz lists. And I wasn’t even a virgin, but all my experience had been in drunken flings, and was most assuredly not quality experience, or emotionally meaningful, and yet still managed to mess with my head in major ways. And most of Liz’s points about setting up for success and the ongoing learning process turned out to apply with my fiance – I don’t know if that’s because many of those will apply in any good relationship, or if it’s because while not a virgin, I was brand new to the world of sober sex in the context of a relationship. I suspect the ongoing learning process piece would be key for anyone, whether or not you wait.
June 3, 2010 6:52 am
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I knew I liked Liz (: I’m also waiting until I’m married but I feel like it’s so unusual that I don’t ever mention it. Some of my friends think that David and I are sleeping together because I don’t feel like saying what Liz just said. There is so much judgement that get throws around at women by other women regarding sex. APW really is THE same space.
June 3, 2010 6:53 am
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I never really told my friends that I was waiting either.
June 3, 2010 6:56 pm
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OMG! Tell people! I lost it at 17 and am totally comfortable with that but, quite frankly, these reasons never occurred to me. I don’t think I’ve ever even known a person who waited for non-religious reasons. For some very strange reason, it is taboo in our society to wait until marriage (or even a committed relationship). While I’m a firm believer in making the choice that is personally right for you, I think young women can really benefit from knowing that there are people out there who are waiting, and that they are cool too (hello…Liz is obviously cool!). When I was in high school pretty much all of my friends were having sex. That’s not why I did it, but I think it’s a big factor for why a lot of girls do. I don’t have a problem with premarital sex (obviously!), but if the whole “waiting-til-marriage” taboo disappeared, I think we would have a much healthier (sexually, physically, emotionally) society. I think we, as women, have maybe gone a little too far with the sexual liberation. I’ve had a few sexual partners, and currently fall into the one-night-stand-that-didn’t-quit category. I will be with my current partner for the rest of my life. The one thing that I regret about not waiting: I will NEVER get to have an amazingly magical first time. I will NEVER experience that culmination of emotion and love and desire and urgency. I want to know what that feels like; to fall in love with someone and experience the nervousness and awkwardness and passion of finally getting each other’s clothes off. At the same time, I probably never would have started a relationship with my boyfriend if we hadn’t gotten drunk and slept together… Wow, sorry this got so long. But, yeah, I think people need to hear that it’s ok to wait!
June 3, 2010 11:43 pm
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Another lurker coming out of the shadows here!
My fiancé and I are both in our early 20s, Christians and both involved a lot in our not-so-much-conservative Apostolic Church in New Zealand.
I decided long before I became a Christian that I too, would wait till marriage, or at the very least until I was in a -serious- long-term relationship. It turned out to be the best decision I could have made.
Admittedly, it has been a struggle sometimes, and many people don’t believe us when we say that we haven’t “done it”yet and are waiting. We’re one of those “short relationship – short engagement”couples, but in no way was this related to “We want/need to have sex sex SEX!”.
This entire post has been a great read, and was actually recommended to me to read by said fiancé, to whom I had sent another post, and he link-clicked to this one!
Thanks a bunch Liz and Meg, you’re both so amazing and do such a great job helping us all out!
– Aimée
March 2, 2011 12:55 pm
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Liz, thank you for an insightful, intelligent post.
I’m Catholic, and I didn’t wait (Don’t tell my family! – When my year younger sister found out I’d lost the big V, she cried! Though she didn’t end up waiting, she and her now husband were ‘good’ throughout most of their engagement.). Sometimes I wish I had waited, but then I don’t think I would fit nearly as well with my liberal Jewish-agnostic FF (Future Fiancee), whom I’m madly in love with, so it turned out all right, didn’t it?
I was dreading having to field the question of whether to wait from my teen-aged younger sisters, but when the topic does come up, I’ll just point them here!
June 3, 2010 6:56 am
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Thank you so much, Liz and Meg, for this beautiful, non-judgmental, nuanced discussion of a topic that most of the wedding blogosphere is silent on. It’s so helpful to have a resource on waiting that is *not* tied up in hyper-religious language.
FH and I are waiting (2 more months! While our engagement is only going to run about 5 months and change in total, there are definitely days when I wish we’d made it even shorter than that. ;) Liz is onto something with short engagements…), but we’ve been talking like CRAZY about our expectations and (my) fears when it comes to sex. For me, the best part of discussing the topic to death has been seeing FH’s patience and commitment to my comfort, which I think is such a stark contrast to some of the messages that culture at large sends women about how all men are cavemen when it comes to sex. That’s been really redemptive, to borrow Meg’s word, for me. There is a level of intellectual and emotional intimacy that comes from the discussions that I hope will translate well into physical intimacy when we finally, er, do the deed. (And which I think is a great reason to talk about sex with one’s partner whether one is waiting or not!)
June 3, 2010 7:03 am
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Sharon! I totally know what you mean about being scared. Even though we both waited, my husband was a lot more comfortable with the subject than I was. Just don’t be afraid to talk about everything with him, even after you’re married. Even though it’s a new level of intimacy (literally and emotionally!), just remember that it’s still the same man that you love and trust. It’s a lot easier to be honest upfront then to spend six months feeling totally awkward and finally blurt out “I hate when you do that!” And don’t be worried if it’s not perfect right off the bat… It doesn’t mean that you’re not meant for each other, you just have to keep practicing! ;)
June 3, 2010 8:20 am
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:) I think you were replying to me right as I was replying to your comment above! And this is why I love APW!
June 3, 2010 8:39 am
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haha! so fantastic.
June 3, 2010 9:19 am
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any pre-marriage sex fears i had were tied up in this amorphous concept of sex. sex the idea. somehow, for awhile there, i would think of The Sex and completely separate it from my relationship.
one day i had an epiphany- “hold the phone. josh is gonna be there. he’ll protect me from the scariness.” DUH. josh is going to be there. sounds dumb, but somehow i had lost sight of the fact that it was just going to be a moment with josh. if that makes sense.
June 3, 2010 7:51 pm
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i echo all the thanks for the post!… This is def a topic which gets lost in the romanticism/feminist liberation/cynicism/politics and religion. i feel like no matter where you fall on the spectrum of water/nonwaiter somebody’s gonna take issue. No sex – you must be brainwashed, repressed, a victim of the crazy patriarchals… Sex – heathen, missing the emotional component of sex, selling yourself cheap, etc. It’s especially disturbing since most people having the dilemma are young and still defining themselves. They definitely deserve access to info without an agenda.
I have personally made it from one end of the spectrum (Catholic, true love waits ring, dated a guy 3 yrs without getting nakey, the works) to the other (will be married to a one-night stand in august). Some points from the post and comments i was happy to see>
*it’s a choice. you should think about it, get info, ask questions, decide what’s good for you and screw everyone else’s opinion! (aa, if only we had that confidence earlier)
*sex is important> it DOES connect you in weird ways and creates a feeling of intimacy. which is sometimes false. Like the night you had a few too many, went home with someone who was amazing and interesting and intriguing etc etc then you had nothing to talk about at breakfast. Yeah, cause you never got to know each other…i think that (false) intimacy can also make a relationship seem more serious/better than it is and keep you from leaving when it would be the best choice.
*…and it isnt> have i had sex with someone and regretted it? yeah. Has that been mind/altering or had a negative effect on later relatonships. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t. I think the scare tactics and extremization of sex talks actually have a negative effect. You do it and it might not have been horrible and you didnt end up pregnant or with an std so you doubt everything they’ve told you…leading you to let your guard down (re safe sex) and maybe even lower your expectations (it wasnt awesome, but he seemed nice enough…).
I gues i’m just agreeing with Laura and liz and meg! Sex should be positive, open, honest and fun! Good luck to all in achieving that!!!!!
June 3, 2010 7:06 am
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My goodness, this was an AMAZING post. Thank you, Liz!
AN ADDITIONAL POINT:
There are occasions when one partner wants to wait and the other doesn’t. (Or in our case, I’m just more committed to the idea of waiting than my fiance is.) This complicates things because I don’t want to just cast his needs and values aside in order to stick to mine. (And vise versa.)
So, like the advice that Meg gives regarding many other APW dilemmas, it all boils down to talking to your partner about EVERY thought and feeling that you have on the issue. My fiance and I have done this and it helps us stick to our individual values while still satisfying the physical/ emotional needs of the other. (How do we do this exactly? Can’t tell you on here but I’ll just say that we have be good listeners and very creative. Hehe.) And I’ve got a funny feeling that practicing good listening and creativity for FIVE WHOLE YEARS (with just 2 itty-bitty months left…phew!), is setting us up for a long-n-strong marriage. :)
June 3, 2010 7:09 am
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Good point! My partner and I had/have different views on abstinence, and even what abstinence means and where the lines should be drawn. I wish that we had done a better job communicating our feelings to each other at the beginning of our relationship, though we’ve sorted things out now. It was a very tough process, but SO worth it.
I commend you, Kim, on your 5 years of working together with your fiance to meet each other’s needs without compromising your own values. That, to me, is exactly what a marriage should be: two people co-operating and loving each other despite their differences.
June 4, 2010 7:32 am
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I loved this post. And posts like this are why I can’t get enough of APW! Liz, you are a very thoughtful, intelligent person, and it’s such a great discussion to have. I never thought of waiting, to be honest. Because when I met my fiance, we were both just in a “have fun, no attachments” kind of phase of life, and our relationship was mainly sexual, but eventually blossomed into real love and commitment. We’d both had partners before one another, and I don’t think we have any regrets about not waiting. And I have to say, I am one of those people that just assumed that people who were waiting were only doing it to escape the fiery pits of hell. So it was really cool to have a stupid assumption of mine blown out of the water.
June 3, 2010 7:21 am
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I heart bullets and lists, too!
–I grew up in a small sect of a small town, with smaller minds. I was surrounded by early pregnancies, a lot of shame and guilt, and absolutely no healthy attitude toward sex at all. I did not have any sort of healthy attitude toward sex at all, and have fought to get to where I am now. Currently most of my sisters have been married by 18, and i’m being told strongly not to live with my significant other, while his family is asking why we haven’t yet. :)
–I am strongly of the opinion that performing various rituals for the sake of beliefs that you haven’t thoroughly thought thru is ignorance personified and leads to big mistakes. I am big on traditions, sometimes just for the sake of them, but I disagree with doing it blindly. That said, I myself have some more conservative leanings than would be expected from my mostly-liberal mindset, and can back these up completely with reason and emotion, and have no compunction about following them. So I thumbs up you, Liz! I love you more than ever (loved the self-catering) for being able to take this horribly muddled topic and stating it so non-judgmentally. I’m sure that this ability was honed through years of getting shite about your decision, but I have to praise you like I should. ;)
–Thanks Meg for being willing to do this!
–High five to all of you APW-ites who are commenting soooo wonderfully, and that all of the differing decisions are honored for what they are: the ability to choose. Thanks fore-mothers!
June 3, 2010 7:24 am
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And Liz, I *LOVE* your point about always talking about things. I’ve been in several relationships that have had wonky sex lives, and one thing I’ve taken away from that experience and volunteering for years at a sexual assault crisis center is that it is important for everyone to talk about sex. To me, I find it a playful and sexy addition to our sex life to come up with a new way to ask for sex daily, to have little code words that we’ve discussed in advance, and to know that any time it doesn’t work like it does in movies is a success, because if we break down most movies, they are usually not very healthy examples. So I kind of adore you even more for bringing that up.
And while haven’t waited for marriage, we definitely had discussion after discussion about sex beforehand, and still engage in them. It’s fun and air-clearing, and very, very intimate. Which is what it should be.
June 3, 2010 7:27 am
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To my bloggy friend Liz, you rock. Love, Meghan
June 3, 2010 7:26 am
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Could of this have been “Why Sex is Important and Healthy in a Relationship” Instead of “Why I Waited”?
This is a very thought provoking subject and I’ve re-written my little comment here several times in an attempt to get it right. Let me begin by saying that I live in a France, a place where girls are NEVER told “true love waits” “wait until you find the right person” “wait till marriage” etc etc etc. I, on the other hand, went to Catholic school and was literally told (I’m not making this up) “Sex is your one way ticket to hell”. As one can imagine, I have a serious mental complex about sex and think the more people I’ve slept with, the “number”, the closer I am to becoming a whore. Many of my French friends don’t even know how many people they’ve slept with and don’t care either. Yet they still have all those great things in their relationship that Liz talked about, open communication, team spirit, honesty. I just wish that virgin could be taken out of our vocabulary and that all this talk about “when” could be replaced with “who”. When I discussed this with my shrink (and yes, I’ve decided to see somebody about my scars from Catholic school before getting married) he said that sex is just sex. Yes it’s important to relationships and should be sacred but by putting so much emphasis on my virginity and what not I was giving it undue importance.
Liz, your body is yours and nobody can tell you what to do with it or criticize you for your choice. A woman can have all those wonderful things in a relationship with one special guy or ten special guys. Thanks for a good article, you’ve made me think
And I just realized there isn’t even a title to this article
June 3, 2010 7:31 am
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I love APW but never comment, but I just HAD to say that your comment about needing to change the conversation about sex from “when” to “who” is about the smartest thing I have read in a long time. What a great way to think about the issue of “waiting.”
June 3, 2010 9:44 pm
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Great reflection–I think “who” includes not just who the partner is but who YOU are, as well. For me, I knew I wasn’t ready until I had become much more comfortable with my own body and personal spaces (like literally, my room is messy and I need to not have shame around that) than I was as a teenager. Being comfortable enough to tell someone else “That feels good” or “What you just said hurt my feelings” or “I can’t sleep when you’re cuddling with me!” is a big part of being ready, I think. And of course, we all know people who have gotten married and still aren’t able to communicate their feelings and needs, and that’s a big problem for them and their partners!
June 4, 2010 11:08 am
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wow Liz! I’m just going to +1 all the comments above that talk about how ridiculously cool you are for talking about this in a completely not awkward, mature, smart way. and blowing my assumptions about waiters out of the water. I mean I kind of knew there were people who waited for other reasons than religion but I never imagined I would hear such a compelling justification. I’m in the “honestly never occurred to me to wait” camp.. I was never religious and didn’t believe in hell and that seemed the only reason anyone waited. If only I had seen this post when I was 19! I don’t really regret my sexual escapades because they have shaped who I am today, and I like who I am. no wait I Love who I am. Yeah. but I can’t deny a little smacking myself upside the head. at least now I have a resource to hand out to any young minds wondering about their own motivations (this blog will be around when my kids are teenagers right??).
June 3, 2010 7:44 am
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Man, I just accidentally erased my comment! But in that time, Charlotte posted and much of what I was trying to say is similar.
I didn’t wait until marriage, but did wait until I was 20, which among my group of friends was “late”. I used a lot of the same reasoning – love, trust, respect, committment, knowing sex ties people together and makes things so complicated.
My husband and I each had 2 or 3 partners before each other, and we are OK with that – it is part of our life experience, right? We waited several months into our relationship to build a deep, stable, nonphysical relationship first.
I really agree with Charlotte that I think it is more “who” then “when”, but that may partly be because I didn’t place a huge emphasis on marriage as a way to cement my relationship (I hope that doesn’t sound judgy, I really don’t mean it to).
But regardless, as long as people are thoughtfully making their decisions to have sex the first night, wait til marriage, or anywhere in between, I think you have to respect that. It is when people have sex/don’t have sex without knowing why they are doing so or whether their reasons are good(i.e., a 15 eyar old saying “everyone else is doing it” is obviously not a good reason) that we run into problems.
June 3, 2010 7:45 am
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I’ve always said that my advice to my future hypothetical offspring is to wait until they are in love. At least the first time. Because the who really does matter.
I waited until I was 20, and in love, and it was SO MUCH better than my friends who has sex for the first time in the back of a church van, for example. It was a Big Deal to me, and I am glad I was with someone who loved me and was deeply sensitive to my needs. I’m also glad I didn’t stay with that guy, because by 5 years later, it was clear we weren’t a good match. But that’s okay – not everything has to last forever, and I’m glad I didn’t marry him, as I would by now have divorced him. I’m glad I didn’t wait until marriage to have sex, because I WOULD have been the girl who married the wrong person for the wrong reason.
My husband and I started out as friends with benefits before quickly falling in love and moving in together. I’m very grateful that in this relationship, we did just dive right in to bed, because I’m not sure we would have ended up here quite as smoothly if we hadn’t. (Life was complicated.)
So, I guess, I’m trying to say the who and the why are what really matter to me, and that’s what I’ll try to pass on to any kids we might have.
June 3, 2010 9:10 am
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Funny enough, I’d disagree. I think WHEN is more important than WHO. IE, make sure you’re ready… if you’re in love great, but that can also complicate things. Plus, often you’re in love before you’re ready.
June 3, 2010 5:44 pm
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On second thought… I agree. What I didn’t articulate is that age doesn’t matter. When we look back on the experience of “losing it”, whether it was a husband, special boyfriend/girlfriend I hope we remember the WHO and not put special importance on the age. “You were 22? Heck, I was 14″, kinda thing. Some people are ready at 14, some need a ring and to know it’s the only guy ever. I think we are trying to say the same thing, I just said it backwards.
June 3, 2010 7:35 pm
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Yeah. For some people. I could care less about my Who. That is more or less why I picked them when I picked them. But I’m super happy with my choices, they were right for me.
June 3, 2010 8:43 pm
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yes, and.
i’m always suspicious of “being in love.” call me a cynic. but i thought i was in love a number of times in high school. really.
and as a (mostly) grown-up, i can look back and say, “hell no.”
June 3, 2010 8:09 pm
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Oh, wow. What a fantastic post! I was raised hardcore Catholic, grew up in a small conservative town with abstinence-only education, and I got myself into quite a bit of trouble at 14 (although, fortunately, the trouble didn’t involve babies- but it certainly could have). I learned a lot of hard lessons, very young- about social perceptions, about how mean and nasty and rumermongering people really can be, and about forgiveness and healing.
Most importantly, I learned about how important it is to be emotionally ready for sex. And even though I didn’t wait until marriage, I did wait a few years to grow up. And when I did have sex, it was with someone I loved deeply, and when I was ready. So this post has a lot of truths that I hold dear- about trust, honesty, and levelheaded thinking when a relationship, married or not, involves sex. And I know by comparison what a deeper and more fulfilling experience it is when you do the deed with someone you love and trust.
June 3, 2010 7:53 am
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Totally new to APW and I’m not even engaged (yet…working on it), but I wanted to pop up and say that I LOVE this post. I have a radically different experience with sex than Liz – my partner and I are both academically-inclined sex nerds who spend a lot of our time and energy doing activism around sex positivity and sexuality/LGBTQ/gender communities. (And, er, a lot of our energy having sex.)
But, I completely relate to the thoughtful attitude of this post. It is so awesome and enlightening to see a considered, careful and self-aware version of the decision to wait! In my experience that’s a choice that doesn’t get a lot of positive press or support from liberal communities. I know a few people who’ve caught a lot of flak for making the same choice, and I’ll definitely point them this way.
June 3, 2010 8:00 am
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Thank you thank you thank you Meg and Liz. Liz, I emailed my fiancé a link to your wedding graduate post (we’re a-typical traditionalists too! And I’m self-catering my wedding!), and I’m going to email him this one too. Actually, I was just reading much of it to him over the phone. We are also waiting, and I assumed that I was the only blog reader/lurker who was. I got the biggest grin when I started reading this post. Your lists were great, and will, I think, give us lots more to talk about (we’ve been talking already). It was so refreshing, and reiterated to me how happy I am about our choice. I especially liked the part on self-control…
“I probably couldn’t tell you how much respect I have for Josh as a result of the self-control he displayed in the 3 years we dated… his commitment to waiting was a sign of his love for me… in the sense that setting a good foundation for our marriage was more important to him than a physiological impulse”
Yeah. Yes. I believe that displaying self-control in this area (especially when it’s difficult) can really give you practice putting your partner’s interests ahead of your own, which to me is part of the work needed in any marriage/relationship.
Meg, I cannot begin to express how much I love this blog. I am constantly surprised by how insightful it is, how it beautifully and delicately talks about sensitive issues, and how it really makes me think about what is truly motivating my decisions. Bravo.
June 3, 2010 8:02 am
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Thank you Liz and Meg. This was a wonderfully interesting and well written post about a topic which is often ignored or at least greatly complicated to discuss.
Reading through all of the smart and thoughtful comments I started thinking about how we understand and relate to our bodies (and by extension sex) is often deeply embedded in familial, or cultural (religion etc.) narratives. So unpacking that narrative and how is has affected my/your/our understanding of this topic is a good place to start. That said, many of the other members of Team Practical who chose to comment also point out how what you do or feel or don’t do is still a choice that you have (which is a pretty liberating idea regardless of if you wait or not). I think one of the best things my parents ever told me about sex was that they hoped I would wait until I was in a loving and committed relationship. That to me makes sense with what many of the comments (and Liz’s fabulous post) have been saying about open communication as so important in respect to sex.
Yay for APW!
June 3, 2010 8:11 am
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I really appreciate this post, and I would love to see a counter-point post from someone who didn’t wait, and here’s why: physical touch is one of my primary love languages. In my first marriage, I married someone with whom I was great friends. I thought that the friendship would carry us through the patches where physical attraction wanes (like it does), being of the mindset that sex should not be, and was not, the most important thing about a relationship. While I still agree that sex is not THE most important thing, sexual compatability is extremely important to a healthy and happy marriage, and it is not something that I would ever want to discover after it was too late.
I’m going to revert to two examples from television because these are familiar examples.
First, there is Charlotte’s marriage to Trey on Sex and the City. Charlotte loved Trey, and they decided to wait until after they were married. Charlotte worked hard, very hard, to make her marriage work despite Trey’s inability to have sex (unbeknownst to Charlotte during the dating period). Ultimately, it was something she just couldn’t get past. She felt rejected, lonely, unloved. In her second marriage, she found someone who loved sex, and loved being physical with her, and it has been an excellent marriage filled with love and affection. Their affection for one another has seen them through extremely difficult years of trying unsuccessfully to conceive and then through the adoption process. Because sex works to bring two people back together and to remind them at the most elemental level why they are together in the first place.
Next, there is the Draper marriage on Mad Men. To his extramarital lovers, Don Draper is a thoughtful and fantastic lover, but to his wife, he is a premature ejaculating dud in bed. This is not a reflection of sexual prowess; it is a reflection of emotional feelings. He feels duty and responsibility toward his wife, but he is not in love with her. His wife is left feeling frustrated, lonely, unloved, and despite her morality, open (but deeply conflicted) to finding the affection she needs from someone else.
It is easy to pass these examples off as just literary license; nothing more than drama. Except that I have lived them. We want friendship to be the most important aspect of a marriage, but for those of us who experience and express love physically, sexual compatibility is essential and not something that should be discovered after the fact.
This does not mean that I believe in promiscuity, nor that sex is the single most important aspect of a relationship. But for me, it is certainly high on the list.
June 3, 2010 8:14 am
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YES. Two very, very interesting and important examples. Sure, they are pulled from fiction, but they’re based on some very real situations that people experience. I think that Charlotte’s experiences are really telling, and to me shed a little light on why sex before marriage could be a good thing. If I could counsel Charlotte, knowing what I know now, I’d tell them to have at least a year’s engagement, and allow themselves sex before marriage, but after becoming engaged. That, to me, seems like a good compromise– it makes the couple wait until they are serious about spending their lives together, but gives them time to explore the sexual side of their relationship. It’s not all that romantic, but it’s easier to break off an engagement than it is to annul a marriage.
June 3, 2010 1:07 pm
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I’m not sure I’d want a counter-point post, because I don’t want to divide the world between “waiting” and “not-waiting,” primarily because I don’t want other choices defined as a negative (you didn’t wait). Y’all were clear you wanted to open up the sex can of worms on APW, and that will continue as long as I’m given fodder (my sex life is off the table). So I’m excited to have other posts on the subject, I just don’t want them to be counter-points or rebuttals to this…. the world is too complicated to break it down into two world views.
June 3, 2010 5:48 pm
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i think we agree. maybe. but i may be misunderstanding what you mean by attraction.
josh is the first man who made me go, “dayum.” i dated all men to whom i was… meh… not so attracted. but, like you’ve said, i figured our emotional connection was more important than any physical chemistry. in my case, though, i didn’t need to have sex with any of these men (cough, boys) to figure out that there was something different about josh.
June 3, 2010 8:17 pm
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Also! I commented before but I want to add one more thing:
In defense of Christianity, the Bible doesn’t say that having sex outside of marriage will send you straight to hell, and I’m sorry to the people that were damaged by that scare-tactic. Please don’t think that all Christians or Waiters are condemning you for making a choice other than the one they’ve made!
We’re all friends here!
June 3, 2010 8:29 am
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Exactly…I’m so sorry that so many of you had such an awful experience religion-wise, because honestly, when you get down to it, my reasons for waiting are EXACTLY the same as Liz’s, plus a strong feeling that the marriage bond (and sex as a part of that bond) is something sacred as well. And I do feel that I was taught that as a part of my religion (I’m Catholic). Basically, I’ve thought long and hard about it and decided that it’s something I want to wait on, but not because “my religion says I can’t,” but because “there reasons why I prefer not to, and the philosophy behind the practice of my religious life happens to agree on this.” Blind obedience, or obedience for the sake of obedience, just doesn’t cut it here.
However, I did have a healthy sex education from my parents, which probably helped matters immensely.
June 3, 2010 3:58 pm
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See, you said it SO much better than I did. Exactly!!!
June 15, 2010 9:54 pm
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I don’t think that was implied. I grew up in a very religious Christian household, and we didn’t believe in waiting at all.
And no, not all people who are waiting for religious reasons threaten others with hell…. but boy-oh-boy some do. I was regularly threatened with hell in High School even though I was A) Baptist and B) Not having sex. But apparently not ascribing to the doctrine of waiting was enough for that one way ticket. Sigh.
So, in sum, Christianity, like everything worthwhile, is complicated.
June 3, 2010 5:52 pm
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what meg said.
that wasn’t implied. i actually very carefully avoided bringing my spirituality into it.
that was one of the assumptions i faced repeatedly (as well as many others) and i think it’s clear that many commentors have held the same misconception. i wanted to make it clear that a fear of hell did not weigh in for me- and in doing that, i didn’t imply that it does for everyone else who subscribes to a certain religion.
June 4, 2010 9:53 am
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What a great post! I am far from a virgin (is there an opposite of virgin? Because I was probably that back in the day… gross I know) but it’s just SO DIFFERENT when you’re with someone you love, and are having sex for the right reasons (not just because of the bow-chicka-bow-bow or the pressure).
And Liz, I heart you.
June 3, 2010 8:31 am
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I know that this deals with the emotional side of sex but I wanted to share that a lot of my decisions regarding sex were due to the education I received on the subject. I’m from Texas, but before they really clamped down on abstinence-only sex education, I actually had a comprehensive sex education in middle and high school, and learning about safe sex helped me to make decisions. I took steps to ensure that I would be protected (from pregnancy, STDs, etc.) and understood the gravity of doing the deed because of that. If I had just been told, “Don’t do it,” I might have made mistakes or ended up not being as vigilant about partners and/or birth control because of ignorance. So for that education, I am thankful.
On to the emotional — I knew, at 16, that I was ready to have sex with my then-current boyfriend. I know that it was kind of on the young side, but I made the decision with all of the mental capacity I had at the time, and I didn’t (and don’t) regret it. But like Liz says here, a lot of the same rules applied – we communicated, we understood what was okay and what wasn’t, we respected each other. I think Charlotte above hit the nail on the head – it shouldn’t really be about “when,” it should be about “who.” I trusted him, and he’s still one of my best friends, though the romance is all gone now. :)
My husband had been a virgin when he met me, which is something that people tell me to be wary of (and I admit, sometimes I worry) – since he hasn’t “tried out other people,” he may feel like I’m not “enough” 5, 10, 15 years down the road – but that’s a different discussion. He and I didn’t wait, either, and that decision worked for us as well. Honestly I never thought I’d get married, so “waiting until marriage” didn’t mean much to me… but once I realized that my husband was amazing and I was happiest with him, I changed my mind about marriage. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I didn’t wait for marriage because I didn’t think about marriage in the first place. I thought about trust, compassion, understanding, love, communication, (and a million other things) in making my decisions. Which works for some of us :)
June 3, 2010 8:40 am
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My fiance was in a similar situation when I met him (not the same, but similar), and I must admit that I’ve had that momentary fear that some day he will want know what sex is like with other people. But from my experience, it’s definitely not about quantity… it’s all quality. And we’ve got that going on!
June 3, 2010 11:18 am
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Jess (and Elissa), as the virgin in the “one of us was a virgin when we met” scenario, one of the best things you can do for your man is to trust their decision and their ability to know what they will and won’t regret. Back when we first got together, this was a way bigger deal for my fiancé than it ever was for me – his worrying over it caused me more grief than any thought of “missed opportunities” ever has!
June 3, 2010 1:11 pm
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why would you wonder about what else is out there if what you’ve got at home is damn good?
June 8, 2010 9:27 am
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Also, I want to come back to this and add this second thought (but I didn’t think it warranted its own standalone post, so I’m adding it as an addendum to my previous one).
I feel like I have open communication with my parents about my sex life – not really the details, but that I do it and that it’s a normal part of my life – and my parents sometimes talk to me about theirs – again, not the details, but that they are still into each other and do it. A lot of people (like my sister) find the disclosure weird, but I think a lot of hangups about sex come from the way people banish it from normal conversation. I kinda feel that my parents’ frankness and honesty about sex, along with acknowledging that I know what I’m doing with my life and my body, and their trust in my judgment, helped me while I was growing up and navigating these difficult fields. I could ask questions and nothing was really taboo.
Does anybody else have this sort of open discussion with their parents?
June 3, 2010 12:00 pm
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I wanted to add, yes, I have that same openness with my parents as well. No details, but acknowledgement. My dad never shied away from talking about sex with me as an adolescent and I know that helped me make the decisions that I did. He answered questions and never laid down ultimatums. He left the decision in my hands and let me know that. He also let me know that if I chose to become sexually active, he expected me to come to him so he could take me to the doctor to get birth control. Knowing that I had my dad’s trust went a long way. Not only did I not want to complicate my life with sex, I had enough teen angst :), or feel that I was ready for sex, I didn’t want to betray my dad’s trust.
June 3, 2010 12:37 pm
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hmm, that comment is supposed to go under my other one. anyway, not sure if i made it clear that as an adult that openness exists. i somehow segued to adolescence. so yeah. i’m with you on that. ;)
June 3, 2010 12:39 pm
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Elissa, I received that same Texan comprehensive sex ed before it became all about abstinence. I didn’t wait for marriage, but learning about the responsibilities sex carries with it compelled me to decide that I would not only wait for love, but I would wait until after I finished high school, regardless if love came before then, at the very least. I felt that sex was complicated and that wasn’t something that I needed to deal with. I knew I wasn’t ready and the last thing I wanted was to end up pregnant.
June 3, 2010 12:30 pm
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I’m from Alberta, and I grew up not even aware that there was any other option than comprehensive sex ed. I will say, from my large circle of acquaintances, good sex ed made it more likely for people to wait, rather than to rush. And I can count on one hand the number of teen pregnancies that I or anyone in my circle even knew about. It just didn’t seem to happen. Quite possibly because we learned about birth control in like grade 7, but partially, I’m sure, because it wasn’t The Forbidden. It was part of life and we were educated about it. I mean, we were always told that abstinence was the only 100% sure way to avoid STDs and babies, but the teacher’s next sentence would be about success rates for condoms, so we all knew it was just part of the script, you know?
June 3, 2010 1:00 pm
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Unfortunately, that isn’t so. I am grateful that my formative years took place before the abstinent only reign. Your school is proof that comprehensive sex ed works. ;)
June 3, 2010 2:37 pm
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Let’s start at the end and work backwards. By the time you hit 50, if all goes well, your sexuality will be fully integrated with the rest of your persona. Let’s start at the beginning. When you are 12, your sexuality is usually over there, in a corner, or even a closet, and barely ever discussed with anyone.
How you get from 12 to 50, and wind up happy at 50, is the question. Waiting until marriage to have intercourse is one part of a long, long process. I celebrate anything that works in the project of how to have a good, meaningful, joyful life.
There are many other ways to get to 50 happy with your sexuality. All of them are going to involve a lot of work on communication. You have to communicate with your partner(s), sure, but you also have to communicate with yourself. It’s not just about getting the mechanics right. It’s about getting the emotional, spiritual, and unknown parts right too. And I know very few people for whom it has been simple, no matter the route they took.
June 3, 2010 8:45 am
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I went to Catholic school all the way through high school – which meant the only sex ed I had from the establishment was a combo of abstinence and “sex is dirty – except in marriage.” What that meant was a whole lot of people breaking loose after high school, getting pregnant, getting married, wham bam bam. That, and women in high school who were pariahs because they were pregnant – not a single one came back the following year because they were so ostracized. I set a different deadline for myself than the wedding – when my fiance and I got engaged, I went on birth control (another Catholic no-no!) and we did it – 9 mos before the wedding. That was mostly because I was terrified though. I didn’t need that sort of stress (no matter how unstressful you try to make it, I was going to freak out – I promise) on my wedding night.
And we, too, were a one-night hookup at a party that just didn’t quit. No idea how I’d explain that to any kids we have…..
June 3, 2010 8:46 am
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Oh, and one other thing – laughter. Not just talking about sex – we laughed our butts off the first time. Made things 10000 times easier!
June 3, 2010 8:52 am
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EXACTLY!! That was exactly my experience completely. From the weird advice and comments to a lot of the reasons why we waited to how we set ourselves up for success (lots of talking before and after the wedding, even reading several books on the subject together). WONDERFUL comments.
June 3, 2010 8:52 am
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I’d like to offer a different spin on ‘waiting’ – I decided very early on I would not sleep with anyone unless they were a steady boy/girl-friend and I felt they loved me. As it happened, I didn’t have any serious/long-term relationships until I was 19 and met and got together with my fiance. He wasn’t a virgin but wasn’t that “experienced” either, having only had a couple of drunken (and frankly rubbish, his words) one night stands. I set him a timeline of when I was prepared to do when, because let’s be honest, sex covers a variety of activites and there’s plenty to do before you get to the make or break virginity point! People thought it was nuts but it worked for both of us – he wasn’t guessing what I would/wouldn’t do, what I wanted/didn’t want from him, or what he was expected to do/try! So while marriage wasn’t what I was waiting for – I thought I’d never get married at this point in my life – the commitment and communication Liz is talking about really resonated with me. I found it an empowering experience to wait – even for a little while – and be waited for, and my boundaries discussed and respected, and I firmly believe our relationship is much stronger than if I’d chosen to sleep with him earlier than my ‘timetable’ said, no matter how…difficult it got sometimes. And now we’ve decided we will marry eventually, it’s a whole new wait and one that gives us time again to have the conversations Liz so eloquently recommends. So thank you Liz, for expressing a rarely-heard perspective, and thank you for Meg and the Team Practical community for being who you are :)
June 3, 2010 8:53 am
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Setting the timelines for what/when sounds like a neat idea! No stress going into a date about “ooh, will we push it just a bit farther this time?” And MAJOR kudos for having the confidence and self-knowledge to do that at 19, I definitely did not!
June 4, 2010 11:13 am
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Loving this conversation. APW happens to be the awesomest place on the Web because we are all really talking about this and affirming each other’s decisions, even though 1.) we’ve never met, and 2.) we have strong personal opinions. You all rock!!
And, also, glad to see the Waiters side represented here. Yay for diversity of all kinds!
June 3, 2010 8:57 am
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I’ve yet to make it through all of the comments, but man Liz, that’s some fascinating, smart, witty advice/experience sharing. So awesome. I’m blown away by the honesty of this post and your talent at crafting it in such a readable, clever, engaging, funny, intelligent, non-offensive and engaging way. Bravo & thank you!
June 3, 2010 9:01 am
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OMG! I’m so glad you wrote a post about this, Liz, and put it up on APW, Meg!
For the record, my fiance and I are not waiting. We live together, connect the dots.
That being said, we started out in a relationship from across the country. We physically could not be intimate because we were so far away from one another. We HAD to talk to be intimate. We talked about our expectations of sex (just like what Liz wrote), what we liked and didn’t like (um, we weren’t virgins), our fears and hopes for our relationship, ect. I think had we been in the same town at the same time, our relationship would be totally different. Neither one of us is paticularly good at dating, so I imagine we would have bypassed all that and maybe hooked up or walked away from one another.
It sucked at the time, but having the opportunity to get the ‘big talks’ done early did wonders for us. Especially because he had already been married and divorced and I’m pretty young. We waited for about two months, essentially, and then had long breaks in between (because we were so far away), but now we live together and the sex thing is totally different. (Maybe like waiting till the wedding night and then the post-honeymoon phase. That’s where we are). Now, whenever we have a problem, we can talk it out because that’s how we started.
I like that you wrote that you can tell if you haven’t had sex in a while because of the way you treat each other, totally true! I notice it, too!
I think it’s awesome you opened up to us, Liz. Thanks for putting this up, Meg! I greatly appreciate it!
June 3, 2010 9:08 am
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I have a close friend who lived with her FI for a year and they still waited until marriage. Talk about me having to abandon assumptions after I found that out!
June 3, 2010 12:27 pm
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My fiance and I often spend the night together, and plan to move in together a few months before we get married, but we’re waiting until the wedding for sex, too. (I have no doubt that we’ll be able to wait for sex sex, but I definitely know that controlling the other things that happen between “neck and knees,” as Liz put it, will be more challenging.) I’m sure that most/all? of the people we know assume we have sex, and honestly, I don’t do anything to disabuse them of the notion. I’m just not comfortable talking widely about our sex life or lack thereof – I think the only other person who knows that we’re both virgins is my sister. (Look at me, even commenting anonymously!) I’m sure I could shake up people’s assumptions if I wanted to, but I’m not inclined to.
June 3, 2010 5:52 pm
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I’m a little late to the party, but I had to comment to this. I have been with my boyfriend for seven years (since high school!). And we have been living together for five. And we are waiting until our wedding to have sex. Whatt!? Impossible, right? But true. I know everyone believes we are having sex, and that is awkward for me. But equally awkward would be to tell every family member, friend, and acquaintance that we are virgins. Why try to convince them of our choices?
But it is something that the two of us share, just as we will share in our experience on our wedding night. It has been a difficult journey at times- oh the restraint!- but we have created a relationship based on communication and understanding, and enjoyment with life’s experiences and adventures outside of sex. Throwing sex into the mix, once we are married, will elevate that love and fun to the next level!
July 30, 2010 11:30 am
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Wonderful article. You really addressed a lot of issues. I am so glad to have read it. I haven’t read the comments yet. I will though. But right now I just need to vent my story. Because it applies.
I have been married twice. My first husband was the first man I slept with. This was back when sex was the “holy grail/forbidden fruit” I wasn’t suppose to sleep with anyone, hadn’t been planning on sleeping with anyone but then I put myself in a compromising position and basically got raped while I was sleeping over at this guy’s house…someone I barely knew. I didn’t get pregnant or anything but I suddenly I felt attached to this guy. Sex can do that. Despite my parents telling me not to, despite his abusive nature, despite my coming to my senses and breaking up with him only to be pressured and getting back together with him…I married him less than a year later. (I was 19 at our wedding)
We stayed married for 8 years. I had two wonderful children with this man that I barely knew, mostly feared and felt inferior to. Basically because I thought no one else would want me because I had sex with him. Eventually this man became more than I could handle. I got up the courage and I divorced him, mostly for my children’s sake. I couldn’t take care of them and their father.
Time passed and I met a man. I was attracted to him and he kissed me the night that we met at a friend’s party. I didn’t plan on having a relationship with him. But a few phone calls and video conferences later he took me out on a date. We were “friends with benefits” and I slept with him. Basically because I wanted too. I wanted to get my ex hunsband’s “mark” off of me. For the first time in my sexual life I made a choice and for the first time I really enjoyed sex. A lot.
This man and I continued dating for almost 4 years. Sex was an important part of our courtship but mostly because I discovered that I really liked it. Life was fun with him and our relationship progressed. We were always a step behind in calling us what were were though. We dated for 5 months before we were more than “friends with benefits” we were moved in together for almost 6 months before he “officially” lived with me and the kids, we felt like we should get married months before he put a ring on my finger and now, more than a month after we got married I realized that we have been “mentally married” since he asked me almost 2 years ago.
I guess I have kinda lost where I was going with my story. But what i think I want to say is that your post summed up a lot of pit falls that I fell into with my first marriage but not with my second and sex has kinda everything and nothing to do with it at the same time…So Bravo LOL thanks!
June 3, 2010 9:24 am
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