I entered a three-year period of self-pity and self loathing over my virginity, and I experienced a growing sense of panic the closer I came to my 30th birthday. Losing my virginity seemed easy enough. I knew that all I had to do was put on some skimpy outfit, walk down to the nearest bar, and pick up any guy that was interested. No relationship would be necessary because I was in a hurry. A one-night stand would do just fine. All I wanted was to have sex, fast, before I was 30, so I could join the human race. The problem with this plan is that it never even made it out of the thought stage. My mind tried hard to sell it, but my heart wouldn’t buy it. I don’t know how other women do it — but there was no way I could have ever gone through with it.

Inevitably, my 30^th birthday came. I went around in a haze for much of that year not knowing quite what to make of things. But after I realized that the sky had not fallen in, the sun still rose everyday, and the seasons still changed… I gradually began to come back to my senses. I was a 30-year-old virgin. I would just have to accept it. I would also have to accept that I was different. I was not like other women, and I was not what society defined as a “woman.” Society defined womanhood as something you would see in a commercial for Victoria Secret. Being a woman, society said, meant being sexy and free with your body. It meant having sex with numerous men — and the more sexually experienced a woman was the more womanly, mature, and strong she was supposed to be. And it’s not just the media that communicates this message. In the everyday world of women you are expected to be sexy to get a man and to get all the sex you can out of him… and if you play your cards right in bed, you can get money, a wedding ring, or both. If you are not doing this you are not a real woman. This, in so many words, is what mothers tell their daughters, it’s what girlfriends tell their girlfriends, it’s what just about any woman will tell another woman.

Knowing that I could not meet these expectations and that people would not look upon me as a “real woman” really hurt. It made me feel small, inadequate, and inferior. On the other hand, accepting who I was very liberating. I finally felt at peace because it was such a relief to let go of those expectations, and there was no longer that pressure to try to live up to something that I could never live up to. I no longer had to try to be something that I was not, could never be, and really didn’t want to be.

I realized that during that period of anxiety about turning 30 and still being a Virgin, I had been at a crossroads. Everyone comes to a crossroads in life where they must choose the path they want to follow and the type of person they want to be. My choice had been between staying a Virgin or becoming promiscuous. I had chosen to stay a Virgin. Yet deep down I still felt that it was time to move on… but to what? I knew that promiscuity was not an option, but I also knew that I couldn’t go back to being a “virgin-in-waiting”. I had mentally and emotionally outgrown the “true-love-waits” scene and the whole idea of pre-marital abstinence. But, even though I was no longer waiting for my prince to come — I would continue to wander aimlessly down the road of abstinence until marriage, for whatever it was worth at that point, because it seemed to be the only viable option for remaining a Virgin.

Continued…

How I came to be a Perpetual Virgin menu