Someone once said “Everybody is afraid of dying until it hits you! After that you don’t give it a second thought.” That quote popped into my mind as I was thinking about what to write for this post and it’s ironic how much it sums up my own experience of being absolutely terrified of becoming a 30-year-old Virgin. Like so many others, I had brought into everything bad that society said about adult Virginity — that adult Virgins are abnormal, freaks, losers, and failures as women. I had been so brainwashed by this garbage that I had, in fact, looked upon turning 30 as a sort of death, because 30 was the “final deadline.”

According to society, you should lose their Virginity before your 18th birthday because you are considered an adult at that age, and no respectable adult should be a Virgin. And though it’s “disappointing” if you don’t make this first deadline, it’s OK, there’s still time. The second deadline comes at age 25. If you still haven’t had sex by then, society says, you definitely have issues, but there’s still hope because you’re not over the hill yet. But once you hit that third and final deadline, the big 3-0, and you still haven’t lost it — you are officially condemned to social oblivion. Three strikes, you’re out!

Fortunately for me being “out” had it’s benefits. Once the unthinkable had happened — I greeted my 30^thbirthday still as pure as a newborn babe — all the fear and anxiety I’d experienced over the prospect of getting stuck with an “expired” V-card vanished. By the time I turned 31 and the “final deadline” had faded into the rear view mirror, all the things that society said about Virginity and sex didn’t matter so much anymore. Everything started to look brighter and clearer, and for the first time in a long time I felt a sense of peace because I was no longer at war with myself. I was no longer fighting the Chaste woman who I was meant to be, and I was no longer trying to destroy the Virginity that was so much a part of me.

Now that I had accepted the fact that I was different, I suddenly felt extremely lonely and isolated. I felt alienated from everyone else around me because I was the only adult Virgin I knew. I wondered if there were any other people like me. I decided to find out, and there was no better place to start than online.

The first significant pro-Virgin website I found was one whose title page declared that Virginity and Celibacy was “a way to longevity and a healthy life.” FINALLY! In an anti-Virgin world where everything was all about sex, I had finally found something that I could relate to. I was so thrilled to have found such a site that devoured its pages without even stopping to comprehend what I was actually reading — like a starving man shoveling heaps of food in his mouth without taking the time to taste it. But the highlight of it all was viewing the website’s guestbook and the tons of comments left by Virgins, many of them my age or older. What a relief it was to finally know that I was not the only one, and that I was not so odd after all. And there were male Virgins, too. More of them than I would have expected there to be. In fact, the males seemed to outnumber the females, not that I had any complains.

My excitement came to a screeching halt, however, when I became aware from closely reading the various messages that this site was about LIFELONG CHASTITY, and advocated staying a Virgin for your ENTIRE life. No sex. No marriage. EVER! Somehow I had missed that part coming in. I couldn’t believe it! As far as I knew, Perpetual Virginity was the stuff of myths and legends. I had never heard of people who chose to permanently remain Virgins in real life; I didn’t even know it was possible, let alone an option. At that time, I was still technically practicing abstinence until marriage. I had always planned on getting married and having sex eventually, because I assumed that marriage and sex, like death and taxes, were inevitable. No matter how much I enjoyed being a Virgin I understood that one day it had to end, because “you can’t stay a Virgin all your life!” or so I had been told. Going through life without ever having sex was unnatural, so I believed. It wasn’t normal and it wasn’t right.

I continued to scroll down through the various messages in the guest book where people spoke about how committing to lifelong Virginity brought them a greater sense of purpose, made them feel closer to God, brought them eternal happiness, and so on. “These people are a bunch of flakes!” I thought. “I search for other Virgins and this is what I find??? This website is nutty and I won’t waste anymore of my time with it!” I exited out and shut down the computer.

 Continued…

How I came to be a Perpetual Virgin menu