Dear Wendy
Dear Wendy

How do I navigate through the dating world as a 27 year old virgin?

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Viewing 12 posts - 13 through 24 (of 38 total)
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  • #872893 Reply

    The real risk you’re talking about isn’t specifically related to sex. It’s the risk of giving your heart to someone and being hurt. In the cases you describe, that emotional pain just happened to have sex as a triggering event. Believe me, you can be hurt just as badly in a relationship that’s totally sex-free. The hurt will just have a different trigger.

    You’ve fixed on sex as the thing you need to avoid to protect yourself from pain. It sounds simple, right? Keep your clothes on, and you’re safe.

    It doesn’t work like that. Anytime you trust, anytime you love, you take a chance that you’ll be hurt.

    And marriage is no protection at all against being hurt. You can wait till marriage, you can marry a man who has the very best of intentions of being faithful to you till the day he dies…and two years into the marriage, he falls in love with a coworker and leaves you (yep, watched that play out at work).

    Being in love is taking a risk, no matter whether you express that love through sex or not.

    #872895 Reply

    It sounds like you know a lot of women who have found sex to be significantly detrimental to their lives. I think the point the others are making is related to the fact that it’s somewhat anecdotal. I don’t have any friends whose lives were directly hurt by having sex. I think that you also have to look at how many of those things were caused simply by having sex and how many were related to other things — low self-esteem, ignoring red flags, not doing enough to prevent pregnancy, etc. So, you may see it a lot, but that doesn’t mean it’s common if you look at the entire population.

    It’s your choice whether to have sex or not. If you choose to wait until marriage, you probably will want to broach that subject somewhat early on because TBH, it’s not a super common position to have unless you live in a very religious place. So, you potentially may create more hurt for yourself by getting invested in relationships with people who may likely end things if they do not want to wait until marriage. You may want to focus on dating people who are more religious (not sure if you are) because they are more likely to feel the same way than others.

    That said, if your only issue is preventing bad things from happening, you also have to decide if it’s worth it. Everyone experiences hurt sometimes. We could all lock ourselves up inside and not date or go places to be totally safe, but that wouldn’t be a great life. There are things you can do. Be picky about who you date. Work on your confidence so you won’t be destroyed if a relationship doesn’t go well. Learn how to reduce the risk of pregnancy the most. (I don’t really know how pedophiles factor into this.)

    If you feel like you regularly catastrophize over regular, everyday things, then consider looking into ways to manage anxiety.

    #872896 Reply

    I also think if you make it your policy not to have sex until marriage just because you’re afraid of getting hurt, then you rule out a ton of guys who might actually be great for you, because those guys want intimacy. You limit yourself to guys who are okay with waiting and will stick around. Which is okay I guess if you share strong religious beliefs. But if you’re just afraid of intimacy and willing to be with whoever will put up with waiting forever for sex, you could end up with, frankly, some real weirdos.

    #872898 Reply

    Do you WANT to have sex? That seems like a key question to ask yourself. Maybe you are asexual? Women have sex for myriad reasons but one of the biggest is: they want to have sex. If this desire is absent in you then maybe the type of relationship you are looking for doesn’t involve sex.

    #872899 Reply
    avatarMiss MJ

    Yes to religious dating apps and church, in terms of meeting men who get that you’re waiting for sex. But, the larger issue isn’t sex. Not having sex doesn’t mean you automatically don’t get hurt. Nor does having sex mean you automatically get hurt. It’s not the sex that makes you vulnerable, it’s the emotion that one puts into it and you can put the same emotion into the relationship without the sex and still be hurt by the outcome. So, no sex doesn’t mean your relationship will progress smoothly or anything. You still have to be emotionally open and put yourself out there and take the risk that you’ll fall in love and it won’t work out.

    And, that’s what you’re seeing happen with your friends who, I bet are largely in their 20s or early 30s. They loved, risked and it didn’t work out like they hoped. It sucks but it happens. Like, a lot at this age because it’s the age where you start thinking about the future and relationships get real. But, hopefully, they’ve learned from the heartaches and will come out the other side with knowledge of who they are, what they want and what they are and are not willing to accept in a partner. And, that’s kinda the point of dating, sex or no.

    #872901 Reply
    avatarMiss MJ

    @Kate makes a great point with this: “You limit yourself to guys who are okay with waiting and will stick around.”

    So, here’s the thing:

    Based on my observational experience, “waiting until you’re married” only means that you get married really, really young just to have sex and then, well, your relationships often fail spectacularly. Because sex cannot make or save a relationship. And very religious young persons learn that the hard way.

    So, by the time you’re in your mid-to-late 20s, most of they guys who are okay with waiting until marriage are steeped in purity and misogyny culture, even if they’ve been sexually active or even previously married. And, frankly, I think most women would be happier not married to a man who thinks her hymen determines her worth and that she’s basically some man’s property and less than him, no matter what her conditioning. Equal relationships are happier relationships, full stop.

    So, you do you, LW. But if you’re thinking sex is the end all be all of everything, I mean, it’s really not. It’s not some relationship magic that ruins “loose” women and “virtuous” women can use lure in a man.

    #872905 Reply

    All the risks you list are not about sex. If you don’t want a baby or an STD/STI, use a condom and use a back up form. You can also map your fertility as yet another method to avoid an unwanted pregnancy.

    The issues you bring up for the most part are about trusting someone else. Without risk, there is no reward. If you can’t be vulnerable and let someone in, trust someone, you won’t find a fulfilling, loving relationship. You could still find companionship.

    Sex is an activity people engage in. It doesn’t use anyone up like a tissue. Having sex as a woman, “giving a man every piece of her body” doesn’t ruin a woman, even if that guy ends up being a jerk and leaving her or whatever. Most of us have some shitty relationships and we learn how to spot red flags and assholes and find good people, eventually.

    You have a lot of very strange, extreme ideas of what sex is, what a women’s worth is based on and how men treat women. There are assholes and abusers and users, yes. But here are also a lot of fun, caring, respectful people out there. You can even have causal sex relationship and still have a relationship based on mutual respect.

    Have you seen a therapist? Did you grow up in a religious family? If you don’t ever want to have sex, that’s fine, but I think worth exploring with a therapist. Waiting for marriage is silly for all the reason previously listed in other comments above. Do you want a marriage and relationship?

    #872909 Reply

    I really take umbrage to the line you wrote about a woman giving a man her body, when he won’t give her his heart. Sex is not had in exchange for someone’s heart. Love is not a reward for sex. That’s a really strange expectation. Love is not a gift you get after you “give a man your body.” Your body is yours, no matter who has sex with you, when or how. No one else owns your body. If someone has sex with you and then breaks up with you, your life is not ruined. Your body is not ruined. You’re not tainted goods because someone didn’t love you the same way you loved them.

    People have sex because there is mutual chemistry and it feels really good with the right person, in the right relationship. It’s not hard to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Heartbreak is harder to avoid, but it still won’t kill you.

    I don’t know how you have so many friends that have such torrid sex lives, but I can assure you this is a weird and negative slice of life you’re getting.

    Everyone has bad relationships or they are the .02% of the population who never do that I’ve never met. You take risks everyday, driving in your car, walking down the street, etc. Dating people is just a different kind of risk.

    #872912 Reply

    The problem is that you are so deeply invested in justifying your own personal isolation that you have built romance and intimacy into something perilous and terrible. You need to see a therapist because you are not a fit partner for anyone in this state. No man should be expected to navigate the parade of horribles that you associate with romance and sex.

    #872928 Reply

    Nothing terribly wrong with being a 27-year-old virgin, but your attitude is terrible. So, how does someone like you handle the dating scene: with the help of a very good therapist. And, I’d stop being the sounding board and free advice-giver to your gfs, if I am you. That jaded view isn’t helping you at all and I serious doubt if your advice, coming from the place where your mind is currently at, is helping them.

    The big question is are YOU happy, huddled away ‘safely’, in your non-dating, no-sexual-contact world? If the answer is yes, then you probably shouldn’t try to date.

    You were in a long, non-sexual relationship. Were you happy in it? Were you loving and affectionate in a not explicitly sexual way? Were you interested in marrying the guy? Did you feel a desire to have sex with him after marriage? Why do you think the relationship ended?

    #872999 Reply

    Lots of people ate injured, paralyzed, killed while driving. I hope that you walk everywhere.

    #873002 Reply

    *are ” injured

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