Don't laugh.

Mike:

22-year-old virgin guys are unheard-of in popular media, but on Earth they're not so rare.

Considering how sexual behavior surveys are based on just personal statements--and anonymous personal statements--in a context that can make one feel as "normal" and "powerful" as whatever definition of such words one has been tricked into believing--I would put very little weight behind them. Guys lose their virginity at 16 like they have 9-inch cocks, if you know what I mean.

3 of my closest male friends were still virgins at your age (22), and so was I. And they didn't magically lose it the day they turned 23 either.... time tends to pass, especially once you get out of school and aren't totally surrounded by experimental-minded, relatively unpressured people all your age and actually have to work full-time... oh shit, that just made me miss college so much. Anyway.

People can maintain their virginity without even meaning to, practically by accident, and no one would think bad of you for it since it's not necessarily a reflection of your kindness, maturity, social skills, or "normality." If you're not good at casual hookups and if you work long hours, it can be really difficult. If you have a hard time meeting people and can only really even try on a weekend, well, that's a *maximum* of only 50 opportunities per year. And how dedicated are you? How many of those weekends are taken up by family commitments, or just socializing-for-fun, or emotionally healthy sloth?

The point? Don't be scared or depressed and don't be so hard on yourself.

At the same time, don't make the mistake of thinking everybody has a "sex ration" that is just kind of automatically coming to you.... the arguments you have already heard, of how "your time will come" or "you'll find somebody" or "it will happen at the right time." I heard that all the damn time and I'm ashamed by how long it took me to realize it's a complete lie. No, it won't "happen." You have to DO it, actively. It may be at a time that you don't expect, but you still have to be out there, trying, with somebody.... You have to devote yourself to it because you really actively want it, and you have to be ready to fail or be shot down more times than you will succeed... it's just part of life, anyone you could possibly encounter will have experienced the same thing.

Now, if you're worried about why you don't seem to actively want it so much.... well, there are varying libido levels out there. Obviously if you don't want it, you shouldn't force yourself to hunt for it, since chances are you'd end up being conflicted and guilt-ridden at the time. It's an intimate physical activity, where you let down all your usual defenses, expose yourself to someone else in all senses of the word, and it's something people are terrified of being bad at despite the awareness that EVERYBODY is or was bad at it at some point in their lives (see: The Matrix, with Keanu Reeves' first jump off the building. He went on to save the fucking world, man! WHOAH!) Also, something that is hard for some people to get past--you are inviting an actual human being, which is basically a very very large *animal*, in to share your personal space and be all over you. If you're not used to having someone, that can be damn scary. That isn't part of the cultural myth of The Guy, who is supposed to be able to get off with a reasonably tight knothole, but it's true.

What does all that mean? Desire MUST outweigh fear, or at least equal it. Don't just go into it like you've got to prove something to somebody. And don't do it to try to "catch up" to everybody else. You can't catch up to EVERYBODY, to all the stories you heard from EVERYBODY, and as long as you measure your own accomplishments in terms of the combined total of EVERYBODY else's, you will never be satisfied with your own. Just a single person's lust can be strong enough, don't hamstring yourself by trying to race with every memory of every stupid adolescent almost-guaranteed-lie you still remember your buddies telling you.

Anyway. Hope this didn't come off as patronizing or whatever, it's just stuff that helped me, and again, I was another 20something virgin too.

" I'm lost, confused, and beginning to come up with reasons as to why I don't want it. And that's possibly the most scary of all, because someday, I'd like to experience it, however awkward and worthless the experience is."


Hi Mike,

Good thing u are opening up

Hope u find someone close to u and who u trust and that can help u but dont keep talking just to yourself because i think u are going to find the same reasons for the "whys" not.

A good thing is not rush to do it just for doing it because when is "right" its a wonderful experience.

take care!

Don't sweat being a virgin. I didn't have sex with a woman for the first time until I was 23. I liked it so much that I gave it up and it was 4 more years before I had sex again, this time with a man. I like that so much that I have sex once a year every year. Point is, who cares what anyone thinks about your virginity or promiscuity, as long as you are happy with who you are.

Are you sure that isn't Christmas?

I love Christmas.. I have this Mistletoe belt.. and when u wear it... well you know
Merry christmas everyone!!

Jumps into room with "special Belt" on

We all have to celebrate it in some way dont we. Wanna be my present next year?

I didn't get any real action until I was 23 either, and the girl didn't even look that hot. Major bummer, but nothing to be ashamed of. I was fat and gross for a long time, so I guess I took what I could get.

Sure I poked around, when I was younger, but that stuff doesn't really count. It's a sad, sad thing, when you're eighteen or nineteen talking about something that happened, when you were fourteen - that always cracked me up. Ask me, nothing you do before age fifteen counts.

Mike,

Let me agree with many of the other posters. Don't force yourself into sex just for the sake of it. You'll hate it, and it will end badly.

That said, let me disagree with some of the posters here. And forgive me for the confronting tone I'm about to adopt in this rather long post. Maybe your situation doesn't parallel my own as closely as I assume. But I suspect that our backgrounds are not dissimilar.

Sex ain't the issue here; it's intimacy. We're programmed to want to be intimate physically. Skin-to-skin touch (beyond the demure "pseudo-sexual" activity of massage) with another human who knows your body as well as you do, surrendering yourself sexually to the beauty, passion and energy of another human being. Is the "surrender" part difficult for you, Mike?

I hate to say so, but the description of yourself as a 22 year old virgin might have been me. I convinced myself that I was above it all; didn't need sex, it all seemed too sordid and silly. People in love behaved with no dignity or self-respect.

Had my first girlfriend, a short-lived affair, at 22. And I did so just for the sake of it. It was kind of like having a tooth out--been there, done that, another chore accomplished, I'm not a virgin anymore, got that problem out of my hair.

It didn't really make me happy. The sex was perfunctory--she said so. She felt I couldn't let myself go, even when she watched me masturbate. Emotionally constipated, she said.

I was curious to see debating in your list of hobbies, Mike. I met this woman in law school because we were both champion debaters. She said the atmosphere of the debate fit my stunted character; passion squeezed into a six-minute speech, no unfair rebuttal, any frankness severely fettered by rules and protocol. And an outside judge declaring a winner in every point made.

You might get the impression she was a bit of a bitch, and you'd be right. But she was the right bitch at the right time, for me. She made me think about some tough issues in my life.

I found it quite threatening to open myself up to another human being. In my family, intimacy was manipulative. "Love" meant control the people close to you, and my parents eventually divorced because neither could bend the other to his or her will. I'd swallowed that message, and shied away from intimacy because of it.

Little by little, I learned to love good people, who loved me back. I relaxed my fetish for compulsive self control (and the subtle manipulation of others if they threatened it) without losing my sense of self in the process. I had a relationship with a woman I loved for a number of years in my late 20s. And in my early thirties, I worked out I was gay.

Mike, I'm not saying you're gay (or straight, for that matter). But you're right--sex DOES change people. Love, even moreso. In ways they don't expect, and can't control. At 48, I'm not the man I imagined myself at 22. And if you had confronted the 22 year-old-me with the current headbang8, I would have done anything to avoid becoming him. But I'm a better man than the young headbang could ver have imagined. Love did that.

Your friends are right, sexual opportunity will come naturally. You can't make it happen, but you can feel it happening. If you had a strict upbringing, it's sometimes hard to know what the feeling is when it hits you. You need to be open. And prepared to surrender a bit of yourself.

It won't happen overnight. And you learn to do it by...well, doing it. There will be good experiences, and so-so ones. Relax.

Sorry for rambling on. Trust some of it helps.

HB8