People come to college with varying degrees of sexual experience. Some of us have lots of it, while others arrive never having even kissed someone. Regardless of where you stood upon arrival your first year, you knew after the first few weeks of school which of your close friends were virgins and which weren't. Somehow there was an invisible line that separated the ones who'd had sex and the ones who hadn't.
Coming to college as a virgin, I secretly looked up to my friends who had had sex. Somehow I thought they were more experienced or sophisticated than me. Now I realize that this was probably not the case.
Cashing in your V-card, that is, your virginity, is a highly debated topic among high school and college students. In high school, all the "cool" kids were doing it. And in college, it feels like everyone is doing it. But, is everyone really doing it? And if they are, why are they doing it, when are they doing it, and why did they do it for the first time? A global sex survey done in 2005 by Durex (yes, the condom maker) found that the average age for losing your virginity is 17. Young people are losing their virginity at 16?earlier than older generations did.
If you could rewrite your college sex life, would you? And how would it read if you could?
I asked one of my best friends who goes to Hamilton College about losing her virginity. She said, "I was relieved to lose it. I thought to myself, 'Thank God I'm not going to be a virgin forever.'" Another friend said she wanted to have sex for the first time so she could give advice to her friends and "finally get what everybody was talking about." Others romanticized losing their virginity, waiting until they found someone they believed they were in love with.
Regardless of how or why these girls lost their virginity, most of them said that having sex for the first time was not all it was cracked up to be. No fireworks, and certainly no orgasm. For most, especially those who were having sex with someone who was also a virgin, it was awkward to say the least. One of my guy friends, who lost his virginity his sophomore year, looking back wishes that his partner was also a virgin so that they could have "shared in the experience together." While another guy friend, who lost his virginity during his first year at college, characterized having sex for the first time as "no big deal."
Going in to senior year, most people just assume that everyone is having sex by now and that the only ones who aren't, are those of us with religious obligations or other personal principles to uphold. But this is not true. There are plenty of people who don't have sex because they're not ready to deal with the pretty serious consequences sex involves, or they haven't found the "right" person. According to a Bowdoin survey done in 2006 by the Health and Wellness Committee, 27.6 percent of the students surveyed have sex at least twice a week, while 32.3 percent never had sex in 2006.
While sex can be fun and exciting, people who abstain from sex aren't at risk for the host of sexually transmitted diseases that sexually active people are. When you don't have sex, you don't have to worry about getting pregnant or getting somebody else pregnant. You're also not at risk for that emotional rollercoaster that comes with it. While I'm in no way anti-sex, let me ask you this: When it comes to sex, is it easier or harder to abstain in college? Are our mothers right: Does sex really just complicate things?
D.H. Lawrence wrote in 1928: "Sex is the one thing you cannot really swindle; and it is the centre of the worst swindling of all, emotional swindling...Sex lashes out against counterfeit emotion, and is ruthless, devastating against false love." Since Lawerence's time, sex has become a cheap commodity. But don't kid yourself, sex is still a big deal?even if MTV tells us it's not. And losing your virginity is an even bigger deal. Choosing whether or not to have sex for the first time is for some people an important, life altering decision, while for others it's, simply put, "no big deal." In my time at Bowdoin, I can tell you this: Have sex because YOU want to have it, not because someone else wants you to. Have sex with someone you trust, whether it's the first time, or the hundredth time. And if you're not ready to take the plunge, don't.