When you lose your virginity, as a girl it’s awkward and confusing; as a guy it’s amazing …ly short. The funny thing about sex is the clumsy way everybody is introduced to it.
You probably expected to be some instant stud and fornicate like a porn star, and you were probably let down. The first time we all stumble around like idiots and are unable to fit things into the right orifices, then we’re unable to keep any semblance of rhythm. All we get is 25 seconds of spastic movements and then five seconds of our body jolting around like we are having a seizure. The first thing that probably races through every person’s mind is “Oh God, am I doing this right?”
The two things that losing your virginity will change forever are your feelings about sex and your ability to claim you’re a virgin. When you’ve already made the decision to have your first sexual encounter, the person that you do it with is just the first to get there, or the nearest one you can find.
Infections and diseases aren’t the scariest thing about sexual intercourse, it’s the unintended consequences that come after. That post-coitial glow isn’t always there, especially after your first time. More likely after that, you felt like a high school athlete thrown onto a professional team; which is to say, you have been preparing for years and end up looking like you have no idea what to do. Sex can be intimidating if you don’t have a sense of humor about it.
We all have our fair share of awkward, abnormal or bizarre sexual experiences, but losing your V-card is the only one that everyone has to go through, so even though it might be bewildering and weird for you, making a joke of yourself might just be the key to getting over it.
Once you have lost it, you aren’t going to suddenly turn into a sex-crazed zombie, and you’re not going to go take a vow of chastity either. Either you will still have trouble driving past a jogger in yoga pants and not veering off the road, or you’ll always forget that Channing Tatum is a horrible actor every time he takes his shirt off, depending on which gender you prefer. The only difference is that now you’re not scared, or at least you shouldn’t be, to have sex. The worst sex you can ever have with another person is still better than having sex with yourself.
There is a flip side to sex: Sex can complicate things in relationships, and doing it before you’re ready tends to make it worse. Once your romantic relationships shift to sexual ones, things can get hairy. If the sex is bad it could put a strain on the relationship, even if the other person is a great partner in all other aspects. If the sex is great, you might stay with someone who is more attached than you are, an octopus dragging your ship down, which is something everyone is guilty of at some point in their life.
However don’t wait until you have been dating for six months to get in there and experiment with your potential bedmate. Finding out six months in, once you’re already head over heels in love, that your partner specializes in the starfish position will be an awful disappointment. So make sure you’re both going to enjoy your time with each other before you get emotionally tangled up in one another.
Let’s face it, do you get a car and wait six months to drive it? No, you drive that car as fast and as hard as you can.
Bobby Whaley and Lizz Carson are City Times Editoral Staffers
