Monday, September 16, 2013

Don't blame it on your virginity

I am going to say something completely shocking: virginity gets a bad rap.

To give a little background to this, you can blame this latest rant of mine on a provocative Salon.com article My Virginity Mistake by .  In this, Ms. Henriquez outlines her devotion to the purity movement as a way of fitting in, and the development of what became her first failed marriage.

The culprit? In her mind, it was abstinence.  As she says:

Had we had sex before our relationship transitioned into a contract, I would have known that there was no passion, no spark, nothing happening between our bodies. I would never have agreed to marry him because sex is a significant part of a relationship and therefore a significant part of our relationship was failing. With the failure of our sex life, I felt like less of a woman, no longer a sexual creature but more of a plant. Sitting there, day in, day out, wilting while I waited for someone to take care of me.
Without having sex before marriage, I blindly walked up an aisle and committed myself to a man who didn’t know me and gave my long-held virginity to someone with whom I had no more chemistry than a second cousin.

However, I believe that this is a complete and utter fallacy. It is so much easier in hindsight to believe that had we taken a different course of action that we would have made a better choice.  Especially since she openly admits earlier in the article that she was 20 years old, and really hadn't built a solid relationship:

The morning of my wedding day, I threw up. Everyone assumed that I was nervous about having sex. I wasn’t. But it dawned on me how much we hadn’t learned yet about one another. We had known each other for three years by this point, but there was so much unexplored territory. So what was I supposed to do when my “aha moment” came as a dress was heaved over my head by seven bridesmaids? Plus, my mother had mentioned no less than 400 times, this wedding was costing them a fortune; I was getting married, there was no way out.
Being 20, and obviously not assured of herself in anyway, she obviously hadn't gotten to know the man she was marrying well enough.  To top it off, she knew the relationship was not going well and had more than just wedding jitters but all of the warning signs that this wouldn't end well.  And she didn't have the maturity to be able to stand up and say I'd rather make this expensive mistake now, rather than having to pay for the wedding and divorce proceedings.

Further, having sex before would simply have been also, giving her long-held virginity to someone unfortunately bad for her. And she talks about how they used to make out all the time, whose to say that even losing her virginity in the back of his Chevy would have ended the relationship?  The problem seemed more a lack of communication. They spent those three years in a sea of hormones but didn't come up for air to discuss anything.

It's far too easy to Monday morning quarterback our mistakes and decide that with this decision it would turn out better, but without a time machine that is completely impossible to predict.  No one knows the actual outcome of the road not taken.  It's the risk we take in life.  And I believe, trading one mistake for another isn't going to do jack.

So the real culprits of her first failed marriage were a lack of maturity and communication.

Blaming virginity is pointless.  The point here should be that sex alone solves nothing.  Relationships are too multi-faceted to rely on one component, and those who want a fully rounded relationship know this.

And there is nothing wrong with believing that our sexuality should be invested in the right relationship as opposed to one-night stands.  If we truly believe in a free society, our sexuality is ours and our body should be ours to do with as we please even when that means waiting for something meaningful. Without being maligned for that choice.










6 comments:

  1. Honestly, I think too much pressure is put on women to be virginal. We have a lot firsts in our lives. Why is one natural, physical act put on so high a pedestal? It's certainly not treated the same for boys. I'm a big fan of "try it before you buy it"! Sex is not the end-all be-all of a relationship, but it's nice to have some spice there if you're going to be spending the rest of your life with them.

    No, I think the bigger problem here is that this girl was not given the option of saying no. I am making an assumption about the magazine article author here but I've seen it so many times. Girls are generally raised and conditioned to be compliant. To do what their parents and eventually their husbands tell them to do. She was guilted into that marriage even though her head and heart were telling her no. I can agree that this issue has nothing to do with her virginity but everything to do with being a 20 year old child who hadn't grown into her own opinions yet.

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    1. Thanks, Cousin. I'm glad you agree that the issue had nothing to do with her virginity.

      "Sex is not the end-all be-all of a relationship"

      I sympathize with those who have had too much emphasis placed on virginity with threat of hellfire to keep them in line, but I also sympathize with those who chose a balanced celibate life until a meaningful relationship comes along and get maligned for it.

      I remember an episode of Oprah where she had an "expert" who claimed that if someone hadn't had sex by X age, they were likely asexual or had some other total sexual dysfunction.

      I call BS. And concur that way too much emphasis is placed on sex as the be-all and end-all.

      Just as anyone can be a vegan or refrain from alcohol, exercise or not, we are the keeper of our bodies and should not be looked down upon for what we eat or drink, or whether we are or are not having sex.


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  2. Honestly, I think too much pressure is put on women to be virginal. We have a lot firsts in our lives. Why is one natural, physical act put on so high a pedestal? It's certainly not treated the same for boys. I'm a big fan of "try it before you buy it"! Sex is not the end-all be-all of a relationship, but it's nice to have some spice there if you're going to be spending the rest of your life with them.

    No, I think the bigger problem here is that this girl was not given the option of saying no. I am making an assumption about the magazine article author here but I've seen it so many times. Girls are generally raised and conditioned to be compliant. To do what their parents and eventually their husbands tell them to do. She was guilted into that marriage even though her head and heart were telling her no. I can agree that this issue has nothing to do with her virginity but everything to do with being a 20 year old child who hadn't grown into her own opinions yet.

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  3. I think sex is just one variable in the complicated algorithm of relationships. Sex can clarify or cloud the judgement, depending on the nature of both the relationship and where one sits on the time scale of life. For most, sex gets better over time anyway, as you learn yourself and your partner. It's difficult for me to believe that just having sex with this guy from age 18 to 20 would have insulated her from deciding to marry the "wrong guy". If things were that simple we would have a lot less divorce in this world. I'm

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  4. I am a person who likes to try things before she buys them because I hate getting stuck with that bag of chips that sounded good but it was totally gross. That being said, I don't necessarily think that someone should hang the responsibility of the success of a relationship purely on sex. I will say that I have felt a lot of the feelings that the girl described and I get where she is coming from. However, I don't think that it can all be blamed on not sampling the goods prior to. Because sex changes over the course of a marriage/relationship. There are highs and there are lows. She had cold feet prior to the wedding and that should have told her something. Vomiting was a clear sign. I walked down the aisle with no alarm bells ringing in my head (but even though it didn't work out, I count him as one of my best friends and clearly it was the right choice at the time. I wouldn't be where I am today without him--the good, the bad, and the ugly on both parts). I wasn't a virgin when we got married. We had had sex before the nuptials and it still came to the same result as the author of the other blog's did.

    Basically, I think that someone should do what is right for them. Maintain your virginity if it's what you want to do. Sex does confuse things but it also sort of smooths out the little things that bug you about the other person. If you're not having it and it's not good, it is just constant grating.

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