Danielle Sorcher
Special Reports Director
Senior Grant has no regrets looking back on the time he lost his virginity his sophomore year. Aside from the setting—he and his girlfriend were in his bedroom, while his parents were downstairs—Grant wouldn’t change anything. “I always told myself that whenever I had my first time that it would be with someone I cared about, that was important to me, and that we weren’t under the influence of anything,” he said. “I had a great time simply because I was fulfilling my goal of having sex with someone I cared about—I was losing my virginity, which was huge. But it was the idea of it, the whole meaning behind it, that I got more enjoyment out of than the physical part of it the first time.”
Grant was ready when the time came for him to lose his virginity, and that seems to be the majority out of surveyed NCHS students. Out of 95 respondents, 84% of NCHS boys and girls collectively felt that they were physically ready at the time they lost their virginity. 81% of boys out of 32 respondents and 65% of girls out of 63 respondents felt they were ready emotionally when they lost their virginity.
School Psychologist Dr. Rossella Fanelli commented on what it means to be ready to lose one’s virginity. “It’s to understand the ramifications of it, to be willing and able to discuss it with your partner, and to accept the responsibility of it,” she said. “It’s to make a conscious, not impulsive, decision by both people.”
Senior Janet made just this kind of decision about her first time. “It was kind of a mutual decision,” she said. “We had talked about it but it was kind of a heat of the moment thing—we had already established that I was ready, he was ready, and the circumstances that night just kind of fit.”
Despite the numbers shown by polled students, senior Dana was only somewhat emotionally ready when she lost her virginity as a junior to her friend with benefits of around three years. “I felt unsure about it but I knew he would never leave my life, in a way,” she said. “It was a little bit awkward afterwards, but just for a day. He tried to make it not awkward, but then again I’m just kind of an awkward person in general.”
Awkwardness is nothing new to those remembering their first times. While Grant looks back on his experience as positive, he admitted that the first time was very awkward. “It was her first time [too], and she wasn’t really enjoying it,” he said. “You had to go really slowly and she sounded like she was in pain. It was just weird trying to make it so we were both comfortable.”
Though many experienced a degree of discomfort their first times—either from pain, nerves, or the person they were with—others felt completely comfortable. Although junior Alice and her partner weren’t officially dating, she was completely comfortable with the situation. “We had been together for a while and it seemed right—it seemed like the next step,” she said. “I’ve known him for so long; you have to have that level of comfort, I guess.”
However, according to Dr. Fanelli, the implications of having sex for the first time with someone who can be termed a ‘friend with benefits’ are severe. “There could be shame, embarrassment, low self worth, and health issues,” she said. “It could be a disaster. From my point of view, the first sexual experience should be safe, comforting and loving rather than that.”
Sometimes the previous sexual activity of a partner can have an effect on the comfort level for people’s first times. 56% of males out of 32 respondents and 57% of female out of 65 respondents, reported that they lost their virginity to another virgin. And out of 94 respondents, 35% of males and females collectively said that they were more comfortable because their partner was a virgin.
“I would have been more uncomfortable if [my boyfriend]wasn’t a virgin,” senior Janet said. “It’s actually hard to imagine if he wasn’t because then I feel like it would’ve happened sooner and things would have been different.”
Junior Alex agreed that, looking back, he was more comfortable his first time because his girlfriend was a virgin too. “It was more comfortable for both of us—we were glad we were both virgins,” he said. “I think it made it more special. It was a lot more personal that way.”
While Janet and Alex were more comfortable because their partners were virgins, Dana was happy that her partner was not. “I felt like he knew what he was doing,” she said.
For those who didn’t know what they were doing, sex was different than what they expected. “I expected it to be awful and painful and bloody—I expected it to be downright disgusting,” Janet said. “I was a little hesitant because I thought it would change our relationship and he would only start liking me for my body instead of the relationship we had built up around personalities. In reality, it was a little painful but it wasn’t life changing, it wasn’t a dramatic event like all the media and whatever portrays it as—it wasn’t anything other than, well, getting personal.”
Janet wasn’t the only one who discovered that, to them, sex wasn’t as big a deal as they thought it would be. “I had always wanted to be madly in love when I first had sex—at least that’s what I thought when I was younger, maybe at the beginning of high school,” Alice said. “But it’s different than what you expected it to be, but not different in a bad way.”
“I think it has some very high emotional stakes and if you were to lose your virginity without actually planning it, it could be kind of traumatic and people could get hurt and have regrets,” Alex said. “After the first time it’s still a big deal but it becomes less significant.”
Besides significance, students voiced that the first time did not go as smoothly as they wanted. “You see things like pornography or movies with sex scenes and you expect it to be something perfect, but it’s not,” Grant said. “You build it up to be great but the first time it’s not—she’s in pain and you have no idea what you’re doing.”
Senior Charlotte said that her first time also didn’t go exactly as she had previously planned. It was very spontaneous—she lost her virginity while under the influence at a friend’s house, and not to the person that she had expected to. “I was madly in love with my ex boyfriend for like two years, so I had always planned to lose it to him,” she said.” I was finally getting over him and I always said, ‘Either lose it to someone you love or someone hot.’ I’m really happy I did it because it helped me get over my ex.”
Students losing their virginity while under the influence is not uncommon. While Charlotte believes that she would change the person she lost her virginity to, she says that she still probably would have done it sober. “I don’t regret it but it probably should have been with someone else,” she said. “If I could change anything it would probably be that I would do it with someone I was closer to. I don’t know if I even would have ended up in the same place if I wasn’t under the influence, but yeah, I probably still would have done it.”
Dr. Fanelli takes the loss of one’s virginity while under the influence as a mistake. “I think if you’re not able to talk about sex with your partner, and about STDs and repercussions, then you shouldn’t be having sex,” she said. “Certainly doing that in an impulsive way when you’re drinking could be emotionally scarring later on.”
Some students mentioned an apparent pressure to lose one’s virginity. “I feel like a lot of the time—and some of my friends—just kind of go for it because others go for it, like even in the same house at parties,” Janet said. “That’s why one of my friends did it.”
Senior Mark agreed. “I think that pressure starts before people even start having sex,” he said. “It’s a culture. While every single person at the end of the day makes their own decisions, I guess there is an unsaid expectation that at some point you will join those people that are sexually active.”
How sad that one’s gift of virginity is nonchalantly thrown away. Do these young women realize that they are wired differently than their male counterparts? Women try to fool themselves into thinking that recreational sex is fine. It’s not fine morally or emotionally. A guy can have sex with a woman and that’s all it means to him; an orgasm. I am so sorry for and pity these young women who pretend that the intimate act has been debased.