A New Perspective on Virginity

I have to go to work this morning but, since it’s slow, I’m going in a little later. Isn’t this the BEST job. I have the BEST boss. The work is delightful. The hours are flexible. The only problem is that there are no benefits and it doesn’t pay that much. The hourly pay is NOT bad for a part time job at all, but the check I take home every other week is not so hot. Oh well, I’m applying for a barista (espresso drink maker) job at the local grocery store to supplement. I loved my job at Starbucks but too many hours at that wore me out. The local grocery chain is offering nice little 3pm – 8pm shifts. I could do 2 or 3 of those per week easily or maybe 2 of those with a 12 – 8pm shift. We’ll see.

Anyway, I wanted to write an entry this morning because in leaving a casual little note for somebody yesterday, I think I stumbled across a truth I didn’t realize before. In the past I wrote a few entries about virginity and why a woman should not just give it up but should wait, particularly until marriage. I think I had some convincing arguments both in a Christian point of view as well as not. (see The Virginity Issue Part I, followed immediately by Part II) But, I think I found the REAL issue last night when I wrote a brief note just off the top of my head. I wrote:“There are few feelings worse than to give your body to someone only to turn around and be hurt and betrayed shortly thereafter. You really feel screwed then It’s such an offense to yield yourself to somebody who doesn’t honor the immensity of that gift — because it is a gift. You pour yourself out to a man. If you don’t have sex with intimacy to THAT extent (where you pour yourself out for a man) then you are not having sex to its FULLEST extent and you’re learning how to close yourself off to true intimacy and then you end up like me, in therapy to find out how to have REAL sex — emotional heart sex and not just lust sex/body sex.”

After I wrote that it kept coming back to me and I realized, as I have about so many OTHER things in the Bible, God doesn’t just put guidelines in there for the sake of making rules, HE puts them in there because they make sense and because they are best for us. I sound so goody goody here, but I’m really not trying to be a Sunday School teacher. The thing is, the first time I extended myself sexually for a man (which doesn’t even mean intercourse, and it was actually for a boy) and then had him treat me in a way that was hurtful, I learned to turn off a little bit of my emotions the next time I extended myself sexually. Of course, already being pretty dysfunctional about my body and my emotions since I was sexually abused as a kid, that wasn’t difficult to do. I was already messed up plenty. But each time I opened my body for somebody and then was hurt, I put up more of an emotional wall cutting off the natural emotions of love and yielding from the natural process of sexual love and yielding. Consequently, by the time I got married, I was so screwed up I had no idea how to integrate sex and love. There were moments in my first marriage when I could associate the two upon occasion but even that was crushed when he cheated on me. By the time I got to my second marriage, all hope was lost and the me that loved my husband was a completely different me that went to bed with my husband. The act of sex had nothing whatsoever to do with the feelings of love I had for him. It made no difference to me, nor to him really. We still had sex and it was certainly satisfying. But, later, when I read about people actually sharing LOVE when they had sex… feeling intense deep love when they had an orgasm… then I wished I could have that too. I began to think wistfully about how I supposed it COULD be. And I heard my husband talk about how it was for him, how it intensified his love for me. And then there was me. Yeah, I had orgasms and they felt good. But I was having pornographic sex… hot sex… good as the stuff you read about on the Internet. yeah big deal. so what?

I had spent my life preparing myself for this moment of intense pornographic sex. I don’t even know what it feels like to have an orgasm with a person you love because as soon as I think about love and vulnerability and what all of that means, I’m too terrified to really participate. Hence, I am now trying to deal with that in therapy (which is probably why all this garbage is coming up right now with men. But, maybe if I can deal with all this crap, I’ll be able to experience a meeting of the hearts as well as the bodies.

So, bottom line is… maybe all of the reasons I gave in the other entries about waiting are valid but the most important reason of all is so that you don’t end up building walls that prevent you from really having genuine heartfelt — I don’t want to call it sex because it’s more than what we have come to see as sex, it’s a — special merging of the bodies shared only by two people bound together in all ways for life. Yes… that’s my new name for it – the special merging of the bodies shared only by two people bound together in all ways for life. It needs a new name because the word intercourse reminds me too much of the way the school nurse in 6th grade referred to us when the girls were taken away to hear our first round of education. Having sex reminds me too much of what I’ve done all my life and that has nothing to do with love. And, puhleeze… f*ck, screw, get-it-on, etc. etc.. those have NOTHING whatsoever to do with love. The thing I’m after has no name anymore so I needed to make up a special one.

Once again, the Bible is proven right, but not for some obscure and capricious reason. Instead it is sound and emotionally good for us. Like I said for the feminists, when they get to the top of the mountain, Mary will be waiting for them. The same is true for the scientists, the psychiatrists, the politicians, the philosophers, etc. etc. I am too much of a thinker and questioner to just get in the helicopter and take the quick ride (“Yes, I blindly believe every word, God.”) But I am making my way up there.