I waited until I was 25 to lose my virginity — and I don’t regret it

That isn’t to say that it didn’t come with SOME regrets.

According to the CDC, the average woman in the U.S. is 17.3 years old when she loses her virginity. I defy that average, and I’m not the only one.

This is not an article to encourage others to wait until they are older, or to warn off on waiting either. I’m merely giving my own perspective on how I felt having sex for the first time at an older (weird word to use for 25) age impacted me.

I’m a 28 year-old single woman. I am not super religious nor have I had any traumatic sexual experience in my past. And yet, I waited until it was shortly before my 26th birthday to lose my virginity.

I can’t say that I lost it to someone that I was 100% sure that he was the one. Nor can I say that he made me feel emotionally safe.

The guy I chose (chose being the operating word here) to lose my virginity to was at best someone who wasn’t interested in commitment, had some opinions on what I should do with my body, someone my parents absolutely didn’t like, and was a full ten years older than me. He was ambitious, ruthless, cold, extremely successful — the kind of guy who went to Tony Robbins seminars religiously.

(Side note: when we met again 1.5 years later, he was a completely different person and I would now consider him my person.)

So could one say that I waited for that special someone? Absolutely not.

There are some technicalities in when I truly did lose my virginity. There was the one moment when I was bleeding after he had convinced me to “just stick in the tip” or I could define it as the moment when we truly went all out. I choose to use the latter.

Let me paint the picture for you (without giving you ALL the details).

I’m 25, turning 26 in two months. I’m sick and tired of always being inexperienced or not knowing what sex is like. I wanted to know what everybody else was talking about, what my smutty romance novels described, and whether steamy rom coms had gotten it right or not.

My parents were super pro-waiting until marriage and had pretty much drilled it into me to not give it up too quickly. They didn’t want me dating anyone, and I felt like the clock was ticking.

I had originally wanted to have sex for the first time with someone I loved and deeply cared for and who obviously felt the same for me. To be honest, with the guy I was seeing at the time — I knew I liked him, but there was a part of me that was deeply unsatisfied. I wasn’t sure if he liked me as well and that created a ton of anxiety in me.

One thing I DID know though — that we had incredible chemistry. He made me feel alive like nobody else. His kisses were passionate and the way he looked at me felt addicting. He knew just what to say to rile me up and to have me wanting for more.

I had never felt this way before.

Previously, I had honestly considered that I was asexual. So when I met this man who was 10 years older and had all this sexual experience and brought major fireworks, I was so relieved.

I figured that if having sex with him was anything like kissing him, then he was bound to be amazing at it.

That’s when I firmly made the decision, he was going to be the one I lost my virginity to. I knew he wanted to sleep with me — he was pretty vocal about it and I had already made him wait close to 6 months. And simultaneously when deciding that I was going to lose my virginity to him, I also thought about how I may or may not end this in-between-relationship thing we had going on right after. I mean, I would get what I want (losing the v-card) and he wanted sex too, so that’s a win-win for everyone, right?

Surprisingly, I wasn’t very nervous. He was gentle-ish. And I honestly don’t regret it. I couldn’t have asked for a better first time.

Now why do I not regret waiting on losing my virginity until I was 25 (and what do I feel like I missed out on by waiting longer than the average person):

1. I originally wanted to lose my virginity to someone who mattered to me. And even though I had a few guys here and there that had some sort of significance in my life, they still didn’t fulfill my standards. I never felt safe with them in terms of my body. I always felt like they were pretending to care for me when they really only wanted sex. With this man, I knew he wanted sex — he didn’t pretend he didn’t want to AND he made me feel like a woman. He mattered to me in the sense that I cared about him and I felt physically safe and desired.
2. I wanted to feel like I was the one choosing when to lose it. Not my parents, not my friends, not a guy, and certainly not society. And I’m so glad I waited until that exact moment.
3. I wanted to lose my virginity when I felt ready. I don’t know what switch flipped in me, but I was 100% certain that I was going to get this over with that day. I mean, I’m not really sure that I did much besides change into lingerie and essentially threw myself across his bed. When I say I was ready, I was SO ready.
4. At 25 years old, I felt that I could deal with the emotional aftermath of having sex with someone a lot better than had I been younger. With the drama and confusion of puberty, adding losing your virginity seemed like asking for a disaster to happen. While I can’t say that I completely escaped the rollercoaster of emotions post-first-time-sex, I do think I handled it better than I would have at 16.
5. Because I lost my virginity at an older than average age, it meant that my partner was also going to be older. In this case, that came with a more experienced lover. Now just because someone is more experienced, doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily better at it but BOY was he good. I didn’t have any awkward fumbling or even an “Oops, I got too excited” moment (those can happen at any age). It was passionate, calm, and sexy.
6. At 25, I could feel confident about communicating what I like, want, and don’t. I don’t know if I had lost my virginity earlier, I would have been confident and secure enough in who I was to express my own interests and not just let the guy take over. But when I did lose it, I felt comfortable saying “this isn’t doing anything for me” or “that feels amazing, keep doing that!”.
7. Being a lot more comfortable and confident in my body. At 17, I could’ve pointed out anything and everything wrong with my body. At 25, I still didn’t love it but I was way less self-conscious and didn’t feel ashamed.

Now, on to the things that I missed out on by waiting as long as I did:

• Not being as experienced at 25 as I could have been if I had started earlier, which also would’ve meant being more confident.
• Having a whole new understanding of my body in terms of sexuality.
• Being able to explore a lot more of what I like and don’t like, kinks, etc.

So in the end do I regret not having had sex earlier? Absolutely not. There’s no right or wrong age per se to have sex at (despite the obvious ones when you’re WAY too young). It’s really all about taking ownership of your body, making sure you feel comfortable with that decision of when you want to have sex, being responsible about who, when, and how you do it — and not letting anybody else tell you anything else. It’s an incredibly personal choice, which is why only YOU can make it.

So whether you’re 35 and you haven’t had sex yet and feel like you’re running behind, or you had sex at 15 and felt like you had it too early — we all make the best decisions we can at the time with the information we have. You are always making the best decision you can and nobody else will be able to know what that is besides YOU.