Losing Your Virginity: How Do You Know if You’re Ready?

You may think that sexual health and wellness concerns start once you begin having sex, but actually the issues start a lot earlier than that. As soon as a few people in your class begin to go through puberty, suddenly it seems like everyone is talking about sex; about who’s a virgin, who isn’t, and who might be. This pressure can intensely effect your wellbeing, whether you’re a guy or a girl, but that’s no reason to rush into what is one of the most important decision you’ll ever make. So, the question is, then, how do you know if it’s the right time for you to have sex?

 

When deciding whether or not to have sex, you need to use your own judgement and decide if it’s the right time, and the right person. Only you can make that decision, which means there are some very important factors you need to consider. You need to think about the physical concerns involved in sex, such as the possibility of becoming pregnant or getting a sexually transmitted infection (STI). There are also emotional factors to consider, because even though your body may be ready for sex, losing your virginity also has very serious emotional consequences. Then, you have moral factors involved in having sex. Whether your religious beliefs, family values or personal attitude has impacted your opinion about sex, you may have an inner voice guiding you about getting sexually involved at the right time for you.

 

One key concern that revolves around sex is peer pressure. No one wants to be the odd one out, but that doesn’t mean you should lose your virginity just to keep up with your friends or be accepted. You may have friends who have already had sex, and play it down like it’s not a big deal – but sex is a big deal, both physically and emotionally. Everyone is different, which means you can’t rely on how your friends feel about sex as a means of testing if you’re ready. Sex might mean something different to you on an emotional level and you, your friends, and your potential partners, need to understand that. If they’re really you’re friends, they won’t care if you’re a virgin or not, and having sex to impress someone or to make your friends happy or feel like you have something in common with them won’t make you feel very good about yourself in the long run.

 

If your boyfriend or girlfriend is pressuring you to have sex, you’re not alone. Although some teens that are going out don’t pressure each other about sex, the truth is that in many relationships, one person wants to have sex although the other one doesn’t. Again, every couple is different, and so your partner may be putting pressure on you for different reasons. It may just be that he or she is more curious about sex, and has stronger sexual feelings than you. Or he or she might have differing religious beliefs, meaning that your attitudes to sex might be different.

 

Whatever the situation might be, when one of you wants to have sex and the other one doesn’t, this can put stress and strain on your relationship. In this circumstance, you have to do what is right for you and, if your partner is worth holding on to, they will respect your decision and not put pressure on you. Don’t give in to the pressure of “If you love me, you’ll do it,” as any person who says that clearly doesn’t love you, and is only looking to satisfy their own sexual urges. Sex should be an expression of love — not something that you feel like you must do.

Categories: doesn, emotional impact, feel, Friends, nbsp, Peer Pressure, pressure, religious beliefs, virginity

Are People Staying Virgins For Longer?

In the past, we might have seen virginity as something that was a natural occurrence until you got married, and as such it was something that didn’t even need to be talked about. If you weren’t married then you were still a virgin, and if you weren’t a virgin but had not married yet that made you ‘sinful’ or a shame to society. Of course, by our modern standards of living, there is nothing wrong with consensual sex between two adults and marriage is not something that even comes into the equation. Perhaps we even got very used to concept of people losing their virginity at a very young age.

There were many social panics in the media that revolved around younger and younger girls getting pregnant. It was also noted that the average age of people losing their virginity was becoming much lower than ever before. It seemed that this inexorable rise of people losing their virginity very early was likely to be that way forever, so it might have seemed that we could forget about the subject. However, it now seems that there may have been a little of a reversal of this trend, and some people are not losing their virginity until they are somewhat older.

There was a new report that was issued by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics which takes a look at the sexual habits of the world that we currently live in. The report is based on in-person interviews and look at approximately 13,500 men and women between the ages of 15 to 44. The report describes all the different types of sexual fact such as what age’s people are having sex, who is having sex with each other and a number of other facts. And perhaps the most interesting aspect of the report is that it seems that virginity is making something of a comeback!

The researchers found that between the years of 2006 and 2008 the percentage of 15- to 24-year-old males who had never had sexual contact of any form with another person was up to a surprising 27 per cent. This number was up from 22 per cent in 2002 and shows an interesting upward trend for virginity. During the same period, 15- to 24-year-old females who had never had any form of sexual contact was up to 29 per cent, and this number was again up from 22 per cent in 2002.

Supposedly the majority of this increase was to be found for those people between the ages of 15 and 19, which suggests it is younger people who are making the decision not to have sex earlier on in their lives. This seems to be counter to the media image that we often find that teenagers are sex crazed and that their insatiable lust for sexual encounters knows no limits. This is certainly one of the more interesting and unexpected aspects of the report.

It might be true that when people see these results that will construe them to mean that less people are having vaginal sex. But the truth is that this shows that their younger people are having no sexual contact whatsoever, including anal or oral sex. It seems that many younger people are making the decision to take themselves away from sex altogether until they are a little older. If these seems to contradict the feelings of many of the major news outlets and media companies perhaps it shows that things are not as clear cut as it might seem.

Categories: people, people losing, report, sexual, sexual contact, virginity, young people, younger, younger people

Warning: Obsession With Virginity Damages Teenage Girls

A new reality TV show is highlighting the difficulties faced by teenagers who have to take a vow of chastity due to their religious parents.

One participant in the show (on Lifetime) is a young woman called Korby Koloff. She is the first teenager to feature in the Preachers’ Daughters television show. The show is based around the idea that the daughters of religious preachers have a hard time balancing the pressures of normal everyday life as a teenager in modern society with the pressures of living the chaste life of a religious leader’s daughter.

The show focuses on the wellbeing of these young girls as they battle to find their own sense of sexual wellness, despite the pressures in both directions. One quote that is used frequently in the show is a Bible verse from 1 Thessalonians 4: ‘For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that you abstain from sexual immorality’.

Following three Christian families which are headed up by pastors, the show looks into the ways in which the teenage girls are discouraged from having sex.

Korby, like most normal teenagers, is keen to go out on dates. At the age of 16 she feels that it is an appropriate time for her to be allowed to go out with male companions on dates. Her father, however, feels that she should not go on dates, as he does not approve of the dating lifestyle. Korby’s issue is twofold though, as she also has a mother who is a preacher. In addition to this, her mother works in a crisis pregnancy centre for Christians and works as a radio talk show host for a Christian station. The mother, Victoria, encourages her daughter to sit through a ‘sex talk’ at church where she preaches abstinence in graphic sexual detail. In the middle of all this, Korby’s sister drops the bombshell that she was not a virgin on her wedding night. The show follows the trials and tribulations of this, and two similar, families as they attempt to find a middle ground between what modern life dictates and what the extremes of Christian religion dictate.

Categories: Sex, teenage, virginity