People Explain What It’s Like Being a Virgin in Your 20s, 30s, 40s and Beyond

Most people lose their virginity in their late teens. Before long, almost everybody has done it: Surveys in the US and Britain suggest that between 95 and 99 percent of 30-year-olds have had sex at least once. For that remaining minority, navigating the tumultuous waters of a sex-obsessed society – and the stigma of being a virgin – is a unique challenge.  

Pop culture gives people who haven’t had sex a pretty rough deal. Everyone laughs when they think about The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But we rarely hear from real-life virgins about how they feel and what they experience. For some, their relationship with sex is complicated by factors like mental health, trauma, and religion, and carrying around the “virgin” label only adds to their fears of being ridiculed or abandoned. For others, losing their virginity is simply not a priority. 

Here, five people ranging from 19 to 52 years of age talk about why they are yet to have sex and how they feel about the future.

Until I was about 16 or 17, I didn’t understand social cues or how to socialise with people at all. I have autism. I stutter a lot. If I can’t talk to people without stuttering and tripping over my words and not getting things to come out properly, that’s not gonna look very good. 

I am bisexual; I’ve only ever felt love feelings towards women. If I had a partner, I would want my experiences with that person both sexually and romantically to be fulfilling for both of us and not just masturbating with the other person’s body. I don’t really like pornography and much of the modern ideas of sex for the sake of sex. I guess I’ve always wanted to see it as a bond between two people.

I have this fear that I’m gonna be 45, 35, and living alone. I have always wanted to have something when I die, and to have children. I do like to fantasise about that – about having some sort of relationship in the future, with some sort of idealised version of myself. Watching people have those experiences and seeing me in the back not doing any of that makes me feel like I’m kinda behind. 

I’m not one of those incel people who blame it on the women. This is a me problem. It's just that I have trouble talking to people I have feelings for. I do think that eventually, I will find somebody. I’m not Debbie Downer. I’m really not even that lonely. I feel emotions very intensely, but I can’t always get them out there. And one thing I guess has always kinda worried me is that I’ll like somebody but I won’t be able to tell them that. 

The pressure for women and girls to have sex is definitely something that’s impressed upon us by a lot of our male or male-presenting peers. It’s just thought that it’s the done thing. But I’m gonna go at my own pace. I want to make sure that I have a good time and I want it to be with someone that I trust. When it comes to romantic stuff, I am very much a slow cooker. I’m a pot roast that you put in for eight hours; I’m not a bag of popcorn that you can throw in the microwave. And it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks of that. When I get married, it’ll happen. If I’m content never getting married, then I’m content never getting married. 

I’ve dated people. I’m bisexual and I’m queer, so the dates have been with men, women, and every other gender. My friends joke that I have high standards, but my standards aren’t exceedingly high. I’m very peculiar as a person, and I know and understand that. I’m very independent. I prefer someone who’s independent. I prefer someone who’s really driven. 

It’s hard to date and break it to people: “I’ve never had sex before. So that’s not happening tonight; that’s not happening the next date. I need you to respect my comfortability with these things.” I’ve tried immediately telling dates these things, and it did not work out. Men got very creepy with me or they would ghost me. For some people, that’s a deal breaker for them. And that’s fair. 

I could go on Tinder right now and say, “Looking for hook-ups,” and get people to respond within minutes. It can happen. It’s just not that big of a deal. At the end of the day, it’s made up. It is a social construct. There’s no way to prove or disprove whether someone is a virgin.

I did try online dating, used Tinder, Bumble, and Facebook Dating. I got close to no traction, almost no right swipes. The main problem is my social anxiety. I avoid crowded places and rarely approach or speak to strangers. While I did go to bars and clubs when I was in my late teens, I always felt out of place and never comfortable. My looks don't help much either. I also have very low self-esteem, close to no confidence, and self-destructive behaviour, and have convinced myself that I’m not worthy of a relationship. 

It's good to read about other people's struggles. But overall, virginity subreddits can have a depressing effect. As for the issues, it's different for everyone. Some just want sex, while others want intimacy and to feel desired by someone. Some also just make a drama about being a virgin at age 16. For myself, not having sex does have some importance, but it's not the main problem. It's the lack of intimacy, feeling desired, and the overall loneliness.

Only my parents and brother know. It's not something I’m proud of, so I keep it to myself. But once you're a certain age, people don't ask or simply assume you’ve already done it. I always told myself if I hadn’t had sex before 30 I’d visit an escort. I’m closing in on 32 and still debating if I should go down that road. Sometimes I think I should just make an appointment and get it over with. Maybe it will give me more confidence and remove some insecurities. If I don't go the escort route, I think I will remain a virgin for the rest of my life.

Every other part of my life is fine: I’m financially stable, I love what I do, I’ve got lots of hobbies, I make friends really easily. But when it comes to women, I think I have this notion of what I think women are looking for, at least physically, and I don’t really think that I have the traits that would make me competitive relative to other men. Now, I know that from a logical standpoint, the only thing that’s holding me back is me. I just feel like I wouldn’t want to have to wade through a sea of rejection to get to that. 

A lot of my friends were like, “Aw, don’t worry, man – it’ll happen.” I was just expecting it to happen without having to put the work in. Now, being as old as I am and not having this normal human experience that, for a large part, is almost a gateway into adulthood, in turn makes me feel even less confident. 

I defend my feelings by driving people away before they can hurt me. I know that stuff like this can typically be resolved with cognitive behavioural therapy and that probably the best thing I can do is directly confront my fear by seeking out rejections. I guess in a sense I feel almost emotionally stunted because I haven’t had these experiences. 

I don’t go out there and advertise this fact but at the same time, I don’t want something like this to define who I am as a person. I know it’s easy to make fun of, but I don’t feel like a complete loser. I can’t say for sure, but I feel like most people feel like they’re the main character in their own story. And I’ve always felt the opposite: I was always kind of a supporting cast for everyone else around me.

I have dated in the past but nothing that really lasted for over a month. What I’ve told some people is, sex I can have by myself – what I’m really missing is a connection with somebody else. There are points where you try something, it fails; you try something else, it fails; and it leads to another level of frustration where you just say, I’m sick of banging my head against a wall trying to make something happen. I do suffer from depression and I’m on medication for it. 

At some point, I decided the main goal of dating apps and websites is to separate lonely people from their money. So I deleted all my profiles. I don’t think I have a problem speaking to people. I think my problem is I never learned how close relationships work. It’s kinda scary. You think you’re just gonna be humiliated by it. I don’t know if the right person is out there that’s gonna be willing to be patient enough with my saying I don’t know what to do. 

I don’t necessarily hide it. At this point, most of my friends are married with kids. The assumption is, at this stage of your life, you’ve had sex, so it’s not something that comes up that often. They usually talk about their career, home life, or kids.

There was always a year where I would tell myself, “This year’s gonna be the year, things are gonna be different”, and then nothing’s ever different. It could lead to a level of frustration, depression, misogyny. It’s really unfair to be angry at the world, or at least half the world’s population, because I’m not getting what I want. 

What I’m trying to do is to just let it go and realise that at this point in my life, it’s unlikely that I’m going to find that special person, and to just try and live as much of a life as I can under the circumstances that I have.