Abstinence

[Schme]

That's what I said. Letting other people in from time to time is not polygamy. Going steady with more then one person is. Although travelling brings another element entirely, I suppose.

[Spazz]

It's somewhat disheartening to see the vast majority (That voted, for all it's worth) voted that it wasn't worth it. I'm 22, and I'm still a virgin, and yes, I'm waiting for, if not marriage, a woman I care greatly about, to have sex for the first time. In my opinion, people are way too casual about having it, talking or being open about it is okay, but I feel it should be special.

[Antichrist_Online]

Alot of the people voting not worth the wait still think it's worth waiting till you find someone you care about alot. More to do with the marraige part... (Bloody hard in some relationships too, up until recently).

[saztronic]

It's somewhat disheartening to see the vast majority (That voted, for all it's worth) voted that it wasn't worth it. I'm 22, and I'm still a virgin, and yes, I'm waiting for, if not marriage, a woman I care greatly about, to have sex for the first time. In my opinion, people are way too casual about having it, talking or being open about it is okay, but I feel it should be special.

Like Nakranoth, I can't believe I'm about to post in this thread. Proof that I am compulsive and/or don't know when to keep my mouth shut.

Like you needed proof.

Spazz, I was a virgin until 22. Well, in an everything but intercourse kind of way, anyway. Although in my case, the everthing but was more often focused on my partners than myself, so even though there were things happening there was also a lot of frustration for me personally.

And even though I lost my viriginity at 22, I had intercourse probably less than 10 times until I was 26, when I met my future wife. My first-ever full-on sexual relationship. She was also a virgin until 22, by the way.

And just speaking from our experience, both of us hated that about ourselves. Just us, you know, each to his/her own and all that, yo. But by the time 22 came around we were both separately going "WHAT is WRONG with ME?" and all that, in that quietly desperate way that Thoreau liked to groove on.

There were reasons why it happened late for me. I matured late, real late, mentally/emotionally. But ready or not, I still wish it had happened a lot sooner and a lot more often for me. My wife is a revelation to me, I love her sing say hosannas daily, everything sexual is right on, but I do regret not getting it on when I was younger, with about 35,000 people. Many missed opportunities. Much unnecessary sturm and drang.

And although it's impossible to tell, I don't think it would have affected my relationship with my wife in anything but unimportant ways.

I'm just saying, wait if you want to wait, no one can be preaching to others on this incredibly personal and individual topic. And peace on you, brother. The road you walk is not easy.

And you're right that it should be special. But how special does it need to be? Only you can decide, but at least try not to build it up into something so mind-blowingly, incredibly, life-altering amazing that "special" comes to mean "one in a billion" lottery-like chances. There are many special people in the world. Probably hundreds within a mile of you.

Life is short, is all I'm saying. Once around and done. There's all paths to regret -- some on here regret going too young, too much, too shallow, and that's not uncommon -- but the road less traveled ain't always the better one either, due respect to Bob Frost.

[notsure]

35,000???

notsure

[saztronic]

Give or take a couple thousand.

If you're going to dream, dream big.

[kinvoya]

Good post, saz. You sound like a very smart and lucky man.

I agree with not blowing sex out of proportion. I'm confused about people who say they are in a relationship but still waiting for it to be with someone special. If the person you're with now isn't special enough to have sex with then why are you in a relationship with them?

[the_antisocial_hermit]

That is a good point.. but there are a lot of factors. Maybe they've not been in the relationship long enough to be sure that they're special enough yet, but they know they have the potential to be, or they aren't quite ready to go there yet. Maybe they have, and would, but things haven't worked out well for that to happen yet. Like distance.. etc.

[SekoETC]

Yes, the distance. And imagine if you messed something up and became pregnant, at least I'm against abortion in most cases. Condoms are rather safe and breaking is very unlikely, but who bothers to use condoms every time? If you're wildly in love with someone, you wouldn't want to spoil the moment with "oops, but we don't have protection, we can't". So then you get a kid while you're still a student, even if you wouldn't mind going to class with a child, the others might be pissed if the brat was crying all the time or if you had to excuse yourself to breastfeed or change nappies in the middle of a lecture. And money doesn't grow on trees. Thrown in a father who lives on the other side of the globe and has their own studies. Plenty of reasons not to risk it until you're living together and at least one of you had a steady job.

[the_antisocial_hermit]

Those are definitely scary thoughts.. and even more so after I found out recently that my friend got pregnant even though she was on birth control and using protection.

[west]

Condoms are rather safe and breaking is very unlikely, but who bothers to use condoms every time?

Me, for one, and anyone I'd care to sleep with.

Those are definitely scary thoughts.. and even more so after I found out recently that my friend got pregnant even though she was on birth control and using protection.

The odds of that are something like 1 in 1 million, provided she was actually taking birth control correctly and using condoms correctly.

[saztronic]

Those are definitely scary thoughts.. and even more so after I found out recently that my friend got pregnant even though she was on birth control and using protection.

The odds of that are something like 1 in 1 million, provided she was actually taking birth control correctly and using condoms correctly.

She didn't specify they were using condoms, only "protection". Could be a spermicidal, IUD, voodoo ritual, who knows.

But let's assume condom, for the sake of argument. A variety of studies, in the aggregate, show that 1 in 10 condoms fail -- breaks, slips, what have you. The pill is about 98% effective.

Do the math and put those together, and you get birth control that's effective 99.8% of the time -- pretty good. On the other hand, while 0.2% doesn't seem like a lot, in whole numbers it means that the pill/condom combination will fail something like once every 500 times.

Now factor in the fact that a woman is fertile perhaps 4 days out of every 28, or roughly 14.3% of the time. And then, the fact that on average (different for everyone, but on average) a woman has perhaps only a 25% chance of conceiving during any given cycle, given the vagaries of chance, the viability of the egg, certain biological factors, etc.

Put all that together, even taking into account timing and biology, and using a condom and the birth control pill correctly should result in pregnancy once in every 14,285 tries. Give or take a couple.

Them's not bad odds. But they're not exactly Powerball odds against, are they? Millions of sexually active, fertile folks in the U.S. alone -- even if all of them were using the pill and condoms correctly every time, there would still be babies born regularly. Not many, but regular as clockwork all the same.

Bottom line, my horny friends, is that sex makes babies. Take precautions, but the best precaution is knowing that simple fact and giving it due consideration. Nature is a persistent and cunning bastard.

[west]

"No babies" is in fact one of my mottoes.

[kinvoya]

A variety of studies, in the aggregate, show that 1 in 10 condoms fail -- breaks, slips, what have you. The pill is about 98% effective.

This is not true. This is the statistic that abstinance advocates use to try to keep people from having intercourse out of fear of pregnancy and STDs. Quality condoms, used properly, very rarely do any of these things. I'll try to find the actual stats later.

[Spillages]

A variety of studies, in the aggregate, show that 1 in 10 condoms fail -- breaks, slips, what have you. The pill is about 98% effective.

This is not true. This is the statistic that abstinance advocates use to try to keep people from having intercourse out of fear of pregnancy and STDs. Quality condoms, used properly, very rarely do any of these things. I'll try to find the actual stats later.

8 out of 10 statistics are false