What do virgins want to know?

 When I was ten years old, and kept reading about ‘intercourse’ in the Old Testament, I wish my mom, who was in the kitchen ironing, told me a lot more than she did. She described intercourse as making love, saying it was when a naked man put a small part of his body into a naked woman, and ‘As God made it, intercourse is beautiful, but what men have done to it, it can be horrible and ugly.’ I asked ‘How? What do you mean?’ She refused to say more as she finished one of my dad’s shirts and pulled another from the to-be-ironed basket. Father said nothing.

I went away thinking, ‘Yuck! I want to wear clothes!’ I imagined two white-sheeted people with two holes in the middle ‘having intercourse’.  As a teenager, I learned the joys of kissing and petting, so eventually I no longer thought of intercourse as ‘Yuck!’

 What I wish my mom had said: 

1. Value your virginity. You can only can share it with one person, and only once.
2. Your virginity is your door to the world. Who and what you open that door to, especially for the first time, you will carry with you your whole life.
3. Wait until you’re over 21 and are engaged to be married. (When you’re younger, your mind, feelings, attitudes, plans and goals are all evolving. If you allow a man into your body and heart too early, you stop yourself from learning who you truly are. You may fall victim to a common female behavior: altering your deepest self to please a man.)
4. Don’t make love simply out of curiosity, peer pressure or other social reasons. It’s bound to be boring and hurtful in the long run in ways you can’t even imagine.
5. Nearly all young males associate sex only with physical pleasure; their own and not yours.  They rarely associate sex with love.

This is a biological reality, driven by hormones. Some women feel the same way, but most women’s hormones push them towards love. Most men’s hormones push them towards sex. Wondering why or hoping to change the situation has been futile for thousands of years. Accept it and deal with it.

1. Men value ‘No’ and you when they keep pestering you for ‘more sex’ – intercourse. 
2. A man’s actions are more important and honest than his words.
3. There is more than one ‘right’ man for you. Every man will offer you problems. Choose the problems you can live with, not ones you think you can change.
4. Avoid alcoholics and drug users, especially men who experiment with needles or cocaine. If you think the person is only experimenting or a social user, watch them for a year. Don’t join them in their behavior. Experimentation may lead to later adult abuse or addiction.
5. Pay attention to how a man earns and spends his money.
6. No one comes from an ideal family. Nor are all dysfunctional families the same in intensity and damage. When dating, the man’s relationship with his family is important. Family problems are often genetic and involve social learning. If from a dysfunctional family, has the man improved his social network, his behavior, understood his family’s impact on him? 
   
   
   What I wish someone had told me about how to do it the first time:

1. Use birth control that has a 99+% rate of success. Both you and your lover should use birth control.
2. Both you and your lover should agree beforehand that if either wants to stop, you will.
3. Plan your time. Have no pending appointments (test the next day, having to go to work in an hour or so…).
4. Choose the place carefully. Make sure it is private, safe and comfortable. A romantic atmosphere helps a lot, including music.
5. Use lots of foreplay – touching each other’s bodies. Explore. Do not be afraid to talk during any part of lovemaking.
6. Expect it to hurt the first time. Your lover must stimulate your body so your natural lubricant will allow entry without pain. Your lover must then move slowly and carefully if your hymen isn’t broken (using Tampax breaks the hymen). Your lover’s penis may actually feel like a sword or knife during penetration, and thus it is important to keep eye contact so he can read your emotions and remember to be gentle (sometimes a man will become lost in his own experience and forget or ignore his partner). If it hurts, your lover should stop.
7. If your vagina does not release a natural lubricant – use more foreplay until it does. Trying to have intercourse with a dry vagina hurts you and your lover. Using lubricants do not help you two communicate. It just helps your lover with easier access.
8. For both, it is best to touch each other to orgasm before penetration. Why? It is common for virgin men to have 3-5 orgasms the first time, but it is equally common for male virgins to suffer from premature ejaculation. For your lover, a manual orgasm overcomes his inner emotional problems and makes his next erection last longer, for mutual pleasure. For you, it prepares you for both the physical and mental processes you may experience during intercourse. During this time, you may change your mind and want to stop. Or he may change his mind and want to stop.
9. If anything feels wrong, stop! Talk about it. If necessary, delay the process. Sleep together and later begin again. If you feel like stopping again, stop.
10. If you are not satisfied in any way, say something immediately. Once you both are out of bed, it often becomes impossible to talk about what happened in bed. And yes, getting a man to talk in bed is very important. Usually, after an orgasm, men become talkative (just as it’s commonly known women do). The afterglow of making love is a wonderful shared time in which to talk about life.
11. A marvelously entrancing extended lovemaking session can be arranged by having a nearby table laden with healthy and delightful food and drink you both enjoy, especially enough water to replace the juices your bodies use during lovemaking.
12. Be prepared for an intense emotional experience. You and your lover may both be surprised by the emotions making love creates. Do not deny them. It is best to talk about them when they happen (see No. 9 above). You may be surprised by your or your lover’s emotions. You may even be shocked by these emotions. Listen, talk, cry, joke, laugh and love again.