The therapist spent the rest of the hour practising a mindfulness technique, says Richard. The thing is, says Richard, “you don’t know who’s going to judge you for it or who won’t. ‘It’s just sex – you need to get over yourself.’” “He asked me – and this will always stick in my head – ‘Why don’t you just pay someone if you want to have sex?’ “I said: ‘Well, I want someone to want me, I want to want them, I want us to want to do this.’ He got really indignant. “I’ve been through a lot, even for a regular person.” Nor is he a “mopey neckbeard or, even worse, incel” – the group of overwhelmingly misogynistic men who blame women for their poor sex lives.Ī few years ago, Richard went to see a sex therapist, but never returned. He rejects the stereotype that lack of sexual experience extends to life experience (in the style of Steve Carrell’s naive 40-Year-Old Virgin). I don’t really have interpersonal romantic experience, not even just on a physical level, but on an emotional level, too.” “At my age, it becomes a red flag for people. “It’s like trying to date with an STD that’s not contagious and easily curable, but still puts people off.”Īlthough he desires a relationship more than sex, he says that at a certain point his status can become self-perpetuating. He is articulate, even wryly humorous, about his virginity, even as he says it causes him day-to-day unhappiness. As Libby puts it: “If someone is still a virgin after 30, they likely have some issues tied to it, none of which will be solved with a swipe to the right and a random hookup.”Īlthough Richard describes himself as introverted and afraid of intimacy and rejection, he says the reason he struggles to approach strangers cold is “not because I’m desperate – it’s because I’m not that desperate”. “If that was all I wanted to accomplish, I would’ve just gone out and got it over with a long time ago.” He has had “a handful” of chances to lose his virginity, but drunken opportunities at parties when he was younger “just didn’t feel right”, and his subsequent sobriety put an end to those.ĭating apps are no solution – for him or many others. But, maybe counterintuitively, he says the reason he has not had sex is that, to him, it’s not just about sex. He guesses that his religious upbringing – where sex was not discussed beyond “Don’t do it” – was also influential. He is now on antidepressants and – following substance abuse in his 20s – sober. Richard also identifies poor mental health as a factor in his virginity. “I don’t blame drugs entirely – as I said, I never put much effort into dating and sex – but I do think they play a large part in my story.”
“And if you don’t have the drive, sex isn’t something you pursue,” says Libby. When she was well, she found that medication – for her mental health, and oral contraceptives to mitigate her very painful periods – wiped out her libido.
“When I was sick, I could barely get out of bed, let alone put myself out there to potential partners.” Libby connects her virginity to her personality traits (“cynical, private, loud, opinionated and chubby – though my friends would say I’m being too hard on myself”) and her 10-year struggle with depression and anxiety. It could be due to a childhood of abuse, or physical health issues like cerebral palsy, or a religious upbringing, or even lack of comprehensive sex education.” “It could be tied to mental health issues, ranging from low self-esteem and social anxiety to serious depression. Yet there are many reasons that a thirty or fortysomething might never have had sex, says Libby, a 37-year-old Canadian. And the most recent data available, from 2010-12, suggests that just 2.2% of British men and 1.1% of women were virgins at the age of 30. Cath Mercer, a principal investigator on the Natsal survey of sexual attitudes and lifestyles in Britain, says the vast majority (95%) of the general population report have made their “sexual debut” – as she rather grandly puts it – by age 25. It may be that later-in-life virginity is dismissed as a problem with an easy fix.