James Layne: I’m a 26-year-old virgin

Salon

November 13, 2013.

I’m a pretty typical 26-year-old male. I’ve been to more than 150 rock concerts. My father and I watched Tiger Woods win all 14 of his major championships. I have a few tattoos. Like most 20-somethings, I’m working on finding myself, whatever that means, and I’m swimming in student loan debt. But I am unique in one way, and it’s not my red hair.

I have never had sex.

It’s not because I haven’t had a girlfriend. All through high school I dated someone, or chased someone depending on whom you ask. For the past four years, I’ve been with the same girl, and we’re getting married in the summer of 2015. She’s a 24-year-old wedding photographer who’s also never had sex. It’s no wonder we found each other, right?

What might be even more surprising is that we aren’t abstaining because of religion, rebellion or any kooky anti-sex group. It’s actually a decision I made all by myself.

Maybe it started in my adolescent years, when friends would talk about women they’d had sex with as if it were a game. That made me feel uncomfortable. I was all for exploring my sexuality, but it seemed to me that people were too casual about it. This is the deed that creates life, after all, and I took it seriously. I knew, even then, that I only wanted to experience its joy and pleasure with one person, and not until we were ready.

When I got together with my fiancée, I knew she was a keeper. But we wanted to play it safe while we work on establishing ourselves as well as a photography business, which will hopefully provide a better life for future children. Yes, there are many forms of healthy protection, but none is greater than abstaining. In addition to being a full-time wedding photographer, my fiancée is also a kindergarten teacher, which is a form of birth control itself. Teachers know what I’m talking about.

Obviously my views on sex put me out of step with my time. Sex is a marketing tool for just about anything these days, and a common sentiment is that sex can be a deal-breaker in a relationship, meaning that a key factor in compatibility is two people sleeping together. I don’t see anything wrong with that line of thinking; I just don’t share it. All I’m asking is that people respect my side of the argument, too.

Sex doesn’t define my relationship. Just because there’s no intercourse in my life doesn’t mean there’s no love in it. And it certainly doesn’t mean there’s a lack of intimacy, or sexual behavior. I still find it bizarre how people pair sex with love, as though they are interchangeable. When my parents taught me about the act, they started the discussion with the famous words, “When two people love each other …” But I will not use those words with my children unless they’re followed with “… they respect each other.”

 Read the rest here.

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Comment: At the outset I thought don't touch this article it is a mess.  Now that I am posting it and writing a reaction I am thinking the same thing.

There is so much bullsh*t in this contrived crap about saving yourself, finding 'the one' and having enough respect for that person to wait.

This is what one comment below the article describes as a "humblebrag" but it is more a deluded brag all whacked out by religious and sexual bigotry.

The latter is more than implied in the nonsense that he considers sex to be an act of procreating.  What a dillweed attitude from a dude who more than likely can point to the passages in the bible where God ordains sex as the 'go forth and multiply' sanction for believers.

So I wonder what he thinks about gay relationships?  Do gay folks have sex or is it just a perversion what they do especially since it can't lead to kids unless they adopt?

Why do folks lie to each other about sex and the biological need to get laid?  This article assumes that the now is the decadent forever where people have transgressed beyond reproach.  Let me tell you folks have been getting laid for as long as the sun has risen and set somewhere in the world.

Your grandma was likely a freak and your grandpa too.  Don't be fooled that they were chaste and moral just because they say so at the old folks reunion.  They chaste now because they got all the freak out of them when you were not even a thought.

There is no right time, right place, or proper mindset for f*cking.  And yeah you can f*ck without getting all fixated on whether it is love or not.  Love is not the issue here because if everyone waited to love someone before they did the nasty there would be about 34 people in the whole world!

I guess being 26 this self-congratulatory twit should be given the room to think aloud about the sanctity of his delusion.  In time he will rue the wasted years he spent waiting for nothing.

The really sad sh*t is when you come across 40-something dillweeds who espouse the same crap and act all sanctimonious about the rightness of their choices, the religious sanction implied, and the respect they have for themselves and their partner to wait for a God-ordained moment to spill the container.

These wait-till-marriage types are usually the same ones who given a chance would dry-hump anyone into a cramp or lick, suck, and finger the living daylights out of their partners without calling it sex.

What hypocrisy all this nonsense about making a normal part of being human such an evil aberration.

My thinking is 'go get f*cked for real': you may like it and what's more you may find your humanity in living and not some mythological crap that was made up to keep you hunched over on Sunday benches or prayer rugs.

My other thinking is I should keep to writing about politics and my own deluded life in the dust bowl by the hole.

Onward!