I have never had sex.

1. fuck you.
2. i can very well accomplish having sex while confined to my house. but thanks for concern.
3. you are terrible at zinging me. i am pretty much the easiest target here after louis. if you can't handle that even, give up.

1. lighten up
2. bet yr wrist hurts
3. i know, that was the point of me putting "obligatory zing" after it as it was a tired meme before it started

Ew, dude, don't let us in on all the minutia next time.

hahaha, perfect thread to ask that question.

dude this is not the kind of shit your guards wanna stumble upon.

That's completely off because our "christian culture" has stigmatized sex as a necessary evil. Guess what, it's neither evil nor necessary. The advice to find someone who you get on well with isn't magical unicorn garbage or idealistic, it's just reasonable.

Wasn't there some study that found that a small percentage of the population is actually fairly asexual? No strong interest in sex with either gender. I often, to the shock and awe of friends, mention how it'd be nice to not spend all that time having sex, thinking about it, or plotting how to get it. Think of all that time!

i believe it's called being married. thanks i'm here all year.

The "get out more" was a genuine statement that you seem to be talking about a society in which "Christian culture has stigmatised sex" and that IMO hasn't existed since the 50s if not before - it was nothing to do with your ability or otherwise to "accomplish having sex at home" (OMFG what a phrase you old romantic!). I was agreeing with Andrew that if anything the opposite is true. Then I realised that it was you he was responding to and put the zing bit in for a wee chuckle as I realised I was playing up to a meme that you've already gone to great lengths to tell everyone isn't funny.

uh...

The further you are away from "official sex" on the intimacy scale, the harder it will be to get there (whether that's the point or not). Personally, I think that while recreational sex has its virtues, it has little to offer in terms of emotional sustenance. Recreational sex, though, can be the gateway into a relationship that's more fulfilling than that, and while you may not be interested in that now, you probably will change your mind in 10-15 years. My advice, then, is this: Try to be more intimate with someone than you have ever been in the past. Don't set "sex" as the goal, but if it wants to happen, let it. Even if you remain a virgin forever, experiences of emotional and physical intimacy will be good for your soul.

Says the unruly one.

But for the record, "find someone you get on well with" is not necessarily a different proposition from "do it just to do it." You can still do it mostly for the sake of it, just with someone you like okay. Hell, this doesn't exactly change for non-virgins: surely the majority of casual sex is just "feel like some sex" + "this person seems reasonably nice," not "OMG I burn for you."

OTM on judging how far you are from having sex on the intimacy/activity scale (though this is admittedly kinda hard to tell when you're a virgin, cause you've never been there, don't recognize the outskirts, and have no idea what magical line gets crossed where suddenly sex is possible). But like if you've never even fooled around with anyone, just concentrate on that, which'll be a lot more fun and less nervewracking than jumping straight in to the deep end.

Ever seen a grown man naked?
http://www.airodyssey.net/graph/airplane-joeyoveurlarge.jpg

The first time's really just about getting it out of the way.

-- Mädchen

OTM. Even if it might be well-intentioned sexing at the time. Doesn't mean it won't be fun, even with the aftermath (trauma, relief, world looking slightly different)

I'm not the best person to ask, though. I went for *years* without sex - most of my 20s.

-- Forest Pines

but don't expect it to the ball to be constantly rolling around in hot sex forever after you've lost your cherry :(

this is good because it's usually lack of confidence that holds people back (far more than 'ugliness').

-- vita susicivus

painfully OTM. Sex isn't really the problem when you get there I think, it's having the right balance of confidence/drive/sensitivity (real or pretend, people being right c*nts to each other often in pursuit of teh sex) to actually establish intimate relationships with other people regularly enough that you don't have to just hope it "happens" one drunken night by dumb luck and yr life is suddenly sorted :/

Oh, and Matt, my 'expounding of grief' line was deliberate innuendo (hence the 'as it were'), so stop taking all the credit!

True story.

True story.

Well, yes, though it's worth noting that, umm ... if you've cooked a meal once, you know better how to shop for the right ingredients next time. You wind up with a better and more comfortable sense of how intimate situations actually lead to sex, and how to navigate those situations better, so they gradually go from fraught and confusing to totally natural. (Haha: e.g. when I was 16 or 17 I had this really "weird" experience hanging out at this woman's house, and then later in life I was making out with someone and suddenly realized that she was very obviously trying to start something, and I was too oblivious to participate because I didn't know the sequence.) (If you doubt my retrospective conclusion let me just note that a book on "sensual massage" was involved.)

xpost = oh, no kissing. Qs:

- you mention courting someone for four months; what do you consider courting?
- what's the extent of your relationships with people you're interested in?
- do you have any regular female friends, like reasonably close ones?
- do you detect a huge difference in the way you relate to female friends and women you're romantically interested in?
- how often do you find yourself spending time alone with a woman, whether on a friendly level or a, umm, courting level?

this explains a lot about you