“You’re still a virgin?”

“Wow, good for you! I could never do that.”

“There are still twenty-six-year-old virgins? WOW!”

Have you ever made a decision when you were a teenager and stuck to it? Yeah, I know, most of us don’t. And in 100% honesty, the majority of things I said when I was a teenager, didn’t hold up but there was one decision I made that stuck and that was the decision to remain pure until marriage. I got married recently and I am so humbled to say that, I was a virgin on my wedding night at twenty-seven-years-old.

Before you freak out, I’ll warn you… This topic has never been a taboo for me. I’ve always been open regarding my virginity because I wasn’t ashamed of it. I was proud of it. I wanted to see people my age take the same stand, but this definitely wasn’t the popular route to take. The majority of my friends gave their virginity to their husbands before they got married or to guys they didn't marry or, are still giving sex to men who won’t even entertain the thought of marriage.

I dated a few guys, and a couple of guys I made mistakes with, but I never gave them that special gift and on the night that I experienced sex for the first time, I was so glad. It was such a humbling experience and honestly, I cried. Not because it hurt, not because it was uncomfortable, not because I wasn’t happy with my body but, because I knew in that moment that my husband loved me beyond any measure of the imagination. You see, my husband waited until marriage as well. Was he perfect?! By no means… We’d both made mistakes. Perhaps he wasn’t my first love and maybe I wasn’t his first kiss but we both gave each other a very special gift when we got married, and that was our entire beings, with no one else getting in the way of it.

I was eating lunch a few days ago at a sit down restaurant. I was by myself and in a hurry to get my food, eat and go. I heard a man and a woman talking about dating in the booth behind me. I’m not sure if they were on a date or had recently been on dates and were reevaluating them but I know they were talking about their experiences with the opposite sex. During their conversation, the guy mentioned a girl he was interested in but she was a virgin and when he found out, he became uninterested in her. My mind was blown. I’d never heard such a ridiculous statement in real life. Perhaps on TV but not in real life. In my dating years, I never had someone become uninterested in me because I was a member of the V club. Actually, most guys (if they were not virgins) would just say, “Wow! I respect that about you. I don’t know how you do that because it seems impossible.” I never really understood that thought process but, I guess being a virgin when you get married is not the most popular road to travel because we live in a society where people do not want to wait because everyone wants everything right then.

Deciding to remain a virgin was backed a lot by my faith. I know a lot of faith driven people who disagree with my stance on remaining pure and that’s ok but, the thing that always gets me most about having sex with multiple people is, you never forget it and then those people end up in the bed with you and your future spouse. If you’ve slept with four people, outside of your spouse, on the wedding night they follow you. It was this concept, outside of my faith convictions, that helped me remain pure. I’m not sure what kept my husband pure, besides his faith, but I’m glad that neither of us knew a thing about sex with another partner when we got married. It would’ve been very awkward for me and I probably would’ve been even more nervous than I was!

I waited for twenty-seven years to experience a phenomenon tha 95% of my friends already had. Was it a hard wait? Yes! But, think about the things you wait for. I don’t know about you but I appreciate my iPad Pro that required saving for, more than my Apple Watch that someone gave me the money to buy it. I’m thankful for both things but, I appreciate the things I had to save for and wait to posses, more. Maybe I'm the only one like that, maybe it's just me.

This isn’t an article to bash people who haven’t saved their virginity, please don’t think that. It’s an article to encourage those who have decided to wait. It may not be the popular thing but… It’s definitely something worth waiting for. As I mentioned earlier, I cried when my husband and I experienced sex for the first time and it wasn't for any other reason than the love I felt in that moment. I knew he’d never felt the way he did about me, about anyone else. I knew that I was the one he planned on spending the rest of his life with, seriously. I knew that he loved me beyond what I could even imagine. And what made it even better was, he knew the same things about me!