The 31-Year Old Virgin at NPR

I heard this commentary last week on NPR's All Things Considered driving home from work.  You could have knocked me over with a feather, as they say.  Caroline Langston, who works at NPR, talks about why she was a virgin on her wedding night at age 31.  You can hear the radio commentary here, the transcript is available here.

(Talking about in her progressive boarding school) "Sex was expected, it was unemotional and it was no big deal, but the pressure to just give it up did not match what I wanted in my heart....The anxious misery of my youth would have been magnified exponentially if I had been sleeping with the boys I dated. It did not seem to make the lives of my girlfriends all that much happier, which is not to say that I did not have my own fun or make my own mistakes in judgment."

She also notes that while most brides and grooms today boogie the night away at their wedding reception, she and her groom were outta there in record time, they couldn't wait to begin their honeymoon.  A very touching commentary, and remarkable for being on NPR, bastion of liberal-think that it is. 

Funny how modesty/chastity is almost considered rebellious today.  But in a time where not only colleges, but even middle schools and high schools are distributing birth control, it is counter-cultural to abstain from sex.  The rebellious kids today are the ones who aren't buying into casual sex or "friends with benefits."  The pendulum is swinging back, methinks, and that's a good thing.   Langston concludes:

"Maybe it’s the word abstinence itself that’s the problem, its pinched tones of puritan self-denial. For me, in the end, it is an argument as much about beauty as it is about morality. We grant the value of discipline, waiting and hope in the creation of art, then why not as well in that realm where the physical intersects with the infinite?"

Comments

[Sissy Willis]

I know what you mean, but, I don't know, hon. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. The window of sexual desireability is wicked narrow.

[misskelly]

I'm not saying that everybody should wait until they're married before having sex. But it's kind of cool that some people still choose that, in spite of our culture which thinks that only repressed weirdos would go that route. And I'm fairly well repulsed by our modern culture, where soft core porn/sleaziness/coarseness abounds. The numbers of 12- and 13-year olds having sex and giving blow jobs is fairly staggering in some school districts. So young!! Who on earth thinks it's a good idea for young teens to be screwing around? Adults have no problem telling kid not to smoke or drink, but they seemingly can't tell their children to wait until they're older to have sex.

[Shane O.]

I was a virgin when I married my wife at 25 years of age (incidentally, she was not, although she was firmly committed to chastity by the time we started dating - perhaps even moreso than I).

I had two explicit offers from women I knew during my 'dating years', and truth be told, part of why I turned them down was a lack of physical attraction.

To kind of return to the point - I didn't so much practice chastity as avoid dating. Not out of some kind of fear, but moreso out of a kind of repulsion towards the dating I saw going on around me. I did briefly date a couple of girls, both times realizing I wasn't ready for something exclusive. I was definitely attracted to many, but from somewhere (not sure where, honestly) developed a refusal to get into a relationship that had no future, which is what most of today's dating is.

Just my several cents' worth.

[Nevada]

While I applaud her principles, I have to question why she waited until 31 to get married when female fertility begins a precipitous decline after age 25-27.

I think it is more courageous these days to marry at what was once a more typical age: 20-22 for women and slightly older for men.

[misskelly]

Excellent point, Nevada, and one that many women are oblivious about (until it's too late). I haven't a clue about her personal circumstances. But it seems to me that more men are reluctant to settle down in their 20's these days.

[annonymous]

I heard that broadcast about the "Virgin" and it seems misleading. She says she "fooled around with dozens of men." How far can you go and with how many and still be considered virtuous? Actually, I know someone who knows the commentator and I am told that she was not exactly truthful.