The Waiting Game

Is it hard to abstain from sex before marriage when it can feel like popular culture is always encouraging you otherwise? We talk to three women who waited.

- Claire Soong

Stephanie*, 22,

Relationship:

Dated husband for four years, married for two, is now divorced.

I grew up in a pretty conservative family, so losing my virginity before marriage was unthinkable – sex was a big deal.

I romanticised the idea of losing it to ‘the one.’ I know it sounds old-fashioned, but I genuinely believed sex was something shared between a husband and wife. My [upbringing] played a part in this. When I met my now ex-husband, he was equally inexperienced and shared the same values about waiting until after marriage. We agreed that we wouldn’t get too intimate or physical with each other because it would be hard to stop once things got heated, so we never really did more than make out.

We had awkward sex on our wedding night, but I had read that the first time is never good, so I thought it was normal. We kept trying, but we just weren’t compatible in bed. It was extremely frustrating. There was a lot of resentment and we played the blame game about whose fault it was. The rare times that we had sex, I had to picture other men to feign interest, and I think I only orgasmed a handful of times.