which doesn’t work.

And we should be creating environments where young women don’t feel embarrassed, slut-shamed or judged for having sex; where young people, no matter gender or sexual orientation, are free to discover the awesomeness of sex, without stereotypes or toxic beliefs being piped into their heads. At the end of the day, talking matter-of-factly about sex and bodies with young people is imperative, and I have done that with my own kids.

But I also wonder if in all those conversations, and all those stories that show teenagers and college kids having sex, we don’t talk enough about how it’s neither strange nor shameful to have your first sexual experience well after adolescence. Not everyone in their teens and 20s is having sex — for a variety of reasons. As articles in The Cut and Refinery 29 have pointed out, while it may feel odd to those who are virgins in college, it’s anything but.

According to a 2019 report from the Guttmacher Institute, an organization working to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights, 65 percent of 18-year-olds have had sexual intercourse. That number jumps quite a bit — to 93 percent — when we get to 25-year-olds. But that still leaves 7 out of every 100 people in their mid-to-late 20s who haven’t had sexual intercourse. The numbers continue to decline, but celibacy into one’s 30s and 40s is not unheard of.

People also don’t tend to have as many sexual partners as popular representations would have us believe. According to the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth from 2015 through 2017, the average number of lifetime opposite-sex sexual partners is 4.1 for women and 6.4 for men.

Sadly, it’s also important to keep in mind how many early sexual experiences can be unwilling ones, with RAINN noting, "One in 9 girls and 1 in 53 boys under the age of 18 experience sexual abuse or assault at the hands of an adult."

Another misleading characteristic of the societal conversation around virginity: its connection to religion. Yes, people who are religious may practice abstinence until marriage. But virginity doesn’t automatically equal religiousness, that someone is “saving” themselves for marriage. And religiosity is not the only valid reason for not having sex.

Going to Catholic high school, I saw the church’s obsession with the idea that sex before marriage was wrong and sinful for what it was: a power play, and a piece of hypocrisy. I wholly rejected those ideas the minute I graduated from my Catholic high school.

My problem wasn’t fear of hell; it was not knowing how to talk to boys, and then to men. It was not being comfortable accepting attention. It was not being interested (much) in drinking or parties or being in the kinds of social situations where people met and mingled. It was living at home during college and not coming out of my shell until I moved away for graduate school.

Perhaps most problematically, I translated a lack of sexual experience that was, in fact, entirely normal into an indictment of my ability to love and be loved. The fear weighed on me, but the shame meant I couldn’t speak of it and get any perspective on it.

In an educational seminar when I was 21, I was supposed to write down something I was stressed about to get some freedom from it. I wrote, “I’m scared that I will never...” That’s as far as I got. I was afraid to actually write the words, to put on paper that I feared I’d never fall in love and have sex.

When you think you’re the only one to experience something, you hold it in for so long and develop all kinds of ideas around it that hold you back, make you feel less than or just plain skew your reality.

Thankfully, 2 1/2 decades later, I’m no longer afraid to write down what I think and feel. I published a book about honesty this year where I talked about many of the things that no one wants to talk about. I have learned that when you think you’re the only one to experience something, you hold it in for so long and develop all kinds of ideas around it that hold you back, make you feel less than or just plain skew your reality.

For me, it looked like underestimating myself and thinking I was socially inept. When, in fact, I’m as socially capable as anyone.

Late blooms are just as beautiful as early ones. But they can be lonely as hell. Just know that you are never the only one. You are among many. And so I say this, holding a yellowing A+ paper written by a 22-year-old virgin: I’ve been there, too.