Thanks!
I only asked because in some situations it feels like not sharing feels like it essentially means putting certain relationships at a surface level with no chance of them ever developing into something more - interms of sharing/vulnerability etc. I personally feel like it is such a huge part of my identity that anyone who doesn't know this, doesn't actually know me, can't know me, all they have in our relationship, whatever it may be, is an idea of who I am, they are relating to an idea. In certain contexts this doesn't matter, e.g. if the other person is a co-worker, an acquaintance etc, but if I suppose they are what you would consider a 'friend', then it holds the friendship from developing. At least sometimes that is what I feel.
Sometimes it just feels like to be open about it, without fear, will also relieve so much internal stuff, about how I feel about it. Like all those internal dialogues will lose there power.
On the other hand there is obviously the fear, the voice that tells you to be quiet, to guard it like some form of secret, that to talk about it is to reveal you are some form of freak, that there is something wrong with you etc.
There is validity in both being open and being secretive I suppose. It depends.
Despite all the images projected by the media/society of virgins being social outcasts, disfigured, ugly etc (at least guys, not women) after much personal examination, I don't think that actually applies in reality, not to everyone, maybe not even to the majority. People develop at different rates and we shouldn't all be running after things just because society says you should, and also like those who aren't virgins, we have 'work' to do on ourselves, we aren't perfect, but we are certainly not freaks for not being perfect!
Why the media and wider culture has decided to stigmatize this state is beyond me, to stigmatize it to such a degree as to make us appear freaks, social failures.
People of all different sexual persuasions are out there fighting for their rights left right and center and yet those who have simply not had sex due to whatever reason are left in the dark, ignored, sometimes ridiculed and ostracised but also projected upon by all sorts of negative thoughts.
To me personally, it's not a choice, it's not really social rejection, it is just how things have happened in my life. The simple act of letting things take their natural course on an individual level is made to appear like a revolutionary act by the wider society, it's mind-blowing.
Not confronting how I am, juxposed against how society expects me to be, has led to a deeply embedded and hidden feeling of shame. One that I didn't even know was there. Shame is the hardest emotion for me to deal with, simply because I truly don't know how it feels. It's not like anger, happiness, anxiety, shyness, guilt etc, I have no idea how shame feels like whereas I know how the others feel like. I feel like a blind man guessing at how a tree looks like. I know how in some moments I feel about myself, and I can trace this to amongst other things, this whole virgin thing, and who I think I am agrees with what I have read about shame. My experience of what I think of as shame is not a feeling that I feel, it is in who I think I am, a state that I have normalised for many many years. It has become so normal that you would never guess it just by looking and talking to me. In this state of shame, I feel perturbations of sadness, guilt, happiness, anger, joy etc, all the other emotions a normal person feels.
Parts of
this article struck me...
Shame is different from guilt because it's about who we are, not what we do.
Do I feel different? I do! Do I feel less? Yes I do. Did I do anything to feel this way? Not really, I just lived my life and it turned out not to be acceptable in the eyes of society. Did I choose to be this way, as a form of rebellion, as some form of virtue? No I did not, I simply just lived my life and accepted it. This is the hand the universe dealt me. Am I a freak? No, not anymore a freak than an average person in a relationship.
Then why is my idea of who I am plagued by what I can only guess to be feelings of shame when all I did was just live my life and accept it the way it was as it was.
