‘Being comfortable in communicating will result in more success for all parties.’ Photo posed
Q: My girlfriend and I have been together for almost a year, and while we love each other, we had decided to stay celibate until we got married. We both come from conservative backgrounds, and our parents would like to see us married and settled down even though we are only in our early 20s and at college. We were OK with this, but now I think both of us have decided that we are OK with being intimate with each other. We can’t tell our parents, as they will not be happy, but we are living away from home in separate houses so they wouldn’t know anything unless we told them. However, while we know we want to lose our virginity together, neither of us had sex education in school or at home so we aren’t quite sure of how to make it the best possible experience for both of us. We’ve done some other stuff, but this feels like a big step, and I want to make sure it’s a comfortable experience for both of us. How do I make losing our virginity a special experience?
Dr West replies: For something so intimate, plenty of people have an opinion on what you should do and what good sex should look like. The problem with this is, it’s their idea of ‘good’, not necessarily yours.
