5 people share what having sex for the first time was like

Going from attempting to put a condom on a banana in front of your teacher to actually having sex for the first time can leave you feeling, well, unprepared.

The uncertainty of exactly how it should feel, whether you’re doing it right and how to work out what works for you can be likened to fumbling around in the dark — in short, you have no idea.

For some of us, it happens as we hope it would, with someone we love and who cares for us deeply. For others it’s underwhelming, and for many, it’s simply something we want over and done with.

But let’s wrap this up because heard from five guys and gals about the first time they ever had sex — and it’s a really mixed bag…

Everything it should’ve been

I consider myself very, very lucky that I met a really lovely boy when I was 16. Both virgins, after seven months of dating, we were both ready to have sex. I don’t ever recall feeling pressured by him, by that point we’d said ‘I love you’, and it felt right.

We waited until his mum had gone out for the evening. Both fairly practised at ‘doing bits’, it was time to take it to the next level in his childhood bedroom. I think there was music, and I remember it seemed really important that we were both totally and completely naked before anything took place.

It was quick, it sort of hurt, but it was exactly how it should have been: with someone I trusted, who I felt safe with. Just after he finished (back then, my orgasms were not a priority), we heard the sound of his mum trying to open the front door that he’d locked, and had left the key in. He rushed down sock-less, and I’m told she took one look at his feet, and burst out laughing!

We were together for almost a decade after that, before realising, perhaps a little too late, that we were only ever meant to be childhood sweethearts. I’ve had much, much better sex since then but, unlike a lot of women, I don’t regret the way I lost my virginity for second.

Freshers week deed

It was freshers week and I was still a virgin, so I figured that I needed to kind of get things done early in the week so that I could enjoy the rest of freshers and stop worrying about it.

We ended up in a club quite early (I think maybe even 8pm) and had already had quite a bit to drink. I ended up going back to my crappy student house with a girl named Lucy. I didn’t want to mention the fact I was a virgin to her, so we just started getting into it.

All I really remember was that it was very dark, enough that I remember putting the condom on by feeling rather than looking! I think I was more bothered about not doing anything wrong that I didn’t really pay much attention to enjoying it, although realistically who actually had great sex their first time?

I don’t think I even told many of my uni friends about the fact I’d just done the deed for the first time through fear of embarrassment, I just kind of shrugged it off as a freshers week type of thing to happen. We never really spoke again much, although we were in the same halls so our paths did cross from time to time.

It’s funny to think how big a thing it felt at the time and now I can look back at it and find it kind of amusing, although it’s not an experience I’d relive in a hurry!

Wrong person, too soon

the following contains details of an emotionally and physically abusive relationship.

I was 15 when I lost my virginity to my boyfriend of four months and it was anything but magical. We already didn’t have the best relationship (he was emotionally abusive and at one point physically) and he was two years older than me — one of the well-known ‘bad guys’ around town. He was the type who would pick a fight with another boy for even talking to me (I know, pathetic). I didn’t leave him because every time I tried, he guilt tripped me back into it.

His mum was out but I think someone may have been home because he insisted we do it on the floor rather than the bed — it creaked a lot. He wanted me to go on top but the second I tried it hurt way too much, so I asked if we could do it in typical missionary fashion (he never gave me any foreplay). He got pissed off with me because that wasn’t what he wanted, but relented and did it anyway. For me it really hurt, much more than what my friends say they felt, but I think part of that was I hadn’t been warmed up and I also didn’t feel loved or comfortable.

I did bleed but thankfully he was understanding, he wasn’t usually the type to be empathetic. It was over quickly and I remember thinking, ‘is that it?’. He didn’t give me any affection after and I went home. Two weeks later he cheated on me. A year later, I found my first proper love, a relationship that lasted three turbulent years, and to this day, I still wish I’d lost it to him instead.

A coming-of-age tick box

I was 16 years-old and still a girl when I decided to have sex for the first time, which was already too late, because I’d read somewhere that the average age for losing your virginity in the UK was 15 and three-quarters.

Luckily, my boyfriend at the time — let’s call him Hugo — was happy to oblige, though I don’t think he realised that most of my interest came from not wanting to be a lone point on a dataset.

I’d also read that women sometimes bleed the first time they have penetrative sex, so I didn’t think it was worrying that blood streamed down my legs, all over the bathroom tiles. I realised later that I must have been bone-dry, but was so jubilant I’d finally managed to check the coming-of-age box — I sent my best friend a picture of the (empty) condom — that my own pleasure didn’t really enter the frame. 

There’s a random line in Stephen King’s Carrie that has always stuck with me:  ‘It seemed like an awful lot of rubbing for very little warmth.’

I’ve had better sex, even good sex, since then. But sex has never been easy for me. I thought coming out as a lesbian and swearing off men might do the trick; then I decided to become one by transitioning at age 20, which didn’t solve everything either. I feel quietly envious of people who do seem to find it easy.

A drunken affair

I was 15 and I’d been with my boyfriend for a couple of months when we decided to take advantage of my parents being out for the evening. He was a couple of years older than me and had already had sex whereas I was a virgin, so he was pretty nervous about being my first.

He asked his friends for advice and they apparently told him there would be loads of blood, which didn’t help, and he ended up trying to calm down beforehand by getting drunk — also not ideal.

The sex itself was fine, but I think his stress kind of clouded things and it didn’t feel like the momentous special moment I’d (perhaps naively) expected.

Thankfully things got better after that and he stopped needing Dutch courage to sleep with me.

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