I was sitting across from my friend S. after dinner when she leaned in close over our cramped restaurant table and inhaled dramatically, as though she were about to confess to murder. "This is not something I advertise about myself," she said, "but I've never really dated anyone." I looked at her, relieved I could still consider my friend a non-killer. "Like, ever," she said, as though maybe I hadn't understood her the first time. But I had. I just wasn't all that surprised.
I have a confession to make too. I'm 27, and I haven't really dated anyone, like ever, either. When my book, a memoir called Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date, came out last year, I thought I was the only relationship virgin out there. But since then, I've heard from hundreds of young women (and men) who, like me, were not just currently unattached but had been for their entire lives — well into their 20s and beyond (note that relationship virgins aren't necessarily virgin virgins and many, in fact, aren't). We may be prospectless at an age that would make a Jane Austen-mother character faint, but many young women, for perhaps the first time in history, view being a long-term, deliberately single person as a legitimate option. The relationship virgin is "part of a larger societal trend in which people are deciding for themselves how they want to live their lives, rather than following conventional scripts," say Bella DePaulo, Ph.D. , a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara and author of Singled Out: How Singles Are Stereotyped, Stigmatized, and Ignored and Still Live Happily Ever After. "Americans now spend more years of their adult lives unmarried." It's true: Millennials are getting married later than our parents' generation did — age 27 on average for women, 29 for men—and it follows that many young people might delay romantic relationships (or the boyfriend thing, as I sometimes call it) entirely. It's official: Relationship virgins (RVs) are on the rise.
Our Growing Ranks
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Andrea Syrtash, a dating expert in New York City and coauthor of It's Okay to Sleep With Him on the First Date: And Every Other Rule of Dating, Debunked, says the diminishing pressure to find a partner in our early 20s gives young women freedom to focus on other things, like friendships, hobbies, and careers. "Women have choices and aren't waiting for a man to 'complete' them," Syrtash says. "They want someone to complement their already full and fulfilling lives."
Besides, who has the energy? Ever-increasing educational achievement and career success mean that some young women feel they simply don't have the bandwidth to date seriously. Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men, says that a growing number of young women equate the term boyfriend with, well, burden. "They think of a boyfriend as a detriment or maybe a distraction from their career goals," she says. Indeed, many of the relationship virgins I've heard from emphasized that enjoying their 20s as a time for independence was one of the major reasons they've forgone (or been happy without) dating. "I probably have more hobbies and more friends with whom I've kept up," says Katy, 29, from Chicago. "I've thrown myself into my career as a teacher and traveled abroad. I'd say I'm pretty happy on my own."
For many super-busy young women, dating needs to be convenient. That's where Internet dating comes in handy. "You can do all the initial meet-and-greet stuff in the comfort of your pajamas in your own home," says Colleen, 27, from Minneapolis. But if messaging a few potential matches is relatively painless, Internet dating can quickly overwhelm rather than lead to relationships. "With dating online, it's common for decision paralysis to get more intense with time, and I think that's a huge part of being in a relationship-virgin pattern," says Brian Schechter, the cofounder of dating site HowAboutWe.com. Having dozens of options at our fingertips is something of a double-edged sword. "You are given access to a significantly wider pool of suitors and are able to multitask by having an open profile 24/7," says Allison, 26, from Brooklyn. "It is part of our ADD culture and makes dating harder because both sides realize there are so many more options out there."
Lots of options mean more casual dalliances and fewer concrete labels and clear-cut relationships. Our oft-cited "hookup culture," while convenient for people not looking to date seriously, can be discouraging for those who want something more meaningful (because let's face it: not all relationship virgins are satisfied in their singlehood). "I think that now whenever you meet someone who you could potentially date, you worry about whether they just want to hook up," says Amanda, 26, from Dayton, Ohio. Allison wonders, "If you meet a guy in a bar and hook up and then maybe do it again, is that your second date?"
The RV Experience
My book is a series of deeply felt crushes gone nowhere, and a number of the young women who e-mailed me included tales of their own unrequited loves. It's not that they (we!) don't ever want to find love. It's that even if we do, we have literally no idea how to start looking. It's a mess out there! A recent USA Today study found that 69 percent of singles expressed feeling confused as to whether or not a planned outing with a romantic interest was even a date.
Dating ineptness (whether real or perceived) can feel especially acute to those who are mostly watching our friends date from the sidelines. "Trying to date is like navigating a maze in which you have no control and you cannot see more than a few steps in front of you," says Amanda. And the truth is, being a relationship virgin can feel isolating: It's hard not to feel left out watching one's friends cycle through significant others. That feeling — that you're not doing something everyone else is doing — can get to you. "Every time I log in to Facebook, there is a glaring message that says 'Update your relationship status,'" says Gabriela, 23, from New York City. "Adults who have not been in a relationship may feel stigmatized," says DePaulo. "It's hard for them not to feel defensive about it."
And while many RVs aren't sexual virgins, a guy or a girl who has been in a relationship is perhaps more likely to have explored in the bedroom more than someone who's had a few one-offs. By one's mid-20s, there is a cultural (and sometimes personal) expectation of shared, baseline sexual experience, and not having it can feel embarrassing. But this can feel like a catch-22: How can you learn all the cool sex tricks if you're not dating, and how can you find someone to date without knowing all the cool sex tricks? Casual sex obviously comes into play, but it can be difficult for relationship virgins (of any gender) to trust that there are people out there who won't hold our inexperience against us. "I remember the anguish of having to tell my first boyfriend I was a virgin," says Katie, 25, from the Bronx, "but he didn't care at all and was impressed I told him."
Some RVs worry their perpetual singlehood means they're missing out on life experience they'll need later on. "Some days, I get all doomsday-y and wonder why I didn't tackle all this when I was 16, like everyone else," says Alanna, 28, from Toronto. The dating pattern we typically see is the string of boyfriends that steadily improve, bit by bit, until we find the one who's "right." Without that rubric, who do we compare our eventual first significant others to? "Sometimes, I worry that I won't be good at being in a relationship because I have no practice," says T., 25, from Vancouver. "I haven't made my rookie mistakes yet."
So does being a relationship virgin affect us when we do eventually enter romantic relationships? From what I can tell ... maybe. Kind of. "We all know that relationships require compromise," says Syrtash, "but when you've been used to doing your own thing for a number of years, it may take some adjustment to not feel smothered or to regularly consider your partner's needs and schedule." It may also take time to overcome our own neuroses about not having dated. But for most of the former relationship virgins I heard from, it seems that what worked was simply being open about it. "Once my new boyfriend knew there would be a lot of firsts in this for me, I think it made things easier than if I'd tried to hide the fact that I hadn't been in a relationship before," says Heather, 24, from Chicago.
Hope for Us All
Whenever I drink too much wine and ask my girlfriends why I'm still single — which I try not to do very much, but I'm only human — they'll use words like picky or intimidating. Every relationship virgin is familiar with this particular set of well-meaning but often condescending vocab. Our glossary of terms for why women are still single is in need of a shake-up ... or a garbage can. It's rarely that simple, and it's rarely (if ever) a problem in need of diagnosis.
The older I get, the more pseudo-dating I do, and the more relationships I watch my friends agonize their way through ... all of it makes me increasingly sure that nobody really knows what they're doing. My friends are as confused about their dating lives as I sometimes am in my lack of one. I don't know if it's especially comforting to realize that no number of relationships can guarantee that the next one will be right, but on the other hand, no number of years spent single can prevent you from finding a great relationship either. If that's what you're looking for. And if not, I think that's great too.
This article was originally published as "The Rise of Relationship Virgins" in the July 2014 issue of Cosmopolitan. Click here to subscribe to the digital edition!
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Photo credit: Nick Onken
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