Despite Hollywood’s claims to the contrary, it’s pretty well established that the first time you have sex never goes well. There’s so much pressure on it that it’s often almost a feat of mental wellness just to get through the experience emotionally unscathed, but how much more pressured would you feel if you discovered that how it goes the first time affects your sexual wellbeing for the rest of your life?
Researchers at the Universities of Tennessee and Mississippi have discovered that your emotional sexual health is greatly affected by the first time you have sex. They found that those who had more positive initiations into sex scored higher for sexual satisfaction and esteem later on in life, and were less likely to report ‘sexual depression.’
For the study, 206 female and 113 male undergraduates were asked about when and how they lost their virginity, how content they were and to what degree did they now regret it? These experiences were characterised in terms of ‘anxiety,’ ‘negativity,’ ‘connection,’ and ‘afterglow.’ The students then rated their current sex lives in terms of sense of control, satisfaction, and general wellbeing, and spent the next two weeks keeping diaries that described and rated all of their ‘sexual interactions’, meaning any encounter ‘in which the purpose was sexual arousal’.
The results of the study were that positive first-time experiences led to physical and emotional satisfaction in later sexual interactions. Feeling loved and respected by one’s partner made people feel more emotionally satisfied later on, and physical satisfaction was also self-perpetuating. On the other end of the scale, those who experienced anxiety and negativity when losing their virginity experienced lower sexual functioning overall.
The study’s authors made the conclusion that, ‘these results suggest that one’s first-time sexual experience is more than just a milestone in development. Rather, it appears to have implications for their sexual well-being years later.’ Study author Matthew Shaffer surmised that you may form thought and behaviour patterns the first time you have sex which guides your future experiences, adding: ‘While this study doesn’t prove that a better first time makes for a better sex life in general, a person’s experience of losing their virginity may set the pattern for years to come.’
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