In most cultures, you can do anything EXCEPT putting a penis in a vagina and still technically be a “virgin.” Oral, manual, anal, outercourse, nipple stimulation, bondage, s&m, and my favorites, are all fair game.
This is, of course, an idiotic way to define virginity. A woman who has had passionate, intensely erotic sex with many, many men can technically be a “virgin,” while a shy innocent girl whose total experience with sex was four minutes of painful penetration is not. This is inane, insane, and stupid, but it’s the “official” rule in many cultures.
But for a lot of women, the real question is:
What kinds of sex can I have and still be sure of bleeding like a virgin on my wedding night?
And if you’re the OP and that’s what you were thinking when you wrote this, I have bad news for you. Short of some sort of extreme surgery or other trickery, there is no way to guarantee that you will bleed on your wedding night.
More than half of all virgins experience no detectable bleeding during their first time with normal vaginal sex. What’s more, the more non-vaginal sex you have, and the more relaxed and eager you are for your first time, the less likely you are to bleed. I wrote this addressed to men, but women can learn from it too:
*A footnote on virginity, hymens, and bleeding
Do you think that all virgins bleed when they have sex for the first time? It’s a persistent myth, but it’s completely false. I happily ditched my virginity 30 years ago and never bled a drop. My gynecologist tells me my hymen is STILL intact, and that that is true of well over half of all the married women she sees in her practice.
She also has menopausal women come to see her because of vaginal bleeding after sex. What happens is that the vaginal tissue gets drier and thinner after menopause, the woman no longer has enough lubrication, her husband pushes his way in anyway, tearing something, and she finally “pops her cherry” after 20 or 30 years of having regular sex!
Think about that. Bleeding doesn’t mean a woman is a virgin. Not bleeding doesn’t mean she isn’t.
With rare exceptions, there is no “cherry” blocking the virgin vagina and it won’t “pop” or bleed on her wedding night unless you penetrate a scared and aroused young girl and damage her vaginal opening.
News flash! Ramming hard objects into tight, dry, unlubricated places can rip the delicate tissues there and cause pain and bleeding! And that’s true whether or not she’s a virgin. But having normal sex with a willing, properly aroused, and well-lubricated partner with a normal hymen normally won’t cause bleeding even if it is her first time.
Having a bad, painful wedding night is not going to encourage your bride to love you or to enjoy sex with you. Don’t be a brute. Whether she is or isn’t a virgin, take special care to see that she is fully aroused and well lubricated before you start penetration.
One sad thing about this situation is that I’m fairly sure there are millions of men alive right now who insisted on marrying a virgin, believed they were marrying a virgin, and actually married a virgin, but have believed ever afterward that they were deceived into marrying a “slut.”
Think about it also from the woman’s side. She has been a good, dutiful, “moral” girl all her life, never dating, never spending any time alone with a man, avoiding “risky” sports and not even riding bicycles, just so she can protect her precious hymen. And then, on her wedding night, she doesn’t bleed.
All her life, she’s been taught that virgins bleed, that the first time for a woman is always painful and bloody, and now she’s been put in the position of someone who has been falsely accused of immorality and has no way to prove her innocence.
Even if her husband says nothing about it, she knows quite well what he’s thinking. When he acts cold and angry and distant, she’ll know why. And she will be absolutely helpless to defend herself or fix the situation. Her hopes of finding love and happiness and a good life with a good man are gone forever, all because of a tiny, extraneous bit of flesh that didn’t exist, or didn’t rip on command.
What’s worse, she probably blames herself. Was it that time I did X? Or was it Y? Was it because I rode pillion on a motorbike, or used tampons in college, or played field hockey in high school, or explored my genitals when my period started, or rode on a donkey when I was 9, or wrestled with the other children when I was 5? And so she becomes even more determined to cloister and constrain her own daughters, repeating the cycle.
I would argue that if you are cautious and responsible about your sexual partners and always take precautions against STDs and pregnancy, your experiences in your “practice” romances, including vaginal sex when appropriate, will make you a better, more loving, and more appreciative wife and partner for an intelligent and loving man. Avoiding those opportunities for personal and emotional growth just to preserve a less than 50% chance of having a bloody sheet on your wedding night is pretty silly.
When you meet the right man for you, he will be right for you because of the sum of all of his experiences, good and bad. He will be right for you because of what he learned and how he grew as a result of the things he has done and the people he has known, because of what he learned from his mistakes and from the way he summoned inner resources he didn’t know he had to overcome adversity and disappointment. If you had the power to take away any of the major events and relationships in his life, doing so would make him less than he is.
The same is true of you. You do not become a mature, responsible, loving woman of 25 by preserving yourself from all intimate relationships for more than a decade. You just become a superannuated teenager, an emotional 15 year old in a 25 year old body.
That doesn’t mean that you should seek out bad experiences. But it does mean that you should not avoid experiences or relationships just because there’s a chance that, in spite of your best judgment, they might turn out badly.
As humans, we are driven to seek warmth, intimacy, and love. Nothing in our evolutionary history prepared us to go for 10 years or more as young adults, in our prime reproductive years, without it. You need deep relationships in order to grow into a complete, caring, and loving adult. And as a young adult, a deep relationship with the opposite sex means an overwhelming impulse to explore the intimate, sexual side of that relationship. Stifling that need is not healthy, and doing so leads to and helps sustain a culture of sexual harassment and abuse.