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yesman asks:

I am 15 and when I was 14 I started becoming very interested in
masturbating. I actually used objects and penetrated them inside my
vagina. After a while i realized how stupid I was being so I stopped
with the masturbating. I’ve been dating my boyfriend for about 4 months
and we are so comfortable with each other. He makes comments as a joke
about vagina tightness and how I’ll bleed when I have sex at first and
it will hurt. But the thing is I have basically de-virgined myself.
Will the guy who I lose my virginity to notice that having sex for the
first time with me will be easy to get in and everything? I really
regret masturbating and everything. This may sound stupid but I’m very
worried.

Heather replies:

Virginity is not something physical or medical. It’s a cultural idea,
one which many people have different definitions of and opinions about,
and one that not everyone even subscribes to in the first place. The
idea that vaginas can be permanently loosened is a myth, and one we
have addressed over and over and over again here. You can find out all about that at any of those links I included.

Any change to your vulva, if there was any change at all, which the
insertion of objects made — if any — very well could have happened
organically without that. The vagina is not a static thing. Much like
your mouth or throat, it’s a stretchy, tubular muscle, one which sits
closed when nothing is in it, then expands to hold what is inside of
it. When you remove whatever that something is, it goes back to the
same closed shape it was before very quickly. That’d be why, if you
look at tampons, you’ll notice that the difference between sizes is
very small…and yet, women of all ages, from women who have had no sex
to women who have had daily intercourse for years, women who have had
no kids to women who have had five, do not have tampons just falling
out of their vaginas because they “got loose.” Vaginal muscles are
strong and active, and while sometimes childbirth can create some
changes — and that’s a very different thing than a vibrator or a penis
— even those changes are often temporary or subtle.

The one change we might see with insertion — which could also
include tampon or menstrual cup use for some women — is changes to the
hymen. Inserting things into the vagina is one of the things that can
contribute to the gradual wearing-away of the hymen. But that happens
with other things as well, like via menstrual flow and other vaginal
discharges, hormonal changes as you mature and basic physical activity.

In other words, whatever state your hymen is in may or may not be
different than before you masturbated. Whatever state your hymen is in
could be the exact same state as that of a woman who has never had ANY
vaginal insertion OR that of a woman who has had intercourse a bunch of
times. Neither we, nor sexual partners, can tell anything about a
woman’s sexual history based on how her vulva looks or feels.

A boyfriend joking about vaginal tightness, telling you how you’re
going to bleed and how first-time sex will hurt sounds a whole lot to
me like a partner lacking the maturity to BE a sexual partner, or even
someone to talk about these kinds of things with. For all of the
obvious reasons — including having to live with the ignorance of so
many people about it — vaginal “tightness” is often as sensitive an
issue for heterosexual women as penis size is for men of all
orientations. Ten bucks says everything would stop being so funny to
him if you responded with similar jokes about his penis size (which I
am not at all suggesting, mind you: we all deserve to be treated with
respect and sensitivity about this stuff).

Not all women bleed with first intercourse, nor do all women
experience pain, and that includes women who have not masturbated or
had ANY other kind of vaginal entry before.

Here are some things that tend to commonly cause pain or bleeding with intercourse:

• A lack of adequate lubrication
• A lack of enough sexual arousal, and/or sexual activities which
  bring about and increase arousal for women (hint: for most women,
  that’s not intercourse)
• Vaginal infections or vaginal health conditions like vulvodynia or vaginismus
• A resilient hymen (one which has not worn away on its own enough yet, or which just isn’t eroding by itself, period)
• Nervousness, fearfulness or anxiety
• Relationships is which a woman does not feel safe, or where she
  feels conflicted about sex or is forced, coerced or rushed into sex
• A partner who is not paying as much attention to his partner and
  what she needs as what feels good to him, or who is too hasty or too
  rough
• The expectation that sex will be painful

Note how last on the list there — though for plenty of women who
experience pain with sex, that is often a BIG part of it — are
expectations of pain. A guy telling a woman to expect to be hurt
seriously isn’t cool in my book. Rather, what he COULD do is a) some
homework so he’s less ignorant about all of this, and b) be talking
with you, taking his time with any kind of sex with you to do all he
can to minimize any pain or discomfort you might experience. However,
it stands to mention that if you’re both really young, he may be
talking the way he is, saying the things he is, because he’s just not
ready to be sexual with someone else yet.

When it comes to vaginal entry, ideally it should not be very
difficult for someone to “get in,” because at the time that’s attempted
it should be enough of what you both want and are ready for that the
vagina will loosen due to your being aroused and relaxed. When
intercourse is something you want as much as they do, something you
feel pretty relaxed about (even though that might be balanced with some
nerves and some excitement), something that’s only happening after
you’re already very aroused, often with the help of other non-entry
sexual activities first and during, because you’re with a partner of
some maturity and sensitivity who is doing all he can to make you
comfortable, while some women may have some momentary discomfort, it
should be more pleasure than pain. And those are the things that tend
to make entry easy or not-so pleasurable or not for women.

Now, it won’t be the case for all women that it’s easy or painless
with first intercourse, or any incident of intercourse at any time.
Some women will or do experience pain or discomfort with intercourse,
the first time or the 201st. That’s not ideal — and if someone
presents battering their way into a vagina as ideal, that’s pretty
creepy, in my book — but it does happen sometimes. But hopefully, a
woman’s partner isn’t glorifying that, but doing what he can, within
his power, to avoid that, and deal with it with sensitivity and care if
it does happen that way. In a whole lot of ways,
the idea of pushing yourself into someone’s vagina that isn’t yielding
to that is a lot like the notion of forcing your way into someone’s
locked front door.

I’m worried to hear you express that you regret masturbation and
feel stupid about it, particularly since that seems to be based not in
a lack of that having been enjoyable for you, but in the idea that your
own solo sex life is going to have some sort of ill effect when it
comes to sex with a partner. Do you think your boyfriend feels that way
about his own masturbation? Probably not, and I think it’s worth having
a think on why you do feel that way, but he likely doesn’t. In general,
any two people who masturbate are usually helped by their masturbation
in sex together, not harmed. It seems to me it probably has an awful
lot to do with things like both of you not understanding the reality of
your genitals and sexuality, one or both of you thinking that it’s GOOD
or important for you to experience pain or bleeding with sex, either
one of you having double-standards about masturbation, and/or with your
reaction to his ignorance and immaturity about vaginas.

The good news is that all of those things are fixable, and that
whether or not you had masturbated, for you to have your best shot at a
sexuality of your own you feel good about, and healthy, happy sex with
partners, those things will probably need to be addressed and worked
through, alone and together.

What I’d suggest first is giving yourself some good education on
these issues, so that one of you can start with a full deck when it
comes to accurate information. Here are some pieces I’d suggest:

• Vagzilla! (Or, All Genitals Great and Small)
• Pink Parts – Female Sexual Anatomy
• From OW! to WOW! Demystifying Painful Intercourse
• Be a Blabbermouth! The Whats, Whys and Hows of Talking About Sex With a Partner
• First Intercourse 101
• Yield for Pleasure
• Ready or Not? The Scarleteen Sex Readiness Checklist
• 10 of the Best Things You Can Do for Your Sexual Self (at Any Age)

I’d pay particular attention to that readiness checklist, since it
sounds like your concerns about all of this are strong enough that that
may be due to feeling like you two may become sexually active soon, and
beyond the couple things on it I can tell you don’t have yet, I would
bet there are a bunch more, as well.

Then I think it’s time to take that info on the road and have a talk
with your boyfriend. Fill him in on some of these facts, either by
telling him yourself, or even printing some of those out for him to
read. Talk about how this juvenile crap (though I’d suggest choosing
less loaded words to describe it to him than those) with the tightness
not only isn’t funny, it’s not how you expect a potential sexual
partner to talk about your body. Tell him about why and how pain or
bleeding can tend to happen, but I’d then also suggest that when you
two talk about possible sex in the future, you drop all the talk about
pain and talk more about pleasure.

One another thing I think would be great to bring up if you are
serious about this person as a current or potential sex partner is how
you are feeling about masturbation, and the worries you have had about
how it may have impacted your body, even though with this new
information, you should feel pretty comfortable in knowing those
worries were unfounded.

I’d say that it’s perhaps a good idea to recognize that if someone
can’t talk about sex without making a ton of har-de-har-har, they
probably are NOT so comfortable. You say you’re really comfortable with
each other, but it sounds to me like, in this area, anyway, you
actually have a little ways to go before you’re there. When we’re
really comfortable with someone else in terms of sex, we can voice
these kinds of concerns — like yours about masturbation — openly,
feel confident we are not going to be made fun of, and not feel like we
have to posture or tolerate insensitivity. You two also do not have to
be talking about sex at all: if one or both of you isn’t ready for
those kinds of conversations, or the way they’re being had just isn’t
with sensitivity, it’s totally valid to say that you don’t want to talk
about sex with a given person anymore. I’d just add, though, that if
you can’t talk about sex with someone, it also doesn’t tend to be a
good idea to have sex with that someone, either.

Lastly, I want to add that I hope you can walk away from this
allowing yourself to make whatever choices you do around masturbation
based on what feels good to you and right for you, all by yourself,
rather than based on fears of what a potential partner will think, or
myths about what masturbation can do to your body.

Most people — including women, and including people in sexual
partnerships with others — masturbate. There’s nothing stupid about
it: it’s not only the way many people learn best what they like, for
themselves, a way many people ease into their own sexuality
comfortably, and the way most people reach orgasm for the first time,
it also can offer a host of other positives. It can be a way to have
sex for yourself when you really only want sex for yourself, not to
share something with another person where you need to consider them as
much as you. It can help relieve stress and menstrual cramps. It can
make you feel more comfortable with your body (especially when you no
longer think it’s somehow ruining your body for future sex partners).

There’s nothing wrong with not masturbating, though, if you
feel like it doesn’t offer you anything or you don’t feel right anymore
doing it. It just tends to be best to make our choices around this and
other kinds of sex from a place that’s all about what’s right for us,
not about what someone else might think.