It is natural that we are insecure because our partner or prospective partner has shared the same intimacy with someone else. It is a mark of virtue to be able to get over it. To an extent, an inability to get over it may likely mean some issues or perhaps even a failure to be charitable, trusting and hopeful. However, if we are understanding of the weakness which caused people to do what they did to lose the virginity status (which should never be discounted), we all the more so need to be understanding of the insecurities which the lack of virginity of the one partner or prospective partner causes in the other. One cannot say that to lose virginity is a human thing but to be insecure about a partner’s or prospective partner’s non-virginity is not. There is also more to it than the moral judgement of the action. Some consequences hard to deal come not only from the knowledge that the partner or prospective partner at some moment sinned against the sixth commandment. If that were only that, past sins of the partner or prospective partner known to us would cause us an equal amount of sorrow, anguish or insecurity and that is not the case. As I said in the beginning, the human nature struggles with our partner or prospective partner having shared this intimacy with someone before us, although the effect is much weaker in case of situations we can more readily empathise with, especially if they involve less blame in our subjective judgement. It also hard to deal with the thought that someone whom we respect at some point didn’t respect himself. Even if it is no longer the case, the past hurts.
In dealing with such situations, it is my view that virginity should not be discounted in any way and neither should people be questioned too much on why they remain virgins. All that Liberanos said is true, but it seems to me that if we started somehow criticising people who have too poor social skills or too much issues to fornicate, it could become dangerous. We shouldn’t regard people as, “too ugly to get laid,” talking in the modern vernacular, even if such a statement seems factually true. It is never a fault that someone is unable to sin and it is never a given that untested virtue is somehow weak. What is rather sure is that being the “40 year old virgin” for reasons that have nothing to do with the Catholic faith is very painful. We’ve heard a lot from people who feel called to marriage but can’t find a spouse. Let us then have some compassion for those who couldn’t fornicate even if they wanted to. As for virtue, there is even some virtue in the fact that those who can’t get it for free didn’t go and pay for it. I would also be careful with judging a non-believer-in-premarital-abstinence as somehow deficient socially on the account of not having sexual partners. While that might actually be true, I don’t like the avenue where that could take us.
As regards porn vs premarital sex, if we start comparing, we might arrive at such conclusions as the mediaeval one that masturbation is worse than rape. Even that claim can be supported with some logical arguments. On the one hand, some porn is typically more filthy than typical sex, on the other hand, porn does not involve actual physical contact. We could argue for hours which is more damaging, porn or premarital sex and I’m not sure what the outcome would be or even which position I would support. In my experience, the filthier thing is not always the one that causes the most falling apart between people, even though it likely is what causes the most resentment.
Ultimately, people who are virgins and would like the partner or prospective partner also to be one incur too much criticism. It seems less than proportional to their supposed offence, which would be isolationism and a degree of reliance on random factors as well as the possibility of discarding a very good person or indeed a very good much merely on that one thing. They attract this criticism precisely because they make a condition of something which cannot be reversed. We would understand the feeling that awakens if someone opened a thread entitled, “I am not going to marry anyone who has ever had a lustful thought.” Now suddenly most of us would find ourselves placed in the bad category for something we had already atoned for. We would have the urge to lecture that person even if that person could prove he or she never had a lustful thought himself or herself.
Same it works with those people who want to marry virgins.
We need to forgive and forget!
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