We place an awful lot of importance on our first time.
We pick apart how old we were and how long we'd been with whomever we did the deed with. We have "the talk" with our mothers or fathers about waiting for someone who loves us. Some people sign pledges to hold off until marriage.
The advice and myths surrounding virginity are not always healthy, but a new study suggests that our first time could say a whole lot about our future sex lives.
Researchers at universities in Tennessee and Mississippi asked 331 college undergrads about their first time having sex, indicating factors like satisfaction, "sexual depression" and how intimate the encounter felt. They were then asked to keep a sex diary for two weeks, rating each sexual experience as they went.
The results showed that (surprise, surprise) a good first experience correlates with satisfying sex later on in life.
"These results suggest that one's first-time sexual experience is more than just a milestone in development," says the study's authors. "Rather, it appears to have implications for their sexual well-being years later."
However, that doesn't mean a terrible first time means your sex life is doomed to failure for the rest of your life. As any amateur statistician will tell you, correlation does not imply causation.
"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," study author Matthew Shaffer told The Atlantic.
Another reason to take this study with a big grain of salt? The age of the study's participants. As college undergrads, no one surveyed could have been getting it on for very long. The Atlantic points out that seven years is the longest anyone had been having sex at the time of the study.
For those of us past the messy years of post-secondary romps, there's still ample of time to have a satisfying sex life — and there's plenty to suggest that it only gets better with age. Last year, a study published in The American Journal of Medicine showed that sexual satisfaction increased for women as they aged.
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