I wanted something from marriage that I knew I could never recreate once it was gone: I wanted my wife to experience sex with me for the first time, just as I wanted to experience it with her.

To me, there was something meaningful about two people entering marriage knowing they had never shared that experience with anyone else. It wasn’t about believing one person was better than another. It was about the kind of marriage I wanted.

So I made a simple decision. I wouldn’t date women whose sexual history was incompatible with the marriage I wanted.

But I also had to ask myself why being her first mattered so much to me.

There’s a difference between wanting to share that first experience with your wife and wanting a virgin because you’re afraid of being compared with other men.

I had to be honest about that. If the real reason I needed a virgin was that I couldn’t tolerate the possibility that another man might have been more attractive, more exciting or better sexually, then I had an insecurity I needed to deal with.

A woman can marry you as a virgin and still compare you with someone else years later. Virginity cannot guarantee attraction, fidelity or a lasting marriage.

I wanted her first experience to be with me. I just had to make sure I wasn’t using virginity to compensate for an insecurity I needed to deal with myself.

A Preference Doesn’t Need Your Approval

People often think that if they disagree with someone’s dating preference, they have to prove that preference is wrong.

They don’t.

A woman can decide she doesn’t want a broke man because she doesn’t want the financial problems she associates with that situation. A man can decide he doesn’t want to marry someone who already has children.

You may think either preference is unfair, but you’re still not entitled to that relationship.

The same applies when a man cares about a woman’s sexual history. I could decide that sexual history mattered to me without believing that every non-virgin woman was immoral or damaged.

I’ve heard men say women with high body counts can never be faithful. That’s an indefensible claim.

There is some evidence that a larger number of previous sexual partners is associated with a higher likelihood of

infidelity or other extradyadic sexual behaviour. But an association doesn’t make the outcome inevitable. Previous infidelity, attitudes toward cheating, relationship satisfaction, commitment and sexual compatibility also matter.

People change. A woman with a long sexual history can become a devoted wife. A virgin can cheat.

No number can tell you whether someone will betray you tomorrow.

But saying sexual history should tell you nothing is also too simple. If someone repeatedly had casual sex before they met you, those choices tell you something about what they were willing to do at that point in their life. They don’t tell you everything about who that person is now.

That distinction matters when you look at research on marriage. A 2024 study using longitudinal Add Health data found an association between having more premarital sexual partners and a higher risk of divorce, with the association strongest among people reporting nine or more premarital partners. The study was about the number of premarital partners, not virginity itself, and it did not show that sexual experience causes divorce.

The research gave me another reason to take sexual history seriously without pretending it could predict someone’s future.

I Didn’t Want to Live With Comparisons I Knew Would Bother Me

I knew myself well enough to recognize something about my own psychology.

If I married a woman who had already had sexual relationships, I might think about her past and wonder whether I measured up.

Some men genuinely don’t care about those questions. I knew I would care, and I didn’t want to enter a marriage while pretending otherwise.

Part of my preference was about the experience itself. I wanted us to discover sex together. I wanted neither of us to enter the marriage already knowing what that experience was like with someone else.

But I also had to admit that my ego was part of it.

I liked the idea that no other man had shared that experience with her before me. I wanted to be her first.

There’s nothing particularly noble about that admission. It was partly about intimacy and partly about ego.

If I needed a virgin because I couldn’t tolerate the possibility that another man might have been better than me, the problem was mine. I wasn’t looking for a guarantee that I would always be the best man she had ever experienced.

I wanted sexual exclusivity before marriage.

That’s different.

I knew being her first wouldn’t make me her last. It wouldn’t guarantee that she would always desire me, stay faithful or remain married to me.

I wanted it anyway.

The Cost of Having Standards

I knew my standard would cost me options.

If I wanted a virgin wife, I couldn’t complain that my dating pool was smaller. I had to accept that many women I found attractive, intelligent and compatible would still be outside my consideration.

Every standard has a cost.

You can demand financial stability and reject someone you would otherwise love. You can insist on physical attraction, religious compatibility, sexual compatibility or a particular family structure and end up with fewer options.

The mistake is wanting the standard without wanting to pay its price.

I was willing to pay it.

There would be women I liked whom I would never date because they didn’t fit something I considered important. I had to accept that without turning those women into villains.

A standard is only honest when you’re willing to live with what it excludes.

I Wasn’t Choosing Who Was Worthy

I wasn’t deciding which women were worthy of marriage. I was deciding what I wanted my marriage to look like.

If a woman had a sexual history I didn’t want in my wife, I could walk away without pretending she was less valuable, less moral or less capable of being a good wife.

And if a woman rejected me because my own sexual history didn’t meet her standard, she wouldn’t owe me an explanation either.

We are free to choose what we can accept in a spouse.

But that freedom comes with responsibility. If you have a standard, you have to own the consequences of keeping it.

Someone Doesn’t Have to Be Bad for You to Say No

This is probably the most important thing I learned from having this preference: someone doesn’t have to be guilty of anything for you to say no.

A woman can be intelligent, kind and attractive and still be completely wrong for the marriage you want.

We often want the other person to have done something wrong because it makes rejection easier to justify.

But marriage isn’t a courtroom.

You don’t have to prove that someone is bad before deciding that they aren’t right for you.

That’s why I think we should be honest about the standards we actually care about. If something matters to you, don’t marry someone while secretly hoping you’ll eventually stop caring about it.

You may tell yourself that their past won’t bother you, only to discover years later that you never truly accepted it.

When that happens, the other person ends up paying for a decision they had no control over. You’re resentful about a past they can’t change because you weren’t honest with yourself about what you could accept in the first place.

It is kinder to walk away early than to marry someone and punish them later for failing to become the person you secretly wanted.

So, Why Did I Never Date a Non-Virgin Woman?

Because I wanted a particular kind of marriage.

I wanted my wife and me to experience sex together for the first time and to enter marriage with the same sexual history. I knew myself well enough to understand that ignoring that preference could create resentment later.

But having that preference didn’t make me morally superior.

A virgin woman wasn’t automatically better than a non-virgin woman, and wanting a virgin didn’t make me entitled to one. I also had no right to insult women who made different choices.

My preference helped me decide who I wanted to marry and who I was willing to walk away from. That meant accepting that some women I liked would never be right for the marriage I wanted.

I didn’t need everyone to agree with my standard.

I needed to be honest enough to live by it — and mature enough to accept the people it excluded without judging their worth.

You don’t just get to choose what you want. You also have to accept what your choice costs you.

-Victor Mong