I’m still a virgin, and it’s starting to get on my last nerve. Especially, since I clocked 25 in April. When I think about my love life or the lack of it, I feel stressed. I ask myself, “How did this happen?” Then I remember that it is my mother’s fault.

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She raised me this way. She was very strict, and disciplined me to be very protective of the values she instilled in me. I only tasted freedom when I started living on my own.

With my newfound independence, things got really strange for me. I made a crazy gang of friends who were everything my mother taught me to stay away from. They would smoke, drink, take lean, and do almost every kind of drug you can think of. There were times they were high enough to have group sex right in my presence. Weird, right?

I held on to my values but at some point, I got influenced. I started sipping small amounts of alcohol and going clubbing with them. I lived wild and large, in a way that would make my mother ashamed of me. The only thing I couldn’t bring myself to do was sleep with someone.

I had so much pride, Jesus Christ! No boy in our group was ever allowed to touch me. That was a red line, and they knew not to cross it because I made it clear from the start. Sometimes, I was even hard on my female friends. I would say things like, “Who raised you people? Why are you doing this? Who will marry you?” — bla bla bla.

Funny enough, most of those friends are happily married now, and here I am writing this.

One day, I had a huge crush on a guy, and a friend helped connect us. It could have been something beautiful, but he was in such a rush to get intimate with me. That killed my interest in him.

It isn’t that I am saving myself for marriage. I just want to take myself to get to know someone first and build a connection with them before it gets to that part. Unfortunately, the men I meet are not patient.

I don’t know if it’s happening everywhere else or it’s just here in South Sudan, but people here have normalised sleeping with strangers on the first date. That’s a total no-no for me. As much as I want a relationship that will lead to marriage, there’s no way I’m going to sleep with someone I barely know just to achieve that goal.

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I remember a time when I decided to come clean and told a guy that I had never done it before. I honestly thought he would be the one. I told him I needed time to get to know him better. He got excited and pretended to love me for about a month, but the red flags were everywhere. Eventually, I was like, “Heyyy, we’re done.” I had to let him go.

I’m kinda beautiful and well-raised. Please don’t tell me you’re going to hit on the first, second, or even third date. I just want to get to know you first, feel comfortable, and build a connection before we even think about going down that road. That’s all I ask for. I don’t think it’s too much — but hey, I keep losing connections every day because I won’t put out.

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I really don’t know what my future holds, but I’m scared and stressed. I want to fall in love and get married. It’s just worrying that no man wants to take me seriously if I won’t let them have my body.

Sometimes I tell myself, maybe life would be easier if I just gave them what they wanted. But I can’t. My upbringing has a strong hold on me when it comes to my sexuality. So now I’m the one here asking myself, “Who raised you? Why are you not having a good time like everyone else? Who will marry you?”

—Tabitha

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