My Two Decades Dating as a Late-in-Life Virgin

On learning to receive love

Amanda McCracken, author of memoir When Longing Becomes Your Lover

The buck-naked auburn-bearded mountain guide turned local strip club bouncer roused me out of sleep when he rolled out of my bed at approximately 3 a.m. “I’m leaving,” Sean declared.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. The numbing effects of the three glasses of tempranillo had begun to wear off leaving, behind an intense pulse in my head.

“You know you can’t control me,” said the man I’d been on four dates with. Sean and I had both sexually pleasured one another that night, but not in the complete sense he later texted me he’d wanted: sexual intercourse.

After dating for over two decades as a late-in-life virgin, Sean wasn’t the first male to call me controlling or selfish. But he was the first to get up out of bed in the middle of the night and walk out. Pissed.

That night, at 39 years old, I felt like a whorish virgin past her prime guilty of disappointing yet another man. Sean was my type: tall, ripped, smart, adventurous, elusive, and (self-pronounced) unavailable.

The next morning, I texted Sean, “What did I do wrong? Can you help me understand what happened last night?”

His lack of response was the excruciating rejection I’d grown used to enduring.

The religious vow of celibacy I’d taken in high school had taken a beating as I’d navigated the secular world of hookups in my twenties, trying to maintain being both desirable and “good” at the same time. In a sex-positive dating world where nothing felt sacred anymore and connections were ambiguous (at best), I wanted something to matter. As a perfectionist and endurance runner, I was hell-bent on reserving sexual intercourse until I was in a committed and loving relationship—no matter how long the journey took.

But I continually self-sabotaged by putting myself in situationships with men who weren’t interested in commitment and made me feel discardable. I’d fall into limerence (rumination on an idealized love interest) with these avoidant men I saw as flawless and invest a ridiculous amount of mental energy imagining “us” in the future together. It was a well-worn path I kept trudging, trying to convince new men of my worth, trying to win their love.

I was a house blend of limerence, sexual anorexia, and a love addiction.

Nationally known psychologist and sexual addiction expert Patrick Carnes describes sexual anorexia as “an obsessive state in which the physical, mental and emotional task of avoiding sex dominates one’s life. Like self-starvation with food, deprivation with sex can make one feel powerful and defended against all hurts.”

The conquest element of love addiction satisfied the athletic drive in me that thrived on the chase. The anticipation element of limerence fed my ADHD brain the drip of dopamine it desired. And the controlling aspect of sexual anorexia kept me feeling safe. At the core of all of these “issues” was the belief that I was unlovable, but that finding love was my most important need.

Sexual anorexics are described by Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (S.L.A.A.) as having addictive obsessions with unavailable people. They admit to issues with perfectionism and loneliness. They fear entering or exiting a relationship, intimacy of connection with others, suffocation or loss of self. I read this description aghast: This was me. By remaining in control of who I had sex with I could feel like I had some control of my life when all else felt uncertain.

Curious, I did what any linguist would do: I looked up the etymology of the word “anorexia,” which was coined by a male physician in 1873. According to etymology.com, “anorexia: can be broken down through a Greek lens: an- “without” + orexis “appetite, desire,” from oregein “long for,” literally “reach out (one’s hand)” (from Proto-Indo-European root *reg- “move in a straight line”) + abstract noun ending -ia.

But when I’ve spoken with friends who have struggled with the eating disorder anorexia, they are not lacking an appetite. They long for the food they restrict themselves from having, sometimes even imagining an elaborate meal they hunger for but won’t enjoy. I wasn’t lacking desire. I fantasized about sex with men I wasn’t having.

Whether with food or sex, anorexics fear getting their needs met, and somewhere buried in that fear is a lack of trust. In my case, I neither trusted myself to make the right decision nor trusted men wouldn’t leave me. This fear and lack of trust were tightly woven into my nervous system at birth.

My mother disappeared after my birth, even if for only three weeks. During delivery, she had a cerebral hemorrhage which resulted in two grand mal seizures. Miraculously, doctors say, she recovered to come home to me, still hopped up on pain meds. When I would ask her as a teen about my birth story, she’d jokingly attribute her stroke to my indecisiveness (not her holding her breath, as she later told me). “You kept going in and out of the birth canal. You couldn’t make up your mind then. Can’t make it up now,” she’d tell me.

Because of this, I distanced myself from the very people who might love and commit to me—because I might hurt them too.

I didn’t owe Sean, or any of the situationships, anything. However, I did owe myself the pleasure of spending time with someone who would respect and care for me. But that required me believing I was worthy of love.

After dating over 100 men over 25 years (and spending those last two years with a somatic therapist), a switch flipped. When Dave showed up in my life during my 40th year with genuine curiosity, care, and vulnerability, I didn’t run. I trusted him in all his imperfections and trusted him with my own. At first, receiving his love felt irritating, like wool on my skin. But slowly, with time, I softened and melted into his arms that now embrace both our daughter and myself.

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Join Open Secrets for a Q&A with Amanda McCracken on being a late-in-life virgin and her memoir When Longing Becomes Your Lover on February 18 at 8:30 p.m. ET on Substack Live.

Amanda McCracken is an award-winning journalist passionate about experiences that highlight the intersection of wellness, travel, and relationships. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Vogue, National Geographic, Elle, NPR, Outside, ESPN, SELF, Runner’s World, and many others. McCracken is the author of the memoir-plus When Longing Becomes Your Lover: Breaking from Infatuation, Rejection and Perfectionism to Find Authentic Love: A True Story of Overcoming Limerence. She published her first article about longing in 2013, which led to additional articles featuring personal anecdotes and deep research and interviews with the BBC and Katie Couric. She is now considered a “limerence expert” and intimacy advocate. Her 2023 TED Talk, “How Longing Keeps Us From Healthy Relationships,” and her podcast, The Longing Lab, highlight how longing can become self sabotaging and shares how to change our patterns of longing. McCracken is also a part-time university instructor, massage therapist, triathlon coach, and competitive athlete. Raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, McCracken put down roots with her husband and daughter in Boulder, Colorado, after a trip around the world aboard the Peace Boat.