From the outside looking in, Amanda McCracken’s dating life in her 20s and 30s probably looked like the dating lives of many other young people.
She had been through a series of situations, one-off dates, and affairs. But unlike many other adults, McCracken’s short-term relationships lacked sex. The journalist and author, now 48, said she didn’t lose her virginity (which she defines as sexual intercourse) until she was 41.
McCracken wasn’t abstaining from sex for religious reasons, but she says it may have started out that way. Rather, she attributes her decades of celibacy to an addiction to limerence, the intense passion that often accompanies early relationships.
McCracken said her focus led her to pursue unavailable men, which kept her from finding a committed relationship, which kept her from having sex. The author details her journey with limerence and late virginity in her book, When Longing Becomes Lover: A True Story of Overcoming Limerence to Find True Love from Infatuation, Rejection, and Perfectionism, released in February.
“I waited until I was 41 to have sex, and I waited for a committed, loving relationship,” McCracken says. “What I realized, perhaps in my late 30s, was that I was basically sabotaging my chances at healthy, committed, loving relationships by dating people who were emotionally and physically unavailable. And because of that, I was staying in a familiar place of longing for what I didn’t have. … It was the longing itself that was keeping me from seeing the potentially healthy relationships that were right in front of me.
“I felt worthless.”
When McCracken was about 16 years old, she signed a pledge of chastity. It was a move motivated partly by her devout Christian upbringing and partly by her own love of challenge.
“I grew up very goal-oriented,” McCracken says. “Also, as an athlete, like an endurance athlete, I think, ‘I’m going to get to the finish line. Just give me some distance.'”
In the end, Ms. McCracken eased her mind, saying that instead of waiting until marriage, they would wait until they had a mutually exclusive, loving relationship. In her 20s, McCracken thought she had found a relationship with a man in the military. After nine months of dating, she told him she felt ready to have sex.
He said he wasn’t interested.
McCracken says his reaction shattered her confidence and began a short-term relationship that lasted several years. McCracken believes that by idealizing men she knew were not right for her, she was sabotaging herself from future long-term relationships and from feeling hurt and rejected.
“I just kind of rewinded it,” she says. “Like, ‘Okay, I’m just going to date a bunch of people who are never going to commit to me. That way I don’t have to, for example, risk breaking my heart and go on dates again.’
In 2014, McCracken, then 36, appeared on Katie Couric’s talk show for a segment about late virginity. McCracken said Couric gave him some tough advice when the cameras weren’t rolling.
A message from the organizer? Ditch the “fairy tale princess syndrome” and just have sex. No knight in shining armor will come to sweep you off your feet.
“It really felt like a slap in the face,” McCracken said. Couric did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment.
McCracken says Couric’s words didn’t ring true for her either. As it turns out, McCracken wasn’t sabotaging her romantic life because he thought she was a princess. Quite the opposite.
“I felt it was unfair,” McCracken says. “That’s the pattern I’ve been in for years.”
How Amanda McCracken found love
Ultimately, Ms. McCracken wisely dealt with her limerence problem, but it took a long time to cure it. Therapy helped. She recalls her therapist having her write in her diary, “I am ready and worthy of a deep, intimate, loving relationship.”
And in the end, such a relationship found her.
McCracken met David Butler at a local rooftop bar in Boulder, Colorado. At the time, Butler had just gotten divorced after 18 years of marriage. For McCracken, their romance felt like a slow burn and wasn’t what she was used to.
After nine months of dating, the couple traveled to Huahine Island in French Polynesia. According to Tahiti Islands Travel, the island means “women’s womb” in English. She thought it was a good place to lose her virginity. Butler proposed on the same trip.
McCracken said Butler’s perseverance showed her how special he was.
McCracken and Butler now have a 5-year-old daughter. She is enjoying married life and motherhood. She still has that “aspirational energy,” she says, but now she channels it in healthier ways: writing, traveling, and other projects.
So, was it worth the wait?
“I’m not going to say I’m proud,” she says. “Not really. But I feel like in my story, I ultimately stayed true to what I set out to do…I’m still the same person with goals and aspirations and looking to the future. But I’m also much more able to sit in the present and be grateful for what I have.”
