I was a married virgin, terrified to have sex. Then I met a handsome stranger and everything changed

Alyne Tamir wasn’t the first person to be a virgin on her wedding night.

An increasing number of men and women are saving themselves for marriage – in 2023, the number of virgins in America hit record numbers, with 10 percent of men and seven percent of women aged between 22 and 34 reporting never having had sex.

However, the fact that she remained one for several years after – until she was 27 – is far less common.

Alyne – an entrepreneur with 333k followers on Instagram – was brought up in the Mormon church, and taught that sex outside marriage would send her straight to hell.

So, when other kids at high school in LA were gleefully exploring their sexuality, she remained happily, and obliviously, pure.

‘I mean, in high school, nobody liked me that I knew of, so it was just nothing to even worry about,’ she tells The Daily Mail.

By the time she switched to university in Utah, however, something changed – boys suddenly started noticing her, and she launched herself on to the dating scene with abandon.

Collecting proposals from hopeful young men became almost like a game. But still, getting physical was off the table entirely.

Engaged at 22, married at 23 – but Alyne didn’t have sex until she was 27

On the day she married, Alyne was terrified about what would be expected of her on her wedding night

‘I didn’t want to have sex,’ she says. ‘I was afraid of penises. I was like, ‘Oh my, horrifying! Thank God I don’t have to touch them or see them or interact.’

She adds: ‘But I was sexual without acknowledging it… we would make out – me and my boyfriends – and we would be pressing on each other. Now I’m like, ‘Oh, I was orgasming.’ But back then I was just, ‘I’m done kissing now.’

Then along came Max. Hot. Fun. And kind. It also helped that the timing was right. All her friends were getting engaged, and it was expected that she, too, would meet a lovely Mormon man, get married in the Mormon Temple, settle down and raise lots of Mormon kids.

But on her wedding night – in 2012 age 23 – she found herself in a luxurious hotel room with her handsome new husband. And she couldn’t do it.

A year into their marriage, they’d tried most things to move the needle – muscle relaxants, sexy lingerie, even a nude photo shoot – but just attempting sex was still agony.

A gynecologist eventually diagnosed her with vaginismus. ‘It’s when there’s pain from penetration that isn’t medically explainable,’ she was told.

Meaning the problem was psychological. 

In her new book, Dear Alyne, she writes: ‘My body could read my mind, and it knew I was dreading sex. This wasn’t something I could simply wish away.

‘And if I’m being honest, I didn’t do any wishing away. I didn’t want to want to have sex. I didn’t want to want any of this. If I allowed myself to want this, what power did I have over my life? I would be stuck there forever.’

For his part, Max was patient and sweet.

As a child, Alyne divided her time between her Israeli family (left) and her mom in LA (right)

She says that, on the outside, she must have looked strong and together. Inside, she was hollow and broken

‘I think he was internally sad and felt rejected and was trying to be a good partner,’ she says.

They stumbled through their first year until Alyne’s annual summer trip to visit her father and extended family in Israel. While Max had some work to finish up in the US, Alyne went ahead of him, ready to enjoy the sun.

Finally free – from her troubled marriage and her overbearing Mormon family – she lay on the beach in Tel Aviv and started to relax. On the outside, she must have looked strong and together. Inside, she says, she was hollow and broken.

Perhaps the handsome young stranger sensed her sadness? Was that why he struck up a conversation? And was that why she found herself flirting back, playing the game, while resolutely sticking to her: ‘I’m a married woman’ line of defense?

At first, the pair’s friendship seemed innocent enough, as they talked books and philosophy, and explored the city together. But by the time it turned sexual, she says she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – resist.

‘This was a one-time thing,’ she writes in the book, ‘but it wasn’t meaningless. It was my escape. My only broken, faulty, terrible way of communicating, ‘I am suffering.’

It would be another three years before she would fully lose her virginity. But the  handsome stranger on the beach made her realize she perhaps wasn’t as separated from her sexuality as she’d thought.

Why did her body ‘work’ with the stranger and not her husband?

‘I think he was all the things that made me feel seen; the other side of me that’s not seen in the church,’ she says.

Alyne with her Israeli father Ami – who she visited every summer (photographed in 1993)

Now 34, she’s still working through a lifetime of conditioning that told her it was a sin to feel sexually aroused; that she would go to hell as an ‘adulteress’

Alyne travels the world, and runs retreats for like-minded men and women

Alyne’s career as an entrepreneur and investor has introduced her to people like Bill Gates and Jane Goodall

‘And he loved all these philosophy books, so he was really good at moral relativism. He would take my little mind and be like, ‘This is a construct’ … he was building this world in which I’m not a bad person if I do the bad things.

‘I wasn’t in love with him,’ she adds, ‘and I knew it. It was just an escape button’.

Looking back, she realizes it all looks so simple: Why did she not just get a divorce? 

‘But I couldn’t at the time.’

The couple stayed together for another two years – attempting ‘non-penetrative intimacy’ but still falling short of a satisfying sex life – until Max eventually called it a day.

But, even though she dated, she remained resolutely NDTF (not down to f***).

Only when she was 27 – on a beach vacation in Sri Lanka – did she finally lose her virginity.

‘It hurt at first,’ she writes, ‘but this time I was prepared. Breathe in, breathe out, and release your muscles, release control, relax, breathe, everything will be fine.

‘He had no idea it was my first time, and that’s exactly how I wanted it. No pressure, just another day, another normal experience.’

When her breathing strategy worked and her body eventually relented, she writes: ‘I turned my head to hide as I teared up, a little from pain, but more so from a huge sensation of relief. A relief that this was possible. A release from a curse I thought might mark my entire life.’

Now 34, she’s still working through a lifetime of conditioning that told her it was a sin to feel sexually aroused; that she would go to hell as an ‘adulteress’; a woman who had committed the cardinal sin of breaking up her family.

Her years of celibate dating, she says now, were about ‘looking for a safe space to just exist around another person that I like and who didn’t want something from me… I didn’t owe them anything.’

She adds: ‘I think being accepted by men was my proxy, because I didn’t realize I need to accept myself.’

That, she says, is still a process.   

Her years of celibate dating, she says now, were about ‘looking for a safe space to just exist around another person that I like and who didn’t want something from me’

‘I think being accepted by men was my proxy, because I didn’t realize I need to accept myself’

Alyne now runs retreats where they talk about ‘sex, work, investments, secrets, plant medicine, and more’

‘Since the book was written, I was with someone that helped me understand something apparently basic, which is that sex is about connection, which I did not know.

‘He said, ‘It feels like you’re doing a series of steps,’ which I was my whole life. ‘First you do this, then you do this.’ And he’s like, ‘Just feel me and feel you… finishing doesn’t matter. It’s about us connecting.’

‘I started crying because we had just slept together for the first time, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I’m 33 and I do not know how to have sex.’

‘I feel like a 15-year-old… I’m learning. But every time I feel shame, which I still feel, I release it more quickly.’

She adds: ‘I didn’t want to write this book. I don’t want my mom to see this. I don’t want my dad to see this… but the only way I’ve gotten to where I am is because other women wrote their books [and they helped me].

‘So even though it’s painful sharing this stuff and having negative feedback and mean people and being misunderstood, when I get those messages from a 27-year-old who’s married and hasn’t had sex for two years with her husband and she found me, I’m like, ‘Okay, that was worth it.’

She says there’s a surprising number of men and women who relate to her story -those from Muslim cultures, Mennonites and other revivalist US faiths, gay men.

‘There’s even straight men that are happy that it’s being talked about,’ she says.

‘But primarily, it’s women from some sort of religious, Baptist, conservative culture that essentially tries to make you feel bad all the time for something, and it’s just exhausting.’

Dear Alyne: My Years as a Married Virgin by Alyne Tamir is published by HarperOne

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