My boyfriend had taken me out for dinner at a nice restaurant and we were both a little tipsy from the wine we had drunk. We had been dating about a month and that night he invited me back to his house. I was giddy, excited, mentally repeating “I’m finally going to lose my virginity” over and over.

The sex was nice, and lasted several hours. I cried without realising it – not because I was sad but because I just felt this overwhelming rush of intense emotion. There was no pain, no bleeding, and afterwards I held him tight and just breathed in his scent, still dizzy from the night’s activities.

We took a bath together, and laughed and talked. It was one of the most open and emotionally intimate experiences of my life. To have a man accept me without criticising any aspect of me, to feel so wanted by somebody, was incredible.

I took the bus back home while writing about it in my notebook – I wanted something to remember it by. Having felt (stupidly) inferior to other girls my age, most of whom had already had sex, finally losing my virginity made me feel awesome and a little more normal.

Sadly, one of my male friends didn’t feel the same way. When he discovered I’d had sex he began calling me a whore, a slut. He claimed I’d lost something I could never get back, said I was somehow changed as a person.

His remarks got to me a little, though I tried not to let them. For a while they made me feel ashamed and less worthy for having had sex. Eventually it began to dawn on me that nobody should ever be made to feel that way, and I stopped trying to justify myself to him. I cut him out of my life pretty soon after that. I can only hope he’ll eventually grow up and get out of that mindset.