Q I’m a 25-year-old woman and I’ve never had sex. I’m too embarrassed to tell anyone that I am still a virgin so I just avoid seeing guys for more than a few dates. I’ve always had this dream of waiting till I was in love, but that still hasn’t happened. And now, having to explain that I have never had sex is putting me off meeting someone.

A Though there is no right time to have sex, according to a 2006 BBC Radio 1 survey by the age of 25 you are one of only 4 per cent of the British population who have not yet lost their virginity.

Holding out for meaningful sex is a worthy aspiration but, as I suspect you are beginning to realise, at a certain point virginity can become a burden. When the rest of your peer group are fully fledged members of the “sexually active club” and you are still waiting for Mr Right to carry you across the threshold, dreams of a first time that is “really special” are slowly but surely being replaced by the twin fears of exclusion and humiliation.

Having failed to trade your “hopes” for real experience, you are left with a choice between declaring yourself “the last virgin in Britain” or embarrassing yourself in an attempt to avoid winning that title.

In discussing virginity, the emphasis is always on stemming teenage promiscuity, but research suggests that delaying sex may also be harmful, so you really should get a move on. Two years ago a study carried out at Columbia University found that those who lose their virginity at a later age — around 21 to 23 — are more likely to experience sexual dysfunction problems in later life.

The study’s findings suggest that men and women who delay sexual activity build up enormous anxiety about it and when they finally have sex if things don’t go smoothly it reinforces the negative thinking or inhibitions that caused them to delay in the first place.

When it comes to first-time sex the gap between expectation and actualisation is huge for both genders, but women complicate the issue further by believing that they should be “in love” with the person with whom they lose their virginity. Young men just don’t project the same emotional expectations on to their early sexual experiences.

For example, in a leading US study 47.5 per cent of teenage girls cited “affection for partner” as their reason for losing their virginity, compared with 25 per cent of boys, whereas nearly half of boys cited curiosity or readiness for sex as a motivation compared with a quarter of girls (Laumann et al, 1994).

Being older, you probably recognise the impossibility of wanting Mr Right to provide your first sexual experience. The other upside to being more mature is that whomever you decide to terminate your virginity with is likely to have some experience.

You don’t need to tell your first partner that you are a virgin — and as long as you don’t shriek when he takes off his pants, a man in the throes of passion is unlikely to notice — but make sure that you are well prepared. My book The Sex Book (Cassell) is a thorough guide to sex and safe sex.

There are also useful personal accounts of first times on the Avert website (www.avert.org/morefirsttime.htm). A few are full of the joys of spring, such as: “He entered me and we both came at the same time,” but the following extract is more typical.“I was not enjoying it one bit, but I tried to act like I was. He finished and then he rolled over on his side and laid there quietly. I laid beside him and I thought, ‘Wow . . . I got like absolutely nothing out of this at all.’ After that, he never talked to me again. I am older now (24) and have grown much wiser about men. I realise now that he was just a jerk. Sex with other boys was more enjoyable and I have now been in a relationship for two years, and we have a great and healthy sex life.”

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