How To Lose Your 'Virginity' at 43

How To! with Mike Pesca

Peach Fish Projects

Education, How To

4.3 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For most of her life, Elizabeth was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which forbids having sex outside of marriage. But she recently left the Mormon faith, and now she's ready to have sex for the first time—at age 43. On this episode of How To!, Courtney Martin brings on Nicole Hardy, author of Confessions of a Latter-Day Virgin to offer Elizabeth advice that's relevant to anyone who's ready to tap into their sexuality later in life—but unsure how (or where! or with whom!) to start.

If you liked this episode check out: How To Orgasm, How To Make Sexual Consent Sexy, and How To Be Free of Body Shame

Do you have a problem that needs solving? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show. Subscribe for free on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen.

The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi everyone, I'm Susie Weiss, and I've noticed there's just simply not enough podcasts in the world. So I'm launching my own. Let's go. Let's go, baby. Second Thought is a weekly show about pop culture. The stuff everyone's been binging, arguing about, obsessing over. Here's the thing about heated rivalry. I mean, even the most devoted swifties, I think we can agree, not our best work. We'll be hosting thoughtful conversations with culture's most important figures. Talk about genius.
0:22.6	Talk about generational talent.
0:23.7	Coming to headphones near you on
0:25.0	April 17th with a first guest you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
0:30.2	My name is Elizabeth. I am 43 years old and I just recently left the Mormon church. I grew up in it and have been in my whole life and I at the end of last year just realized it was not working for me and it was time for something new. Welcome to how to. I'm Courtney Martin. How to, as you know, is an advice show, and we get questions
0:56.8	about everything from how to pay off your student loans to like how to have a yard sale. And then
1:03.6	there are deeply personal questions, like Elizabeth, which arrived in an email with a subject line,
1:10.4	How to Lose My Virginity in
1:12.4	my 40s. Okay, now just a heads up, we are obviously going to talk about sex in this conversation.
1:18.7	So, in her message, Elizabeth wrote, I grew up in the Mormon church, which has very strict
1:24.2	rules about sex outside of marriage. I never got married.
1:27.7	So no sex.
1:29.5	And now I don't even know how to go about doing this.
1:33.5	It's a very good question.
1:36.0	Obviously there are many, many different forms of sexual physical intimacy.
1:40.2	But culturally, we often hear about people experiencing their firsts as teens.
1:45.6	During that time, there's awkwardness, fumbling, learning together.
1:49.6	And when you don't have that developmental period, for whatever reason, you feel behind.
1:54.8	Like everyone has this script or knowledge, and you don't.
1:58.3	It can be deeply isolating. Which is why today's listener Elizabeth wants some guidance.
2:04.0	Teachings of the Mormon church include not having sex outside of marriage, and that's something
2:09.2	that is taken very seriously. People have been kicked out of the church for having sex outside
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Peach Fish Projects, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Peach Fish Projects and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.