I didn't read it that way. Sometimes only friends can ask you the questions you don't want to be asked. My friends and I will often ask each other questions that are actually probing, but would be judgmental if they weren't coming from friends. If you trust her ability to vet her friends, then it might not be shaming, but just friendly sound-boarding and advice. If I had a friend that wanted to have sex but wasn't because she hadn't yet met someone she wanted to marry, I'd definitely tell her to consider to dropping the 'marriage material' requirement if having sex was that important to her. But I do agree, we obsess about sex far too much.Her friends are cunts. They shouldn't be shaming her for not having sex, or saying it has something to do with her that she isn't having sex.
I guess I'm just basing it off of what I've experienced and assumed she's experiencing the same. I've never heard those phrases meant constructively, even from what I would have called "friends", and it makes you feel really bad when you hear it. It's usually said with the implication that if you aren't having sex you must be miserable and depressed, and I've definitely heard these words quoted in the article: As if you are doing something inhuman or so depressing to them that they don't want to think about it. Usually they even go as far as to say you aren't experiencing the whole of human existence. "lower your standards" and such is also quite silly considering many women love being around me, and if I so desired I could easily go down that path with them I just don't want to. Sex is never "just sex", as people put it, with sex always comes waves and waves of drama that I just don't want to deal with, and being mentally ill I have plenty of drama in my head already without others adding to it. I now only keep friends that don't ask those questions at all and mind their own business. Most of what I currently have as friends don't even really know for sure what sexual orientation I am and that's the way I like it. Maybe her friends didn't mean it that way, but it's definitely received that way usually.“How can you go so long?” they ask. “I can’t imagine.”