He was twenty-five years old and had never gone to bed with a woman until he married Mrs. Elliot. He wanted to keep himself pure so that he could bring to his wife the same purity of mind and body that he expected from her. He called it to himself living straight. He had been in love with various girls before he kissed Mrs. Elliot and always told them sooner or later that he had led a clean life. Nearly all the girls lost interest in him. He was shocked and really horrified at the way girls would become engaged to and marry men whom they must know had dragged themselves through the gutter. He once tried to warn a girl he knew against a man of whom he had almost proof that he had been a rotter at college and a very unpleasant incident had resulted.

From “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot,” by Ernest Hemingway

At the time that Hemingway wrote this short story, most men expected their women to be virgins. They did not conceive that, prior to their engagements, their other halves might have enjoyed the pleasure of the flesh with other men. Men did not preserve their virginity for their future wives on purpose. It was either a matter of opportunities, of getting “lucky.” Sexual relationship between men and women was a mine field where you could find yourself before an altar under duress. Women, however, did not care about men’s chastity since they valued other qualities more than their men’s naiveness on the subject.