i can do it.. but i can't do it...

[smc]

As someone much older than you, I'd like to offer this advice. It follows largely from what franalexes suggests.

1. It's not just, as she writes, that "having sex with someone you love is a heck of a lot easier than trying to love someone you merely had sex with." There's something very special to that sex. It is genuine lovemaking. And the fear of being a first-timer sexually only exacerbates this knowledge of the difference, and makes you wonder.

2. On the trust issue, it's also about trusting yourself. There's something to be said for getting the loss of virginity over with and then moving on from there. But you have to trust yourself as much, if not more than the partner, that now is your time. That doesn't just have to do with the love issue, but everything else you can imagine.

The good news might be that you are thinking these things through, and that it sounds (at least for now) that you are not going to lose your virginity in a drunken stupor at a party, or some similar circumstance, where any prior consideration of how you want to handle this rite of passage is essentially out the window.