She remained a virgin until age 41. She had 'an addiction to longing.'

From the outside, Amanda McCracken's dating life in her 20s and 30s probably looked like that of many other young adults.

She'd had strings of situationships, one-off dates and flings. But, unlike that of many other adults, McCracken's short-term relationships all lacked one thing: sex. The journalist and author, now 48, says she didn't lose her virginity, which she defines as having sexual intercourse, until she was 41.

McCracken wasn't refraining from sex for religious reasons, she says, though perhaps it started off that way. Instead, she chalks up her decades of abstinence to an addiction to limerence, or that intense passion that often accompanies early dating.

That focus, McCracken says, left her chasing unavailable men, which kept her from finding a committed relationship, which kept her from having sex. The author details her journey with limerence and being a late-in-life virgin in her book "When Longing Becomes Your Lover: Breaking from Infatuation, Rejection, and Perfectionism to Find Authentic Love: A True Story of Overcoming Limerence," released in February.

"I waited until I was 41 to have sexual intercourse, and I was waiting for a committed and loving relationship," McCracken says. "What I realized probably in my late 30s was that I was basically self-sabotaging my chances of getting in that healthy, committed, loving relationship by dating people who were emotionally or physically unavailable. And so it kind of kept me in that familiar place of longing for that which I didn't have. ... It was longing itself that had kept me from seeing the potentially healthy relationships right in front of me.

'I felt undeserving'

When McCracken was about 16, she signed a purity pledge. It was a move partly motivated by her religious Christian upbringing and partly by her own love for a challenge.

"I grew up very goal-oriented," McCracken says. "Also, as an athlete, like an endurance athlete, I'm like, 'I will make it to the finish line. Give me any distance.'"

Eventually, McCracken softened her view: Instead of waiting until marriage, she'd wait until she was in a mutually exclusive, loving relationship. In her 20s, McCracken thought she'd found that relationship with a man in the military. After nine months of dating, she told him she felt ready to have sex.

He said he wasn't interested.

His reaction, McCracken says, shattered her confidence and kicked off several years of short-term relationships. By idealizing men she knew weren't right for her, McCracken believes she was sabotaging herself from ever getting into another long-term relationship, and thus, from ever getting hurt or rejected again.

"I just kind of reeled it back in," she says. "Like, "OK, well, I'll just date a bunch of people who are never going to commit to me, and then I won't ever have to, say, offer it again with the chance of getting my heart broken."

In 2014, McCracken, then 36, appeared on Katie Couric's talk show for a segment on late-in-life virgins. When the camera's weren't rolling, McCracken says, Couric gave some harsh advice.

The host's message? Drop the "fairytale princess syndrome" and just have sex. No knight in shining armor is coming to sweep you off your feet.

"It really felt like a slap in the face," McCracken says. Couric did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.

McCracken says Couric's words also didn't ring true for her. After all, McCracken wasn't sabotaging her romantic life because she thought she was some princess. Quite the opposite.

"I felt undeserving," McCracken says. "That is the pattern that I had been in for so long."

How Amanda McCracken found love

Eventually, McCracken got wise to her limerence problem, but it took a lot to heal from it. Therapy helped. She recalls how her therapist had her write in her journal: "I'm ready for and worthy of a deeply intimate and loving relationship."

And eventually, that kind of relationship found her.

McCracken met David Butler at a local rooftop bar in Boulder, Colorado. At the time, Butler was newly divorced after an 18-year marriage. To McCracken, their romance felt like a slow burn − not something she was used to.

After dating for nine months, the couple took a trip to the French Polynesian island of Huahine, which, according to Tahiti Islands Travel, roughly translates to "woman's womb" in English. She thought it a fitting place to lose her virginity. That same trip, Butler proposed.

Butler's patience, McCracken says, showed her how special he was.

Today, McCracken and Butler share a 5-year-old daughter. She enjoys married life and motherhood. She still has that "longing energy," she says, but now she channels it in healthier ways − into writing, traveling and other projects.

So, was waiting worth it?

"I'm not going to say I'm proud," she says. "It's not something like that. But I do feel like there is something in my story where I do feel like, in the end, I was true to what I had set out to do ... I'm still that same person who's goal-oriented and longing and looking towards the future. But I'm also much more able to sit in the present and appreciate what I have now."