Although most of the posts found in The Sex Column won’t always be based on my personal experience, I feel that it is important to share my relationship with sex prior to The Sex Column. You should also take some time to understand your current relationship with sex as well.
Growing up I didn’t talk about sex with my parents, well my parents didn’t talk about sex with me. I mean yes I had “the talk”-ish…I think, but sex just wasn’t a topic we discussed. My parents told us to close our eyes during sex scenes in movies until they didn’t. I am not sure why they stopped, I don’t remember there being a conversation about it either. As I got older I remember my parents randomly asking if I had sex to which I would respond “no”. I entered highschool and got into a serious long term relationship, one day I got an enormous and extremely dark hickey. I had heard of them and knew what they looked like but I had never had one before. I honestly didn’t even know that I had it. My friend told me it was there and when I looked in the mirror all I could say was “my mother is going to kill me,” I had never seen a hickey that looked like that before. My friend at the time gave me some options to hide and possibly get rid of it. I tried everything. Each day I made sure to completely cover it and I was successful until I believed it to be unnoticeable and boy was I wrong, my mother noticed it.
My point in telling this story is because of the conversation we had immediately after. She yelled and asked me all sorts of uncomfortable questions. My mother was very vulgar and I often perceived her tone to be harsh so this was not going well for me. She asked questions like “Where did this happen?” “Are you f**king?” “Where were his hands?” “Do you want to have sex with him?” etc. I was cringing. I never wanted to discuss sex or anything remotely close to it again, at least not with my mom. I will say though, I did take something from this conversation that helped me tremendously to ensure that I would not regret my decision when I was ready to make it. Not in her exact words but basically she said that if you would not be okay with never speaking to the person again after losing your virginity to them then don’t have sex with them. Writing this out sounds a bit crazy but I don’t think it is. My mother also brought me a mirror shortly after.
Fast forward, I am assuming she told my aunt because we had a talk about losing my virginity. She basically told me that when I was ready I needed to be sure to use protection and that I would need to tell someone so that I could go to the doctor for a pap smear. She honestly made it seem like if I didn’t tell anyone and/or have this pap smear that I would die. Lol
Fast forward, I am no longer a virgin an am actively having sex. Keep in mind I am using the word “actively” very loosely here. Lol Anyway, I still haven’t had healthy conversations about sex with an adult. All I know, at this point, for a fact in regard to sex is that you can get pregnant, STD’s, and that you need to use protection. I was always very shy, quiet, and went with the flow when it came to sex and not because I wanted to be. Simply because I wasn’t comfortable and I didn’t know much. It wasn’t until I started dating women that I begin to educate myself more about sex. I still went with the flow and was timid but I was at that point able to say “no” when I needed to.
Conclusion
My relationship with sex for the majority of my life has been unhealthy. I believed that it was something that only happened between people who were in love with each other. That if you had sex at an early age it said something negative about the person you were. That sex was for the man. That if you had sex with multiple people you were a “hoe”. That talking about sex was distasteful and taboo. That once you had sex with someone you had to have sex with them every time they wanted to.
These thoughts may sound weird and even crazy to some but they were real thoughts for me that could have been cleared up by having healthy conversations about sex. Although my relationship with and thoughts around sex have since changed I want The Sex Column to be the safe space for women, young women included, to come have healthy and non judge mental conversations around sex.
What would you say your relationship with sex was like growing up compared to now?
- Condoms Photo by Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition on Unsplash
- Mean Girls gif found on google
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