What We Were Never Taught:

How Childhood Shame, Purity Culture, and Porn Scripts Shaped Your Sex Life—And How to Unlearn It

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Are you struggling with sex and shame? Maybe afraid to explore your kinks-or even bring them up-to a partner of 20 years who in every other way knows you inside and out? Or, perhaphs, struggling with ED? Or, maybe your in your 20's or 30's-or even older-and terrified you will be the real life 40 Year Old Virgin forever?

You don’t become sexually dysfunctional at 45.

You become repressed at 5, shamed at 12, misinformed at 15, and left to fend for yourself at 17.

The dysfunction? That’s just the echo.”

We didn’t grow up in a vacuum—we grew up in classrooms where sex was whispered about, if acknowledged at all. In households where “touching yourself” was met with a slap on the wrist or a look of thin-lipped disappointment. In locker rooms where bravado masked confusion. On school buses and in bedrooms where our sex education came from porn, gossip, jokes, and the occasional poorly-hidden magazine.

This wasn’t accidental. It was designed.

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Purity Before Pleasure: A Legacy of Abstinence and Control

If you grew up in the U.S., your body—especially your sexual body—was likely handed to you with a warning label: “Dangerous. Shameful. Only to be used within marriage. Preferably missionary.”

The remnants of Puritanical doctrine still haunt our culture. Though the witch trials are long gone, the obsession with sexual control remains. Abstinence-only sex education was—and in many places, still is—the state-sanctioned approach. It offered no real instruction on consent, pleasure, anatomy, or emotional intimacy. Just fear. Just “No.”

No wonder so many adults are still waiting for their “Yes.”

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What Shame Taught Us to Forget

Shame is a powerful teacher. It doesn’t just teach you not to touch—it teaches you not to feel. It teaches you to disconnect, to compartmentalize. To separate arousal from affection, curiosity from confidence, and desire from worth.

Boys were told their erections were dirty and girls were told their worth was their virginity. Masturbation was a punchline or a sin. Queerness was erased. Bodies were only beautiful if they conformed to impossible standards. And no one—no one—was talking about pleasure as something holy, mutual, or healing.

You were trained to repress, not to relate. To hide, not to explore.

And then you were expected to just… figure it out.

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Porn, Peers, and the Patchwork of “Education”

With no trusted adults or institutions offering real guidance, we turned elsewhere.

Porn became our teacher. Friends became our sexperts. Urban legends about G-spots and blowjobs and “how long real men last” filled the gaps left by silence. But those weren’t facts—they were scripts. Performance scripts. Scripts that rewarded domination, numbness, and endless stamina. Scripts that said “this is what sex should look like,” even if your body, your desires, or your relationships didn’t match.

You may have had sex, but you didn’t learn intimacy. You may have performed, but you didn’t feel empowered. You may have tried to please her, but no one ever taught you how to please yourself.

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When the Ghosts Show Up in the Bedroom

Fast-forward to adulthood.

You're married—but feel more like roommates. You’re “experienced”—but sex feels mechanical. You’re “normal”—but secretly ashamed of your kinks. You’ve got a job, a mortgage, and a browser history you’d never share. You check all the boxes but can’t help wondering: Is this it?

That dull ache? That distance? That craving for something more honest, more raw, more real?

That’s not dysfunction. That’s your humanity knocking.

And sometimes that humanity comes wrapped in awkwardly hilarious packaging.

Like the client of mine who lives at home as an overnight caretaker for his disabled sister. In a rare moment of self-investment, he ordered a Fleshlight online—only for his mother to intercept the package and open it. The man is in his thirties. But he had to claim it was a foreign textile import from work—“must’ve gotten switched in transit”—and promise to return it immediately. Of course, he kept it. But that moment? That shame spiral? That’s what decades of repression does. It teaches us that even our private pleasure must come with an alibi.

And yet, on the other end of the spectrum, there’s this: Another client, married over a decade, hadn’t had intercourse in seven years. On my advice, he bought his wife a simple sex toy. Nothing wild. Just an invitation. That same week? They had sex three times. Not because she was “broken” or he was “defective.” But because they were both starved of safety, novelty, and non-judgmental touch.

The problem isn’t your desire. It’s the silence around it.

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Unlearning Isn’t Easy—But It’s Possible

Here’s the good news: What was learned can be unlearned.

You don’t need to carry someone else’s shame anymore. You don’t need to perform someone else’s script. You get to write your own. Pleasure isn’t something you “earn” by doing it all right. It’s something you discover by daring to be present. Curious. Connected. Whole.

You’re allowed to explore what turns you on. You’re allowed to feel desire without apology. You’re allowed to stop chasing “normal” and start cultivating fulfilling.

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Reclamation Starts With Awareness

Start by asking:

What were you taught about sex—and what did those lessons leave out?

When did you first feel shame about your body, your pleasure, your desire?

What does intimacy feel like to you—not just in your genitals, but in your chest, your gut, your nervous system?

These are the questions that real sexual satisfaction is built on. Not technique. Not performance. Not pornified perfection.

But connection. Permission. Practice.

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Pleasure isn’t selfish. It’s sacred.

And it starts the moment you stop hiding from yourself.