Many people and couples arrive in my office longing to reclaim a sense of intimacy, pleasure, or connection. Perhaps they have never fully felt a sense of release during sexual experiences, whether that’s a literal orgasm or just the ability to enjoy intimacy without their body subtly bracing or the “vibes” feeling off between both partners. Other times, clients describe not being able to relax, or feeling like they have a lot of voices going on in their mind while they are engaging in intimacy. They might feel exposed, guilty, or uncomfortable with having certain desires, even when they consciously believe there is nothing wrong with what they want.
Usually, there is a sense of wanting more freedom and play and release, an ability to let go, while their bodies are bracing and their minds are suffocated by criticism when they’re trying to access pleasure. My role as a sex therapist and trauma therapist is to support my clients in exploring what an embodied, intentional, shame-free sexual experience or erotic life could look like for them, and to discover the blocks that are getting in the way.
What Is Sexual Shame?
It probably will come as no surprise that one of– if not the– biggest challenge that gets in the way of many of my client’s work around sexuality, intimacy, and erotic exploration is shame. We do not live in a culture that relates to sex in an embracing, non-pathologizing, positive, and relaxed manner. Instead, we are taught from a young age to brace. Many of us share similar stories: our eyes got covered during films when characters began to touch one another, our parent’s bodies stiffen when we asked questions about our bodies, jokes were made to shake off discomfort around sexual topics, and then there was the silence, because sometimes what is not said has the biggest impact.
Sexual shame can be described as the experience of feeling embarrassed or ashamed of your erotic desires and longings, or feeling like there is something about your engagement in sexuality that is wrong. Sometimes it attaches to a particular desire, fantasy, or experience while other times, it feels more pervasive, like there is something wrong with you for wanting and engaging in pleasure at all. And shame can also attach to not wanting sex, not responding in the way you “think you should,” or not having the kind of erotic life that other people seem to expect– an erotic life that perhaps is not as represented in dominant culture.
The human experience is incredibly varied. Asexuality is not pathological, and ace people have varied relationships with desire, pleasure, and intimacy themselves. There is no particular amount of sexual interest that I am trying to help every person arrive at. Yet messages to the contrary surround us. Just last night I was watching 90 Day Fiance (such a fascinating show for observing human psychology ha) and everyone gasped when one couples described the amount of sex they were having, as though there is some kind of “normal” or “ideal” amount of sexual connection humans must have. All to say, we soak up these messages throughout the course of our lives, developing arbitrary benchmarks and measuring sticks, and then an abundance of distress when we judge ourselves as somehow falling outside what is “normal.”
Most of the people who show up in my office are holding these concerns and are longing to explore their erotic worlds, wanting something different from what they are currently experiencing.
But before we continue, it’s important for me to name my own positionality as we begin to discuss this topic, because I do think that matters. I am writing from the lens of a trauma and attachment therapist whose work is informed by what we know on a scientific level about human attachment, and as someone who has undergone my own deconstruction around religion, spirituality, sexuality, relationships, and shame. I am an “agnosticish atheist,” a queer and poly therapist, and someone well-versed in non-monogamy, diverse relationship structures, kink, sex positive, and queer spaces. I am indeed a feminist who believes patriarchy harms everyone– men, women, gender expansive individuals– and I have no interest in hiding that my own theory and perspective is informed by that position.
However, it’s important to emphasize that if you are stumbling upon this blog and occupy different philosophical, spiritual, political, or religious orientations that are different from mine, while some of these thoughts might feel challenging or may not fit with how you understand your own sexuality, in the room, I meet my clients where they’re at and do not have an agenda. My goal as a post-modern therapist who believes there are endless ways to craft a meaningful and rich life, is to support all clients, including those who occupy different intersections. My role is never to tell clients what to think, feel, or believe when it comes to defining sexuality and their values and longings. Rather, we get curious together about how those beliefs relate to whatever goal it is they say they want to experience, where there may be incongruence, what might be accounting for that incongruence, and whether shame is getting in the way.
What Our Families and Cultures Teach Us About Sex, Even When They Never Talk About It
When my clients come into my office, we get curious what their families and cultures have taught them about sex, even when they never talked about it aloud. There can be so much implicitly embedded in our understanding of sexuality and intimacy that we take for granted. Many of my clients reflect that they’ve never seen their parents kiss or engage in physical affection, and that absence can carry meaning that is different for each person and family. We get curious about what they came to understand about closeness, pleasure, connection, bodies, and the expression of desire.
Other people describe secrecy and judgment around bodies and nakedness. As we grow up, we may be subjected to jokes and a felt sense of discomfort whenever sex and intimacy enters the chat. Then there are layers of gender expectations, negative attitudes toward certain bodies and positive attitudes toward others, and the sense that some people are more deserving of pleasure than others. Someone may learn that being desirable matters a great deal, while expressing their own desire is unacceptable. Or that their role is to provide pleasure, with very little room to consider what they might want themselves.
Our world has a very complicated relationship to pleasure. In some families, cultures, and religious environments, pleasure is treated as inherently dangerous or taboo. Don’t be too gluttonous. Don’t enjoy life too much. Don’t lean too heavily into release or you might lose yourself in a fury of debauchery and despair! There can be a sense that enjoying something too fully means consequences are coming, or that restraint is evidence of goodness while pleasure is evidence of moral failure.
I personally don’t think messages that demonize pleasure are helpful for us, at all. I think pleasurable experiences, including those that are erotic ones among consenting adults, can be profoundly enriching. Some people can even describe them as healing. But that possibility depends on what the people involved actually want, how their boundaries are respected, and whether they have room to choose. The freedom to engage and the freedom not to engage both matter here.
Many of my clients arrive having already engaged in a hefty amount of reading and deconstruction around religion and sexuality, gender and feminism. They may have consciously rejected the idea that there is something “dirty” or “wrong” about seeking pleasure, and yet they still find that their body in the moment is bracing. This is where the work becomes more complicated than identifying an outdated message and replacing it with a belief that feels more aligned.
When Religion Shapes the Meaning of Desire
There are many beliefs about intimacy, desire, and eroticism informed by different faiths, and there is considerable variation within those faiths. In some religious environments, sexuality comes with moral scrutiny, conditional belonging, and a sense that certain sexual acts reflect somebody’s moral deficits, while others are acceptable only in particular contexts. Religious teachings can become closely intertwined with family expectations, so that questioning a belief about sex also means wondering what might happen to your relationships or your place in a community.
Some of my clients opt to continue embracing their religious and spiritual beliefs while deciding that particular messages embedded in those teachings feel outdated and deserve reconsideration. Others find that certain limits remain deeply meaningful to them. They get to define the terms of that relationship with faith. My own deconstruction does not become a requirement for theirs.
Sometimes, though, people show up in my office wanting something that feels fundamentally incongruent with the religious or spiritual beliefs they practice. This is where narrative work and deconstruction can be helpful in crystallizing: Are these values and goals actually what I want? Are they in alignment with what I believe about humankind? What do I find meaningful in this teaching, and what am I holding onto because I am afraid of what it would mean to question it?
Sometimes the answer is yes, these beliefs still feel like mine. There may then be grief about experiences someone chooses not to pursue, and exploration around other ways of expressing their longings. Those desires still deserve acknowledgment. Choosing not to act on something does not require treating the part of yourself that wants it as shameful. In my own office, I often find that clients realize at least some of the messages they inherited no longer reflect what they believe. There is a re-authoring around sexual shame and an embracing of their humanness, while they determine which values they want to carry forward.
When Sexual Shame Enters the Relationship
Sexual shame can enter a relationship as difficulty naming preferences, being afraid to put language to your longings, or struggling to let go and receive pleasure given by another person. It can also look like difficulty saying no or setting boundaries out of fear of disappointing someone you care about. There may be struggles with initiating due to fears of rejection or shame, or difficulty talking about differences without activating the couple’s negative cycle.
These experiences can become layered. Someone might already feel ashamed of what they want, then interpret a partner’s hesitation as confirmation that the desire is unacceptable. Another person may agree to an experience because they fear disappointing their partner, while becoming increasingly disconnected from what they want themselves. It becomes harder to have an honest conversation when so much feels at stake in the answer.
Your partner’s internalized shame and beliefs about sex and intimacy also play a role. How they respond to your preferences, limits, uncertainty, or curiosity matters. This is why, when appropriate, I sometimes find couples therapy helpful alongside individual exploration. We can look at the dynamics between people, including whether there is room for each person to speak openly without pressure and whether their boundaries are genuinely respected.
Is This My Preference, My Value, or Something I Learned to Fear?
This is a question I would invite readers and my clients to consider when thinking about their inherited beliefs around sex. What feels like a core preference in your body? What are your values telling you, and where do those values come from? What might be driven by fear, shame, or bracing? These experiences can overlap, and the answers may not be immediately clear.
A preference does not need to be proven innate in order to deserve respect. You can understand something about where a limit came from and still want that limit in place. You can also find that a belief you once held firmly no longer fits. Getting curious about your relationship with sexuality leaves room for either possibility.
What I am interested in is whether someone has enough room to consider what they want, including what they don’t want, without criticism taking over the entire process. Can you acknowledge a longing without immediately deciding that it says something terrible about you? Can you decline an experience without having to defend your boundary as evidence of how healed or open-minded you are? There needs to be room for both.
What Working Through Sexual Shame Can Look Like in Therapy
Working through sexual shame is an exploratory process. We spend time engaging in narrative work, understanding some of the core implicit messages we carry and have inherited from our childhoods, our families, and our cultures. We find and focus in on protective responses and behaviors generated by fear and internalized shame. We practice developing language for the things we want and the limits we want in place.
We also learn to tolerate some uncertainty. Engaging in sex and intimacy can come with a lot of unknowns, and that can feel scary. How can we stay flexible, curious, and creative while still listening to ourselves? What would make it easier to communicate that something feels good, that something doesn’t, or that we aren’t sure yet?
We spend time exploring what consent is and what it isn’t. Consent involves freely given, ongoing agreement, with room to change your mind. Choice is central, including the choice not to pursue particular experiences.
Sometimes, when I work with couples, we collaboratively agree to take a pause from sexual or erotic contact so they can understand their individual erotic maps and interrupt negative cycles that have been running rampant in the relationship.
We clarify what that pause means for them and which forms of affection, if any, still feel welcome. The pause itself needs to reflect the same respect for choice that we are trying to cultivate.
The question I would want readers and my clients to take away from this article is: What do you want your relationship with sexuality to ultimately feel like? Rather than me or any therapist telling you what you should or shouldn’t feel when it comes to intimacy and eroticism, I would want you to think about the core emotional experiences you want to embrace.
When you say you want more freedom, what would that feel like for you? When you imagine being able to let go, what would you need from yourself and from another person? Your answers give us somewhere to begin.
