Girl Sex Talk...and why I was never apart of it.

The other day I found myself reading an article about how common it was for women to talk extensively about sex with their female friends and how therapeutic it is for women to have these discussions.

I found myself thinking that this was another sign that I was not like the typical woman. In my life I have had plenty of female friends and I felt like I could talk to them about anything. Yet I never felt that sex was a topic that I could discuss. I read an article about how common it was for women to discuss sex with other women.

My husband use to ask me if I talked about how good he was in bed or how big he was to my female friends and he was always suspicious when I would always tell him no. He didn’t believe me at first, but after ten years, he realized that I was telling him the truth.

It took a lot of thinking and soul searching, for me to realize exactly what was keeping me mute all these years in the topic of sex. Here is what I discovered.

 

Reason #1: Hiding my own sexuality

I spent my entire life hiding my sexual orientation so talking about sex with my friends was very difficult. I was afraid that if the topic came up it would lead to questions or topics that would or could expose the secrets I was keeping. Or I would feel forced to lie about the truth in order to keep everyone in the dark. I was afraid my friends would no longer be my friends if they knew the truth. So whenever they brought up the subject, I would never offer my two cents. I would always stay quiet.

 

Reason #2: Bragging Paranoia

I also knew that talking about how amazing your guy is in bed can be very dangerous. I knew friends that always talked about how big their guy was and how amazing he was and then have another friend want to find out for themselves and end up sleeping with him. I have a hard time trusting people so I always down played my sex life thinking that they wouldn’t try to poach and I wouldn’t end up on Investigative Discovery Channel.

 

Reason #3: The Shame

In my household, no one talked about sex although I knew that everyone was having it. I mean I am one of 9 children from my mother and am aunt to over 40 nieces and nephews. There was plenty of sex happening but no one was talking openly about it. From a young age I assumed that meant it wasn’t something to talk about. That it was shameful or bad. My parents never had “the talk” with me and not one of my siblings took it upon themselves to educate me. I was left to educate myself. I thought it was something to be ashamed of. Especially when it was all apparent to me that I was not straight. I was very ashamed. For a sexually confused kid, coming from a semi-religious household with a bunch of people that portrayed sex as off limits as a topic of conversation, it was pretty rough for me.

 

Publishing my first erotic novel was my break through. I was talking about sex to the world at that moment. My own anxiety almost stopped me from doing that. Yet, I decided that writing that novel was something I needed to do. 

Though I have amazing friends, I am still struggling to completely open up to them. Of course I don’t have to always talk about sex with my friends, but not talking about it at all is an example of my continuing struggle to accept my own sexuality, getting over my past shame and allowing myself to trust.

I’ll get there, I hope. Baby steps…