Growing up and Learning How to Talk about sex…
sex. talking with your gynecologist/Ob about sex.
yes.
I finally grew the balls ovaries to ask my gynecologist/Ob questions about the actual deed. Oh, and this is after going through 3 pregnancies (2 of which he delivered), with him and his practice. I’ve always been a bit coy when it comes to talking to my professional about sex! Now, what the heck is that all about?
Upon summoning my therapist’s ways of pulling out the past, I THINK I have always felt the need to be (appear) as a “good girl”. But, wait, I’ve had 3 children. LOL….
vintage bride, (source, www.fashion-era.com)
Is this some sort of post-feminism/raised-by-a-baby-boomer neurosis of mine? My mother, god bless her, pretty much always preached “don’t have sex”, or “stay away from boys”, yadda. And even though she may have at times been not so serious, or saying these things in jest, I was a very impressionable child/adolescent. So I grew up thinking that “good girls don’t have sex”, let alone GOOD sex, and heaven forbid even TALK about it!
And here’s the catch, or twist. I grew up in a doctor’s home. A home in a university town, a home in the epicenter of academia, PhD’s for neighbors down each block and street. Yet, I was given the responsibility of appearing the “all american teen daughter of a well known M.D. in the town,” which meant to me: don’t do anything that might embarrass your father. Which boils down also to “good girls don’t have sex”.
dugesia (source, http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu)
I was a classic case of when you tell people your are pregnant, “they’re going to know I had sex!” Earth shattering news! Living organisms have existed on the planet for millions of years, and they had to reproduce to get to 2009! and many species of organisms are NOT asexual! Did you know that?
Now, as I have gotten older, and lived through a marriage, (though a bad one, still a marriage), it has slowly become just a bit easier for me to occasionally approach my parents with questions. But, they are always just health questions. And when I call, I’ll announce that I have “a girly question for mom”. (she was a RN). Sometimes to my embarrassment, she won’t know the answer and will ask, “do you mind if I ask your father”, sigh. fine.
So, fast forward to Faye in the beginning stages of her new life/decade/growth/freedom post-divorce, post-bad marriage, entering her thirties, three kids down, studying pre-med, and feeling like she is finally becoming the woman she was meant to be. Hooray! Part of my progress over the past year, I must say, I give credit to meeting a man who makes me feel like a woman in bed. Yes, the crowd cheers! I cannot begin to tell you the impact that his love, patience, passion, compassion, desire for me, has had on my self-discovery and growth.
Dolphins (source, http://www.dolphinreef.co.il/)
Folks, what I’m saying here is that sex matters. Yes, we want to teach our daughters to hold off until they’re mature enough to know what they’re doing. (or who they’re doing.) Yes, we want them to be safe because raising children does not fit on the plate of a teenager. And yes, we want them to be safe for the whole gamut of other reasons. But! Do we possibly owe it to our daughters (and our sons) to teach them that the person who deserves to have their hand in marriage, or respectful love, are the ones who exude that same virtue in the bedroom? After learning the possibilities that I have learned about myself since my divorce, the more I have realized that not only was the sex bad in my marriage, I didn’t even care. and He didn’t care either. I just waited for it to be over.
I only had a simple, probably common question for my gynecologist yesterday. However, the fact that I have finally gotten to a point in my life where not only am I comfortable and confident enough to discuss it openly, but I have finally learned that it is meant to be enjoyable for me, and that when you have a partner who shares mutual respect for you as a person both in and out of the bedroom, that when you ARE in the bedroom, the earth really can shatter.
Shaking! (source, /www.usyd.edu.au/SCH/school/Seismograph/seismogram.jpg)
Faye,
Since you are studying pre-med, you will come upon a well known physiological fact: men are at their sexual peak at the late teens to early twenties. Women reach their sexual peak in their early thirties. I always thought that this was somewhat odd and never really made sense to me. But we Homo sapiens are complex creatures and sometimes somethings are beyond our ability to comprehend.
Dr. S
Yes, I have read those bemusing statistics. In fact, I was reading some googled articles yesterday that were discussing the irony of women who reach their peak in their thirties, and yet men of the same age or within the decade are losing their libido, and hence women can become sexually frustrated by not having their “needs” met… AND, it accounts for older men who start to find YOUNGER women (early 20′s) attractive because they’re not yet demanding the frequency like the 30-something ladies.
Ha! The world’s just one big paradox.
Now I’m thinking about the “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode when Larry tells Cheryl that he’s always ready and she just needs to give him the “shoulder tap”….
A long rambly comment from your sister.
Just to break the ice. I have sex too.
Parents always seem to relax and be less strict and formal with the later children. The “as long as they don’t die, I don’t care” attitude. And so, I think that by the time I came of age, the message had changed slightly. Instead of being told simply not to have sex, the message was more tilted to why having sex in high school is dumb. It sort of went “Don’t have sex. You could get pregnant, STDs. Nothing is wrong with sex itself. But, you’ll break up with these guys anyway, do you really want to be stuck with the consequences for the rest of your life?” And, the discussion always ended with “and if you’re STUPID enough to have sex, at least use birth control, and not just condoms, they break! And, I’M not raising your child for you!” I also got constant reminders of how hard it is to raise children, and how very fertile the women in our family are.
That, combined with the fact that is was always very obvious that our parents had a sex life and enjoyed it, (though the thought horrified me at the time) made sex seem like something to enjoy, not waste, or be ashamed of. I also remember a few dinner conversations between mom and dad where dad specifically said that he thought that the embarrasment that surrounds sex and the idea that it was dirty somehow were both ridiculous.
So, as weird as this is coming from your little sister, enjoy yourself. You’re an adult woman with kids…don’t you think it would be weirder if you DIDN’T have sex? Nobody will think you’re bad. Our family certainly isn’t prudish. Heck, even the very conservative Baptist pastor that married Matthew and me, told us to enjoy our sexuality, and not feel that like we had to be proper. It was repeated over and over that love and respect are both important in our sex life, but so is fun. Lol, he even talked about a book of sex tricks and positions and tips that he and his wife read, and recommended we read one too if we were interested.
As mom would say, “They can hang from the chandeliers for all I care.”
Don’t be embarrassed.