Reflecting on My Sexual Conditioning: Unraveling the Messages I Grew Up With

A Curiosity..............

Have you ever paused to trace the invisible lines that map your understanding of intimacy, sex and connection? To ask where those lines originated? For most of us, they began in our childhood homes, flowed through whispered conversations and awkward school lessons, and were shaped by the unspoken expectations etched into every glance, comment, or cultural cue. These lines became our compass, guiding us through the chaotic, electric world of human connection. But are they truly ours? Or are they borrowed, inherited, and unquestioned?  Are we just agreeing to rules that were implicitly placed on us and we just go along with??

For the longest time, I believed my map was mine. Growing up, I thought I was lucky to have an upbringing that felt relatively open when it came to sex. My parents weren’t prudish; they didn’t veil the subject in shame or evasiveness. Conversations about protection, consent, and the mechanics of intimacy weren’t shrouded in embarrassment. I wasn’t raised in a home where sex was dirty or forbidden; it was acknowledged with a certain matter-of-factness that, at the time, felt progressive compared to the hush-hush environment many of my friends described.

And so, I carried this quiet confidence into adulthood, believing I had untangled the societal skeins around sex and relationships. I thought I had permission—not only to understand intimacy but to explore it freely. But maps, like conditioning, often hide in plain sight. A rule book written for me that I did not consent to.. It wasn’t until later, when I started looking beyond the borders of my assumptions, that I realized just how constrained my understanding of sex and relationships had been.  When I stopped and paused I realised that I too was carrying conditioning around what sex should look like,.

For example, while sex was "openly" discussed in my home, it came wrapped in a default narrative. It was always heterosexual, always monogamous, always enmeshed with love and commitment. There was no room for queerness, no mention of polyamory, no invitation to imagine other flavors of intimacy and certainly no talk of BDSM or Tantra. The message wasn’t explicit, but it was crystalline in its clarity: sex was one part of a tightly scripted tale, culminating in a happily-ever-after tied with the bow of marriage.

I didn’t question this script. Like many, I followed it. I found a partner, formed a relationship and got married.  My parents were delighted, and believed that each step adhered to a timeline of fulfillment and success. And yet, somewhere beneath the surface, I could hear the faintest murmur of unease. I couldn’t name it at first, and so, I buried it. Louder was the societal applause for doing things “right.” Why dig into discomfort when everything seems perfectly fine?

But unease, like truth, is persistent. The more I tried to dismiss it, the more it rumbled beneath the surface. It wasn’t that I was unhappy in my marriage, but rather that I felt there was a part of me still unexplored, unacknowledged. A quiet voice whispered questions I was afraid to answer. Had I chosen this path, or had it been laid out for me? Were my desires my own, or were they shaped by conditioning so ingrained I couldn’t see it?

And then, as life often does, an opportunity for reflection appeared in the form of new connections. I began meeting people whose lives didn’t echo the narratives I knew. People who loved openly and expansively, who rejected the confines of monogamy, who didn’t hide their queerness under layers of conditioning. At first, their choices intrigued me. Then they unsettled me. Why did their freedom feel, to me, like a challenge?

It took time to understand that the discomfort I felt wasn’t about them. It was about me. My so-called "liberal" upbringing, celebrated in its openness, had only stretched so far. It had given me just enough of a glimpse at choice to make me believe I had autonomy, but it had stopped short of allowing me to visualize the full spectrum of possibilities.

This realization cracked something open. I began to see how deeply interwoven my conditioning was—not just in how I approached relationships, but how I saw myself. Love, sex, commitment, permanence, fidelity… all of it framed with an unspoken "should." One person, forever, tied with a ribbon of exclusivity. Anything else was deviant, experimental, or destined to end in heartbreak.

But life, in its complexity and beauty, rarely adheres to such strict formulas. Realizing this was liberating, albeit terrifying. As I questioned my conditioning I notice I was on a venture into the unknown. It’s peeling back layers of what I thought were truths and realizing they’re constructs. It’s standing at the edge of my carefully drawn map, staring into uncharted territory, and stepping forward anyway.

The process of unlearning isn’t easy. Conditioning has a tenacious way of clinging on, whispering questions designed to pull me back into safety. What if I lose yourself? What if exploring these feelings makes everything else unravel? What if I am  wrong? But growth rarely arrives without discomfort, and I began to learn that challenging my beliefs didn’t erase me. It brought me closer to my authentic self.

I took small steps at first, questioning the assumptions I built my decisions upon. Did monogamy feel right because it aligned with my desires, or because I had never believed alternatives were possible? Had I fully understood my identity, my preferences, my boundaries, or had I only scratched what felt acceptable within the framework I knew?

Each question was a door; each answer, an opening. It wasn’t that I arrived at definitive solutions, but I realized something profound along the way—I wasn’t bound by the script handed to me living by rules I had not agreed to. If nothing else, I could imagine a different story. I could write it myself.

And maybe you’ve felt this too. Perhaps you’ve accepted certain ideas about intimacy without pausing to wonder: Do they feel expansive, or do they confine? Are they rooted in authenticity, or are they the echoes of other voices? Have I truly explored—that deliciously curious word, explored?

Tearing apart the script that was handed to me—the worn, binding rule book of who I was supposed to be—wasn’t an act of rebellion; it was an act of reclamation. It felt like peeling back layers of old, ill-fitting skin to reveal something raw, something achingly real. Beneath the lines I was taught to follow, I found a sensual rhythm that was uniquely mine, an intimate language that pulsed with authenticity. I discovered how to move, how to express, how to touch, shamelessly and tenderly, in ways that felt alive and wholly mine, I stepped into BDSM and same sex experiences, I exposed with multiple partners and the rest became history.  I broke the chains of conditioning and found freedom   Liberation, I realized, isn’t always loud; sometimes it whispers softly in the act of choosing yourself.

Conditioning, I’ve come to learn, doesn’t just shape our actions; it coats the subtle corners of our psyche. It informs how we see ourselves, how deeply we connect, how we touch, and how we interact. It isn’t inherently bad or good, but it deserves to be examined.

Because here is the beautiful thing I have learnt about being human—I can evolve. I can rewrite. I can step into new truths, discover fresh desires, and uncouple the threads of conditioning in search of something that feels more... me.

What might your map look like if you allowed yourself to dream without limits? What definitions of sex, desire, and connection would show up if you weren’t afraid to redraw the lines and the rules that were conditioned into you? And if the map you follow doesn’t feel like it’s completely yours... are you ready to start sketching a new one?

Lets explore together if you are willing to...