As humans, we tend to accept each other’s little differences - “You don’t like Tacos? No problem, let’s go get Pizza!” “You read Fantasy? I’m usually more into Sci-Fi, do you have any recommendations?” But when it comes to sexuality, we have been taught to discount, discredit, and often disdain anything that is inconsistent from what we’ve learned sex is supposed to be. Our ethics and beliefs about sex and sexuality often haven’t been allowed to flourish into our own thoughts and expressions, so we go on judging ourselves and others based on norms that, frankly, don’t actually exist.

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“95% of people have never and will never share their sexual desires with anyone else.”

__Dr. David Ley

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So many of us go through our entire lives feeling vaguely unknown, having a deep-seated part of our most authentic selves that we hide away as a dirty little secret. Always on the lookout for this truth to come out, we marinate in shame for years over these quite often highly acceptable (dare I say, normal?) sexual preferences, likes, desires, fantasies, a-little-to-the-right-theres that many of us yearn for. 

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You’re not alone. Sexuality has a way of throwing little dilemmas, big challenges, and radical explorations of love and intimacy our way throughout our lifecycles. Our sexuality has the same ability to shift as all of our preferences do, as all of our desires in life do…as we do. Hormones shift, feelings shift, time shifts, life shifts. Medications and chronic illness can often throw a wrench in even the most well-intentioned couple. Because so few of us are taught how to talk about sex and our needs surrounding, many couples, individuals, and families end up feeling frustrated, resentful, and alone, unable to find a solution to a very real and pertinent situation in their life. 

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Those going through life dealing with pain surrounding sex, sexual dysfunction, intimacy transitions, or new sexual norms coming in and out of their lives often find themselves feeling judged and broken when they walk out of their practitioner or therapist’s office. No one is to blame, the training often isn’t there. On average, physicians receive less than 10 hours of education about sexuality and sexual function throughout medical school, and sex therapists are not required to have any sex education to bill themselves as a sex therapist. People are receiving shame-filled, often-incorrect diagnoses and little hope for confident, forward-motion in their lives. 

 

So many of us bear constant, self-judgmental thought, fatigued from managing this hidden suffering. Aren’t you tired of carrying that inner-burden alone?

 

I know from experience, it’s far easier to unmask with the help of another than to unmask alone.

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HOW RELATE CAN HELP__

 

The concept of freedom is at the core of RELATE. We all deserve to be loved, to be seen, to be free, as exactly ourselves. “Relationship” is a basic human need and we somehow keep letting our close connections lose their familiarity, our brains greedily preferring the noise of strangers and the numbing of the scroll to conversing on the couch with those folks we could once gab for hours with. We are currently living in a state declared by the US Surgeon General to be a “loneliness epidemic”. In this modern state of turmoil and unrest and life just not quite clicking that is felt by so many of us, let’s do the radical thing and learn to find each other again. 

 

Let’s take back intimacy, y’all. ​​