Does Your Sexual Blueprint Govern your Relationship with Sex as an Adult?

Today we dive into your sexual blueprint.

What is it? How can you identify your sexual blueprint?

Sexual blueprints have a big impact on what our relationship with sex is as an adult. It affects how we interact with partners. It dictates how we express our fears, insecurities, and turn-ons.

Let me give you a brief excerpt from my book, Living an Orgasmic Life: Heal Yourself and Awaken Your Pleasure.

“The sexual blueprint is similar to an architectural blueprint that shows all the details of the plumbing, electricity, drywall, windows, and doors that make up a building.

Your sexual blueprint is comprised of all of the early life experiences that make up your sense of yourself as a sexual being. I call it a blueprint to emphasize the impact of these early experiences that govern your relationship with your own sexuality, as well as how you relate to members of the opposite or the same sex.”

There are several elements in your sexual blueprint.

1. The messages that you received about sex as a child from your parents, other adults, and society in general.
2. The early childhood sexual explorations you had with yourself or others.
3. Seminal events that impacted your body image.

Example:

Often when I work with men, they tell me about the time they were in the locker room at the gym and they weren’t as sexually developed as some of their friends. Their penis was smaller and they got made fun of and shamed. Experiences like that become a huge issue which will eventually come up time and time again.

4. Religious ideology or indoctrination.

This is for those of us who were raised with a very strict religious background or in a country or a culture where sex is really not talked about and children are given negative messages about sex. (e.g. No sex before marriage, men only want you, for one thing, etc).

Questions you should be asking about your sexual blueprint:

• Did you see your parents hold hands and touch each other?

The way in which we see our parents interact with each other, the way in which they model intimacy and sex has an impact on whether or not we feel comfortable with touch and intimacy as adults. It’s healthy to be touching our partner,  holding their hand or cuddling with them in bed

• Did your parents kiss in front of you?

Were those kisses tender or were they just like the perfunctory little peck on the mouth or peck on the cheek?

• Were you allowed to crawl into your parents’ bed and cuddle with them?
• Did you ever see your parents or other adults naked? And what were the circumstances under which that happened?
• Were you one of those people where your parents covered your eyes every time there was a romantic scene on TV? Again, that’s a negative message about sex that creates shame and is one of the things that hold us back from being really sexual.
• Was there ever any discussion of sex in your family?

Here are some ways in which this impacts people.  These are examples from my book of work that I’ve done with clients. Which of these do you relate to?

Situation 1:

I was working with a woman and she was telling her story, one that is alarmingly common.

She was kind of a tomboy growing up and she used to run around with her shirt off just like her brothers. Nobody ever said anything about it, but she got older and started to develop breasts around the age of 10. One day she was running around outside when her mother came home from work to find her daughter bare-chested with her breasts showing.  She began screaming and told her to get in the car. This poor girl. She had no idea what was going on.

But what was really happening was that her mother was feeling uncomfortable about her daughter’s developing breasts being exposed. She imposed her own body shame on her daughter for allowing her to run around without a shirt.

This client of mine, as a result, had severe body shame issues and it all stemmed from this incident when she was just  10 years old. , Seemingly small early experiences can truly have a big impact on us.

When I explore with clients why they are feeling shut down or struggling with their sexuality, we often end up finding that there are these types of experiences that actually created a lot of shame for them.

Shame is one of those nasty, nasty words.

I call it the nastiest  5 letter word in the universe. I

Situation 2:

I had another female client and she couldn’t have an orgasm or any pleasure. She felt completely numb whenever a partner tried to touch her genitals.

I was doing a practice with her where I was touching her arm in a very sensual way.  All of a sudden, she burst out into tears and she told me this powerful story.

She grew up in Iran, a very sexually shut down society. She was 9 or 10 years old and she was driving in the car with her mother. She saw a woman and a man on a motorcycle. The woman was holding onto the guy and had long hair that was flying freely through the air. It was exciting and it was the stereotypical image of a woman and man on a motorcycle. You can see the freedom, sexuality and the desire that comes through that. My client was actually excited by this image and she told her mother directly “I wish I can be that woman”.

The response–a slap across her face. “That girl is a slut and if you ever do that, you’re going to be a slut too”, her mother told her.

This created a negative message around pleasure, that if you get turned on you are going to be a slut. It was very high-level slut-shaming, but sadly it happens all the time, typically by women.

As I was giving her sensual touch, she said she was feeling a tad aroused. But as this happened, she heard her mother’s voice in her head saying she was a slut, and that completely shut her down. She associated pleasure with shame–not a recipe to experience an orgasm.

What messages and experienced did you have that are impacting you as an adult? Share your stories in our private FB Group, Girlfriend Sex Talk. I’m constantly sharing new research and information and there are some good conversations that are going on.

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