Sexuality

  1. Home
  2. Health
  3. Sexuality
photo of Cory Silverberg

Sexuality Blog

By Cory Silverberg, About.com Guide to Sexuality since 2005

Telling Your Sexual Story

Thursday March 13, 2008

One of my favorite ways to get to know someone is to get them talking about their sexuality. I’m usually less interested in the stats (what they’ve done, who they did it with, how often they’ve done it, etc…) than in the cumulative history and how, as an adult, they understand their personal development. Listening to people talk about how they were raised, the circumstances of their early sexual experiences (which often are not happy ones) and how they have ended up where they are can be intimate and powerful.

But sharing your most intimate sexual history with strangers (even, maybe especially, strangers who write about sex for a living) is not always something people want to, or should, do. Telling your story, if only to yourself, gives you an opportunity to learn more about your own sexuality, and in the telling there is great potential for transformation. Most of us keep a lot of sexual secrets, including secrets we keep from ourselves. Making your sexual history explicit to yourself is a relatively safe way to start exploring those secrets.

This kind of sexual history is something very different from the kind you may have had taken by a doctor or therapist at some point in your life. If you’re interested in what I mean, you can read more, and find a kind of loose outline for writing your own sexual history by following the link below.

Read more - Write Your Own Sexual History

Comments

No comments yet. Leave a Comment

Leave a Comment

Line and paragraph breaks are automatic. Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title="">, <b>, <i>, <strike>

Discuss

Community Forum

Explore Sexuality

About.com Special Features

Do I Have Allergies?

Are your symptoms merely irritating, or could they be a sign of allergies? More >

Preventing Headaches

The best way to treat a headache is to prevent it. Learn how. More >

Sexuality

  1. Home
  2. Health
  3. Sexuality

©2009 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.