Why do I no longer want to stay silent about sexuality?
Because, as a psychotherapist who has worked with people for 20 years, I witness how many wounds and how much silence we all carry in our bodies, and how much harm this does to families and society as a whole. Research has shown that almost 50% of divorces in Croatia result from a lack of communication skills and dissatisfaction with one's sex life.
It no longer makes sense to me to keep pretending that sexuality and intimacy are not part of our lives. And I believe someone needs to name the ‘pink elephant’ in the room.
For me, keeping things unspoken is the same as lying, and that is why I choose to speak.
Since I stepped into the field of sexuality and intimacy a year and a half ago, intending to speak out and stop pretending that this part of life does not exist, I have gone through different stages. I became aware of how much resistance there is in our society around this, and how difficult it is for people to name, show and even be in contact with the subject of sexuality.
For years, I too stayed silent without questioning where the instructions that ‘we do not talk about that’ and ‘we should keep quiet about that’ came from. And when I began speaking out, I felt in my own body how difficult it is to face fear, resistance and shame.
For a moment I thought: if I have so many years of psychotherapy and personal development behind me and it is difficult for me, what must it be like for people who have never had a single therapy session?
I became aware of how tight my throat was, how much tension appeared and how much conscious effort it took to move through my own resistance and let my voice out. I know what I want to say, I know why it matters to me, but I still have to move through the learned instruction to stay silent about it. That prohibition can be felt even at the moment when I decide I no longer want to follow it.
(But that is not all!! 🤣)
I felt how challenging it was, after letting my voice out, to stand my ground and endure other people's labels or projections coming from the shadows, precisely because I had spoken.
When I opened up topics that caused discomfort and unconscious reactions in others, I often felt an urge to quiet myself, make myself smaller or reshape what I had said so I would not hurt someone.
Several times I stood at a crossroads, considering whether to withdraw, because it was not easy to carry everything I was experiencing through the process. I began asking myself whether there was any point in speaking when someone would hear something completely different in what I said, assign me an intention I did not have or give themselves the right to react to their own image of me.
In my heart I know that this is my way of serving the community and my contribution to meaningful evolution, so I find the motivation to keep going.
I want us all to have more knowledge, more words and more freedom to ask what we do not know, without fear of being labelled strange for asking.
What is ‘normal’ for us in Croatia?
In our country, staying silent is normal. And I want to question that ‘normal’ and offer you a view from my own perspective.
I once asked an adult man what sex was, and he answered with visible discomfort and confusion: ‘It is what happens when coitus occurs.’
A teacher in my HDST training had an adult man come to her for therapy because he wanted to have a child with his partner. She asked whether he ejaculated, and he replied: ‘Well, yes. It gets hard, I have no problems there.’ It took her about ten minutes to explain that erection and ejaculation are not the same thing.
I had a female client who did not know that the vaginal canal and the urethra are not the same passage.
And these are not people who should be shamed for not knowing. These people are victims of silence and the denial of sexuality. They were not given the basic knowledge they need to understand their own bodies, and that is a failure.
We need to be able to talk about these subjects simply and clearly, without assuming that the person on the other side already knows all this. Clearly, many do not.
Do we really want to live in a society where this is normal?
Are we really going to reduce sex to intercourse and consider that normal?
I do not.
I want a new normal.
I want my children to live in a country where it is all right to ask when they do not understand or know something. I want them to be able to get answers to these questions from their parents, teachers, coaches and doctors, rather than looking for answers on the internet, where an algorithm will connect them with distorted sources of information.
Adults need to prepare for that kind of conversation with knowledge, but also emotionally. Because if curious children are met every time by parents who feel overwhelming discomfort or a prohibition, they will stop asking us and look for answers in the wrong places.
I want to live in a country where I will not be the strange mother because I explain to my son why he too should be vaccinated against HPV, or why he wakes up after a wet dream. I want there to be many strange mothers and strange fathers. I want enough of us to be there for a question about one's own body to stop being a reason for shame. I want to live in a country where people will know how to answer questions about sex and their own sexual organs, because sex (sexual activity) is definitely not just intercourse.
I had a male client who was destroying himself emotionally because, believing that sex = intercourse, he forced himself into a performance he did not enjoy at all. He could not even feel it. His sex life suffered so much that every encounter with sex became a real nightmare.
Sex is actually everything that happens between one orgasm and the next.
Foreplay: a look, an accidental touch, a passionate kiss or simply an ordinary, gentle, short kiss, flirting, playful word games, a message on your phone, sexting…
Time set aside for ourselves and our bodies as we look for our own pleasure.
Time set aside for us, when we explore, talk about our discoveries, ask, try things, spend time with our bodies in different ways… through petting, oral sex, energetic contact, touch, intercourse…
Can you see now how small a part of this whole range intercourse is??
All of this together is sex.
When I say that sex can be everything that happens between one orgasm and the next, I really mean it. I am talking about the breadth of that field, about how our sex lives do not have to begin with penetration and end with orgasm. A sexual encounter can be fulfilling when there is no penetration and when there is no orgasm.
If it is currently ‘normal’ for us to feel uncomfortable talking about all this, I want to help make it easier. And I want to take part in creating a ‘new normal’.
I want us to be able to express ourselves clearly when we tell our partner what we enjoy, what interests us and what we do not want. I want partners to be able to reach an agreement, instead of going through what they assume would suit the other person or what they have learned is taken for granted.
What does silence do to our relationships?
I know it is difficult to support people who move away from the ‘normal’, because a fear appears that others will then think we are ‘not normal’ too. And I am not asking for support for myself, because I choose where I stand and I am all right here. I am asking for support so this awareness can spread further, because education about sexuality is immensely important.
How does it sound to challenge yourself to share this link publicly on your wall, add your own voice and watch how your body reacts to stepping out of the old normal?
Believe me, thousands of marriages would have worked better if the partners had known how to talk about their needs and desires, if they had gone to a therapist when a mismatch in sexual desire arose between them, and if they had worked together on the problem they faced. There would have been far fewer affairs, far fewer divorces, hurt partners and hurt families as a whole.
The children in those marriages would have felt more secure if they had watched their mother and father solve the problem together, talk, make agreements and look for a solution. I am not saying they should know the details of their parents' sex lives, but they should see that difficulties can be talked about, that it is all right to ask for help and that a problem does not have to mean turning against one another and becoming passive-aggressive.
I want us to have words with which to ask, knowledge with which to answer and enough courage to listen to the answer even when it makes us uncomfortable.
If you have questions about sexuality, your body or intimacy that you carry inside you but have never dared to ask, get in touch for an individual conversation. We can begin with what is difficult for you to say out loud.
Silence is definitely not golden.