I grew up in a traditional Christian and Caribbean home. There was no such thing as sex education or the infamous American “sex talk.” The only thing that we kids needed to know about sex is that we should not be having it until marriage.

All the information I gathered about sex came from school, the media, and fundamentalist religion… not a good combination. When I was around 12, I heard some television preacher say that masturbation was a form of fornication, and then I really panicked. I was going through puberty and experiencing all the highs and lows of my unstable hormones, and masturbation was part of that. I came to my mom, crying, and she assured me that as long as I hadn’t “stuck anything up in myself” that I was okay. I was a perfectionist who was struggling with my understanding of religion at the time, so sinning, to me, was a one-way ticket to hell. I didn’t necessarily feel relieved after that conversation, because I had no tools to manage my raging hormones, and I didn’t want to face the heat of God’s fire and brimstone.

Not only was I a perfectionist, I was an atypical, ambitious perfectionist. I was going to be a neurosurgeon-slash-medical journalist, and I had a morbid fear of getting pregnant. I didn’t want any boy or baby to come and ruin my career goals. I also didn’t want to face the wrath of my parents. So, I’m not necessarily the type of person who made the prototypical teenage mistakes because my parents and I didn’t have a meaningful conversation about sex. However, my miseducation about sex and the role sex would play in led me to confusion, disappointments, and tough conversations with both myself and my lover. Below are the roots of The (Sex) Miseducation of Melissa B.

1. Waiting for “marriage” (long-term, romantic relationship) would lead to a fulfilling sex life. This is the fairy tale narrative fed to girls from the age of about 3 years old… And they lived happily ever after… I definitely bought into this narrative. However, sex in a committed relationship has so much more nuance to it than the happily ever after narrative. There are several major factors that contribute to one’s sex life, primarily relating to health: mental health, spiritual health, and emotional health, particularly stress level. One’s ability to manage #adulting overall is directly connected to their sexual health and sex life. I’ve learned that the amount of sex we have, our desire to have sex, and our enjoyment of sex ebbs and flows with life’s changes.
2. Being in a "marriage" means constant access to sex. This is entirely untrue. I’m not sure when I developed this belief, but being in a long term relationship has shown me how erroneous this belief is. Everyone has unique needs when it comes to sex, and everyone has a different sex drive. When you are in a relationship, you have to talk through all of this, and no matter how attracted you are to one another, you may not always be 100% compatible with your partner(s) in this arena. Also, this may seem obvious, but I realized that consent and mutual desire is a basic necessity in any sexual interaction, even if you are in a committed relationship with the person you would like to have sex with.
3. One’s desirability is correlated to their sex life. I’m pretty sure this is due to the misleading messages I received about sex via music, movies, and television. I did not begin having sex until after my teenage years, and because of that, my confidence suffered. I was somewhat contradictory. Although I wanted to wait until I met someone I loved, or at least vibed with, before I had sex, I still didn’t know that both high school and college would pass without any meaningful sexual experiences to speak of. I thought maybe I was ugly, or undesirable, or in some way insufficient. The irony of it all was that, although I was determined in my promise to remain abstinent unless I met someone I truly cared for, the wait was hard, because I am actually a very sexual and sensual person.

Ultimately, intimate relationships, both platonic and romantic, are the ultimate classroom. Everything that I once thought about sex and relationships has been debunked. I think that it is essential that I share the wisdom and experiences I’ve gained with others so that we can begin to have meaningful and transformational conversations about sex and relationships. Our health and contentment depends on our re-education.