Sexual energy spills over into all areas of life, as I wrote last time. But this energy is often blocked or distorted by something we absorbed long before we understood what we were absorbing: taboos. Not those declared explicitly, but the implicit ones, those transmitted through silence, through reactions of shame, through what was never said but was clearly felt to be forbidden.
Sexual taboos are among the oldest and most persistent forms of social control. Every culture, every family, every generation transmits an implicit set of norms about what is acceptable and what is not in sexual life. And the problem is not that these norms exist, but that we absorb them without examining them and that they continue to operate in us as adults, long after the context that produced them is no longer relevant.
What is a sexual taboo, actually? It is not necessarily something dramatic or extreme. It can be the conviction that speaking openly about sex is vulgar. That wanting is shameful. That certain forms of pleasure are perverse. That sex is an obligation in marriage, not a choice. That the body is a source of sin, not of joy. That a woman who expresses her desire is lacking in morality. That a man who needs tenderness is weak.
All of these are cultural constructions, not universal truths. But they operate in the body as though they were absolute truths, because they were absorbed during the formative period, when the brain did not have the critical tools needed to examine them.
How do absorbed taboos manifest in the intimate life of adults? A few concrete forms I observe frequently.
The first is automatic bodily shame. A reflex of embarrassment or discomfort towards one's own body or the other's, which arises without a rational cause in the present, but which is perfectly explicable by what was transmitted in childhood or adolescence about the body and sexuality.
The second is the self-censorship of desires. People who know what they want but cannot say it, because the internalised voice of the taboo says that thing is wrong, dirty, or inappropriate. This self-censorship produces a less satisfying sexual life not from lack of desire, but from lack of inner permission.
The third is difficulty in receiving pleasure. A pattern I see often: people who can offer pleasure more easily than they can receive it. Offering is active, controlled, acceptable. Receiving requires believing you deserve it, that you are worthy of attention and care. And that is precisely what taboos related to self-worth make harder.
There is a category of taboos we underestimate: those connected to gender. Men grew up with clear messages about how they should be sexually, active, initiating, performing, always willing. Women grew up with equally clear but often opposite messages: to be receptive, not to ask, not to seem too eager, not to be too initiating. These gender constructions produce men who do not know how to be vulnerable in intimacy and women who do not know how to ask for what they want. And from their combination result couples in which nobody truly receives what they need.
How do you work with absorbed taboos? Not through denial and not through forced rebellion. But through awareness and gradual examination.
The first step is to recognise that they exist. That the reflexes of shame or discomfort you feel in certain intimate moments do not come from you as a person, but from what you absorbed. That they are not truths about who you are, but old programmes running in the background.
The second step is to ask where each one comes from. When did you first feel that thing was forbidden or shameful? Who transmitted that to you, explicitly or through silence? This anchoring in origin reduces the power of the taboo, because it moves it out of the zone of absolute truth and into the zone of personal history.
The third step is to consciously choose what you keep and what you do not. Not all norms are damaging. Some reflect values you genuinely share. Others are simply inheritances that no longer serve anyone.
I believe one of the most liberating questions you can ask in your sexual life is: is this rule I am following mine, or does it belong to someone long absent from my life?
What is the sexual taboo you have absorbed that you believe most limits your freedom to be yourself in intimacy?
