Dealing with unpleasant sexual experiences

Bit of a trigger warning, this one. I want to talk about trauma, or sometimes even abuse. I suspect, like many people who grew up in the '70s, that not all of our sexual experiences were pleasant ones, and we may have had experiences that may not have been completely sexual but were very you know, just were generally untoward. Personally, I recall being at school when I was in a play and was being given a review by a famous actor at the time who had come to visit our school, and the first thing he did was comment on my chest in front of everyone, which was, as a 17-year-old, quite inappropriate for him to do and made me feel really self-conscious. I've had situations where people came up to me on the street when I was a kid and grabbed my breasts. I had somebody once put their hand under my skirt when I was walking along right outside my house where I was living with my family. I've had sex that wasn't completely consensual, and I know that I'm not alone in any of these. I'm not alone in having any of this happen to me. I had friends that were sexually abused. I know that lots and lots of men my own age, especially that went to boarding schools, had— were abused as well. And so lots and lots of us growing up in it at our age, in our 60s and 70s, don't always have pleasant memories when it comes to our early sexual experiences. Experiences, which can influence how we go through life dealing with sex. For some men, I suspect that sex becomes a violent act. For some women, they just shut down completely. And so when they reach, you know, postmenopausal age and they don't have to do it anymore, they think, what a relief. But after a conversation that Pete and I had yesterday with a a woman who specializes in tantra, and we were talking about our shared experiences, all of us, around these issues. I realized, you know, that I've spent a considerable amount of time myself working through some of those challenges that I had around, around experiences that weren't consensual, and I've gotten myself to a place where I just really enjoy sex. And similarly with our guest Mari, who we're going to be releasing on our podcast shortly, she herself went through experiences of being celibate and then learning how to enjoy sex and pleasure. But I, I think a lot of it is about whether or not you choose to do the work, because it is work deciding that you want to enjoy sex. Sex is one of the great pleasures in life, and whether or not you want to enjoy it or not is completely dependent on your choice whether or not you want to. And if your early experiences have been unpleasant, then, you know, it's not surprising that you may think, screw it, I don't actually want to have sex. It was never that fun, or it was associated in some way with really unpleasant memories that you don't want to revisit. So, you know, all I'm saying is that for those of you who may have experienced, like many of us have those unpleasant sexual experiences and want to get past that. There are ways to do that. There are, you know, lots of people that you can go and see— coaches, people that specialize in things like Tantra— to get you through that unpleasantness and to a place where you deeply appreciate the pleasure that comes from having sex an intimacy with someone else or even just yourself.