“Failing to plan is planning to fail”

Damn that’s so real… fuck that. I have a hard time remembering sometimes how bad it was.

Those thoughts definitely enhanced the experience for me.

Pushing those attitudes on children is sexual abuse

In a college aged church service some years ago, the pastor specifically called out people “struggling “ with porn and masturbation and said they should go to the back to get prayer. My friend immediately went. I myself felt shock and shame. It took several more years before I realized that guilt is a tool the church uses to hook people. It’s insidious.

Read my other comment.

I heard my parents going at it and thought my dad was beating my mom. He almost got a baseball bat to his head.

Yeah, when you don’t know what they’re actually doing, hearing them have sex can sound like dad beating mom, and I almost went to defend my mom.

For an ignorant child, hearing that activity can indeed be traumatic enough to make a kid want to defend their mom…

Essentially my parents didn’t explain to me what sex is at all and all the kids comming into this world are brought there by a … stork. That’s why i later on (thanks to schoolmates) thought that it’s a blowjob to learn later on (by reading it up on web) what actually it is.

Anyway, i’m sorry for your trauma

You’ve combined the two things together and said they are worse than one on its own. Duh.

The original poster is talking about the vast majority of kids today who do in fact get a decent sex education and if they see/hear their parents going at it, the ‘trauma’ is in seeing them in an unexpected context, not thinking Dad is beating mom.

You went 10 years without seeing a baby? Like ever?

You might be interested to read Sybil by Schreiber.

I feel like it had almost no effect on my life.

My mom was what is colloquially called a screamer. Mind you, it wasn’t actual screams, she was just really loud. More moans and grunts

By the time I was old enough to even notice that it was happening, it was just something that happened. They’d be alone in their room, making noises, then come out a little later very happy and laughing and that joy would spill over.

In other words, their good sex made me happy because it made them happy.

Now, it wasn’t too long before I asked what they were doing. They gave me the pidgin version “when adults really love each other, they’ll spend time alone together having sex sometimes.” They answered my questions about that in similarly simple terms.

By the time I really understood what sex was, it was something that when I heard it, I was still happy because it meant good things.

I also knew that my parents were willing to answer reasonable questions about sex, and that they’d give me resources when their knowledge of factual matters ended.

Now, my sister, when she was maybe 10 had never noticed it because with two kids, the only time they got to have sex was after we were both in bed lol. She’d be asleep fast, but I’d be reading.

So, one night they woke her up, and she came to me and said she was scared. I, in what was a rare instance of me getting things right as a big brother, hugged her and said it was okay, and explained things to her in the same way it had been explained to me.

And, my sister being who she was just asked, “can I bring my barbies in here, they’re too loud the go back to sleep”. So, when my parents got up to clean up and whatnot, they asked what was going on, and I explained it to them, they apologized for waking her up, and made sure she was okay, and that I was okay.

Growing up, we both tended to have very positive views about sex. It wasn’t something either of us ever expressed any fear of, or anything like that. My sister has said that, while she chose to wait a lot longer than I did to engage in anything serious, when she did feel ready, she wasn’t scared or nervous because she knew that it was supposed to be something everyone involved had fun doing. She also knew that anyone being to pressure her or anything more intense than that was not acceptable, and that my dad would gladly beat the ever living hell out of anyone trying it. As would I.

Which was also my takeaway from it. That sex was something good, and it brought joy to people. Also that it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, though (as my parents had warned me) that not everyone felt that way. So neither of us was prone to evangelizing sex either. We were what is called “sex positive”.

My sister was an adult by the time she wanted to do anything more than kissing and maybe some over the clothes groping. I started a bit younger, what with a lot of my friends in the neighborhood being girls and me being decidedly not prone to the usual bravado and bullshit that boys get into. I didn’t enjoy the company of most boys, and wasn’t an asshole to the girls, so they liked me.

That meant that when they were feeling ready to engage in exploration, I was the boy they trusted enough to bring it up with. Then, because I was sex positive and had been very firmly advised not to pressure people into things, they would often pick me for the next step they wanted to take.

By the time I was willing and ready to engage in penetrative sex with someone, I had had access to plenty of great information on how to not make bad decisions. I knew about safer sex, I understood that if a girl said no, even if we were in the middle of something, I was expected to stop. And I knew that I wasn’t the only one that could and should enjoy it.

It was also the case that I turned down PIV sex several times before I felt ready for it. Not that I didn’t want to do it, I definitely did. I just didn’t feel like it was something I was ready for emotionally or in a practical sense. So I waited longer than I might have without the access to sex positive information, which was part and parcel of how my parents handled all of it.

Which, a shoutout to Coco, the young lady that, when I said I wasn’t ready to go all the way in response to her request, said that it was okay, just go down on her again. Zero pressure, no insults or snide jokes, just a shrug and switching activities.

As an adult, I directly credit my parents being open, honest, and positive about sex to me having had good sex. Me and my wife have raised our kid in a similar way (though we’re not as loud lol, we know how to grab a pillow before things get that good), and the kid has expressed gratitude about how we’ve handled it after hearing friends talk about how their parents address sex.

Our kid has also said that they’re glad we still love each other like that, because some of those friends have also talked about what happens when their parents aren’t engaging in a mutually healthy sexual interaction. There’s other reasons too, but those get into things that would be against the agreement with the kid about what kind of information we adults are allowed to share with others about them

So, that’s my basic experience. That the sounds of sex matter a shit ton less than how the adults handle things regarding sex. If the parents are willing to put in the work and make it a positive, it’s a positive thing, even a potentially great thing.