The Love Files No.18 // Sexual Guilt

Lately I came to realise that very often after having had sex with someone while not being in a relationship with that guy, that after the sex lots of negative feelings came creeping up inside of me. Feelings of guilt, regret, shame mostly. So I googled this and there really is the term ‘sexual guilt’ and ‘sexual shame’ that refers to feeling bad about the sex, yourself and the person you had sex with afterwards. And I realised that I was going through all of those feelings every time I had sex with a guy I was not in a relationship with when I did not know the man extremely well. Apparently this comes from the values and morals of society we are raised in, religion also seems to take a major part in shaping those feeling for people who grew up in very religious environments and I assume that also personal character traits play an important role here not everyone deals well with causal sex. I certainly don’t is which I realise more and more after having had casual sex.

I just found it quite interesting that the feeling of guilt and shame afterwards is not just something that I experience, it really is apparently something that many people experience. I don’t remember it too well anymore from what I have read but from what I remember women feel more regret, shame and guilt afterwards than men do. Truth is I am not surprised because women and men get raised differently when it comes to sex. I think in our society standards for men are different ones than standards for women when it comes to sex. When we as women have sex outside of a relationship with different partners we are quickly labeled as sluts or whores while for men the story is a little different, they are the guys who have great success with women if they make it it get someone laid while women get judged and called bad names for it when doing exactly the same thing. Let’s talk about double standards here is all I can say about it.

Mainly this feeling of sexual guilt or shame comes up in my case when I feel that things maybe did not work out too well, that it was too fast to go for the sex at this point or that I was maybe not even so sure about really wanting sex with the guy. But on the other hand I also had this feeling of guilt and shame afterwards even when I had known a man for quite a long time but as soon as sex was involved, things very often dramatically changed between us and nowadays after having had sex with a guy I mostly feel like completely distancing myself from him. I will just zoom out afterwards and I also wonder about it and feel that this ain’t normal at all. Actually this just started after I was having the fling with the Italian guy after my breakup, before it was not like that.

So, I think sexual guilt and shame is quite an interesting topic to explore and I am very sure that it is something many people feel, even though the majority won’t openly talk about it because it is another topic that we just never talk about. For me the feelings of sexual guilt and shame are certainly real and I have not realised it until now when I finally took a look what casual sex does to my emotions and feelings and I can say the outcome it not a great one for me and most of the time the sex wasn’t either. But on the other hand i thought why not go for it when at that point it felt like the right thing to do for the man and for me as well. Truth is we don’t know how we feel afterwards many times but I guess now my problem is that I don’t even expect to feel good anymore after having sex with someone so there I probably kind of try to convince me to go for it with the hope that in the end I will feel good about it but lately it was never ever the case.

So my question to you is, do you know these feelings of sexual guilt and shame and if you do, how do you cope with it? Please share with me, I am very interested to hear more opinions on this topic.

xx, Phyllis