Happy Pride month!

Even though we’re celebrating pride, sexuality, and self-acceptance every single day here at GETSOME, there’s no better time to sit down and reflect on human sexuality than the month of June. It’s such a complicated and nuanced topic that we can (and will) talk about forever. The conversation around personal sexuality truly never ends, because it’s fluid, complicated, and vast.

Even as an individual, your journey through understanding, exploring, and accepting your own sexuality truly never ends. Pretty exciting, if we do say so ourselves. Because you have a whole lifetime of self-love to look forward to.

In honor of Pride, we scoured the internet (and tapped into our own anonymous Sex Therapist Hotline) to find some questions about sexuality that have left a lot of people perplexed. Hopefully we can help you find some peace of mind and understanding surrounding such a complicated topic.

But before we start answering your long-held questions about sexuality…

What is sexuality?

Sexuality is a broad term that refers to a person’s sexual feelings, thoughts, attractions, and behaviors. It’s also a deeply personal aspect of who you are, as unique as a fingerprint. You can share sexual preferences with a person and still never be 100% alike in your sexuality. It’s one of the things that truly makes people one-of-a-kind.

Exploring and getting to understand your own sexuality can be an exciting, fun, and liberating experience. But of course, accepting and celebrating your sexuality isn’t always an easy journey. That’s exactly why we created our Unlearning Sexual Shame module–for people who want to work through the feelings of shame and anxiety that they feel regarding their own sexuality and emerge feeling confident and empowered in their understanding of themselves.

It’s also important to remember that there is no rush to “figure out” your sexuality, as it’s a lifelong journey that’s truly never finished. It’s best to simply enjoy the ride.

So with that in mind, let’s take a look at some interesting questions we’ve encountered regarding sexuality…

Can sexuality change over time?

Yes. But that doesn’t mean that it definitely will.

Sexuality is a personal evolution. It can change with factors including (but absolutely not limited to) experience, exposure, community, and age. As you get older and time passes, you have more experiences, you understand yourself better, and you start to want different things. It’s highly possible that your sexual preferences and proclivities will shift. As you experience new things, new neural pathways are opened which allow for alternate ways of thinking and experiencing the world.

The more you choose an alternative to your “default,” the easier it is for you to enjoy something new rather than catastrophizing it.

And, as a fun fact about sexuality, pleasure, and aging–did you know that couples over 60 who are still having sex report that the quality of sex actually increases as they age? That’s because the emphasis shifts from performance to pleasure and connection.

Can sexuality be influenced?

Yes and no. Remember the thing that we just said about neural pathways?

Sexuality can be influenced by the people around you, the experiences you’ve had, and the things that you’ve been exposed to. Because it’s fluid and ever-shifting.

That said, there are elements of your sexuality that are simply genetic. Like who you’re attracted to, for example. Just like you can’t “make” someone gay, or “convert” a gay person into a straight person. It’s almost like there’s a genetic baseline to your sexuality that stays the same, even as you continue to grow and evolve in your tastes, kinks, and preferences.

You will find yourself over time, grow and mature, and realize what you like and don’t like. Rather than looking at it as being “influenced,” or “changed, why not think of it as coming into yourself?

Can sexuality be a trauma response?

Oftentimes, the stereotype of a survivor of sexual violence is that they become hypersexual, putting themselves in potentially dangerous situations as a means of coping with their trauma. While this is certainly a trauma response that some survivors experience, it’s important to remember that (like almost everything else in the world of sex and sexuality), trauma’s impact on one’s sexuality is incredibly personal. It depends on the individual as well as factors like their experience, their coping mechanisms, and their support system.

As a result of a traumatic experience, you can find yourself drawn to specific people or situations that feel safe or validating. But that’s not necessarily a direct reflection of your shifting sexuality.

To learn more about trauma, sexuality, and healing, click here to read an interview with The Body Keeps the Score author, Bessel Van Der Kolk. And remember, if you are struggling to cope with trauma, there is always support available. Please reach out to your therapist or doctor to find resources available to you.

A question about sexuality from the Sex Therapist Hotline.

If you’re not familiar, we run an anonymous “Sex Therapist Hotline,” where you can submit the questions about sex that you’ve always been curious about and have them answered by an ASTO licensed sex therapist! We recently received an interesting question about bisexuality from an audience member. Let’s take a look–

“I’m a woman that enjoys making out with women, but I’m not interested in getting naked and having sex with them. Can I still call myself bisexual?”

Such an interesting question. Depending on who you ask, you will hear a million different opinions on what “bisexuality” actually is. But the truth is, sexuality can’t be defined in such a solid sense. We try to better understand ourselves and the world around us by placing things into defining categories. This works sometimes, but in the case of sexuality, it doesn’t do justice to the nuance and complexities of being human.

Bisexuality (and sexuality in general), is not defined by sex acts, but rather what one considers to be their authentic state of being. That’s the best part–you get to decide!

That’s why it’s so important to have conversations about your preferences. Just because someone identifies as bisexual doesn’t mean that they want to have sex with every single person alive, or that their most authentic expression of their sexuality is the same as yours.

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Ultimately, your sexuality is a personal journey that takes place over the course of your entire life. Not a single destination or a puzzle to be solved as quickly and efficiently as possible. What’s most important is that you are living as your authentic self and getting the support you need along the way.

Want to learn more about sex, sexuality, and pleasure?

Click here to dive into our Unlearning Sexual Shame module!

Click here to listen to the latest season of the GETSOME podcast!

Click here to submit your anonymous questions to the Sex Therapist Hotline!