⚠️ Trigger warning: This article discusses sensitive topics including sexual assault, coercion, manipulation, religious trauma, and sexual shame. If you're in crisis, please reach out to a support resource like RAINN (1-800-656-4673).

Hey Loves,

I want to talk to you about an increasingly important theme in my practice as an intimacy coach: purity culture. It’s an entire institution that requires much more than one article to adequately address. That being said, I have to start somewhere. So, let’s dig in….

If you grew up in purity culture, you likely heard messages like: sex is shameful, your body is dangerous, and your worth depends on your “sexual purity.”

And now? You're an adult trying to have healthy relationships that may or may not involve sex, and you have no idea what that looks like.

So let's talk about it. Let’s discuss how purity culture impacts intimacy, and how to break free and start healing from it. Your sexual desires don’t deserve condemnation. They deserve celebration.

A common theme I encounter in my practice is men are “entitled” to have orgasms, but it doesn’t matter if women have them because a woman’s pleasure isn’t important or necessary.

I understand why people believe this. It’s normal for a man to lose his erection (and desire for sex) after an orgasm. Women often don’t know how to orgasm, that they’re capable of orgasm, that they “deserve” to have orgasms, or that their pleasure even matters.

This disparity in orgasms is the gender orgasm gap, or pleasure gap, and it’s real and well-documented. Heterosexual women have significantly fewer orgasms than their male partners.

And if sex is primarily for procreation anyways, then why should a woman’s orgasm matter?

People socialized as men and women receive vastly different messages about what sexuality means. But those messages aren't always true or fair—and purity culture amplifies the worst ones.

Women raised in purity culture often learn their sexuality exists primarily for men's pleasure, not their own. Sexual desire becomes something shameful and scary. Sexual pleasure becomes something you're not supposed to want, and if you do… you’re a “slut.” Maintaining “purity" is the main focus until marriage. Then, suddenly the focus is on serving her husband’s sexual desires. But her sexual desires? Her sexual pleasure? What ever do you mean?

Meanwhile, men in these same religious environments absorb toxic messages too. They learn sexual thoughts are sinful, desire is dangerous, and women are either pure Madonnas or corrupted whores. The standards and expectations this creates for everyone make feelings of desire very confusing.

The gender orgasm gap has roots in culture, religion, and sex education. For example, comprehensive sex education curricula rarely teach about the clitoris being a woman's pleasure center. It's not unusual for a man to be unfamiliar with the clitoris, and it's not unusual for a woman to be unfamiliar with it either. You can imagine the challenges this creates for women's sexual pleasure.

Women shouldn’t have to advocate for their pleasure any more than men, and they shouldn’t feel ashamed for having sexual desire (nor should men). But this is the world so many of us live in. If we want the orgasm gap to close, then we need to be the ones who do it. That means approaching sexuality without judgment, advocating for ourselves, and choosing partners who want to be a part of our pleasure.

It also means being willing to shake your fist at society and letting go of shame, which is much easier said than done.

The confusion of purity culture leads us to draw harmful conclusions about our experiences when our expectations aren’t met. And, as stated earlier, purity culture sets confusing expectations to begin with. So it sets us up for failure.

Here are a couple examples:

I once spoke with a woman who lamented that her boyfriend was killing their sex life. He “only” lasted five minutes during sex and seemed to have a low sex drive overall. They were having sex one-to-two times per week. She was frustrated, saying he "won't have sex often enough to build stamina," and concluded he must not be attracted to her since she’d walk around in lingerie and he still didn’t want to have sex.

What she wasn’t saying was almost more important than what she was saying:

Men are supposed to want sex all the time, be ready for sex whenever, initiate sex, and control their erections.

Men are human beings though, not machines. But society—especially purity culture—will have you believe otherwise. So when those expectations don’t match reality, women start questioning themselves, men feel bad about themselves, and down the shame spiral they gooooo.

I've also talked with women whose boyfriends can only orgasm through masturbation, not through partnered sex. One woman described amazing sex with her boyfriend, but it bothered her deeply that he masturbated to reach orgasm. She felt insecure. She assumed she must be the “problem,” even though he told her he’d never been able to orgasm through partnered sex. He was insecure about it, as well.

There’s nothing wrong with desiring her boyfriend to orgasm through partnered sex. But, there’s also nothing wrong with him not orgasming through partnered sex. This was normal for him, but they were both struggling to understand and accept it.

But why?

It’s common for women to use vibrators or manual stimulation to orgasm, and that’s generally accepted as normal (although I use the term “generally” a bit generously). So, why can't it be normal for men, too?

If we look at this through a lens of non-judgment and set aside expectations, their story has much to celebrate. Instead of mourning what they didn’t have, they could get excited about what they did have: amazing sex, a great connection, open and honest communication, and genuine concern and care for one another.

When you accept and celebrate the things that do work, you can actually create space for new things. You open the door to adding new experiences and exploring new territory. So, maybe that’s when he orgasms through penetration for the first time (I’ve worked with couples who have experienced this exact situation). And the great sex keeps being great, just in a different way.

If we look at it again through the lens of judgment and expectations, the celebration is gone and the shame crops up. The mental block is fortified, and reaching orgasm is difficult. And, arguably less fun.

Sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski writes about this in her book Come As You Are. She discusses the research on how shame and pressure make reaching orgasm more difficult for everyone, regardless of gender. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in learning more about sex and desire, and how we really experience pleasure. Not how we’re supposed to experience it.

Perhaps nothing illustrates purity culture's damage more clearly than the Madonna-whore complex (audible sigh).

A woman in her 40s spoke about her 30-year-old boyfriend who'd completely changed after moving across the country to be with her. He'd left behind heavy drug use, homelessness, and a very active (sometimes paid) sex life. He got clean, got tested, and committed to her.

But their sex life was nearly non-existent. She always had to initiate, to the point where she felt like she was begging.

She tried surprising him with oral sex, based on a friend's suggestion. His response? He stopped her. He said he didn't like that, and that "Only hoes do that." He told her she was his girlfriend—not a slut—so he didn't want her doing that.

This is purity culture poison at its finest, and it’s harmful to everyone.

This man had divided women into two categories: women you have sex with (sluts, whores, sex workers) and women you respect and love (girlfriends, wives, Madonnas). In this man’s worldview, the two could never overlap. And unfortunately, this is incredibly common.

So, she wasn’t able to connect with him sexually. But, she'd catch him masturbating to porn. This meant he was thinking about sex and getting pleasure from it. Just not with her. Because he wasn’t able to associate his sexual desire with the woman he loved.

The Madonna-whore complex destroys relationships. Plain and simple.

It’s misogynistic, disrespectful, hateful, and quite honestly… boring. When you’re a man who can’t have love and sex at the same time, you sacrifice one for the other. And if you’re a woman with a man who loves you but doesn’t desire you? I’ve seen the pain it causes, and it’s an incredibly difficult road to go down.

This is one of purity culture's cruelest legacies: teaching people that love and desire are incompatible, that respect and sexuality can't coexist, and that you must choose between being "good" or being sexual, because never the two shall meet.

The impact of purity culture doesn’t stop at awkward sex or mismatched libidos. It can actually lead to violation and abuse.

I recently helped a woman who wondered if she had been raped (a question that I hear way too often). She described a relationship that started when she was 17. She'd been clear from the beginning that she wasn't ready for sex. “Catholic guilt,” she said. But her boyfriend wasn’t ok with that. He brought it up constantly. He convinced her to perform oral sex, which she hated.

Eventually she had sex with him because she felt guilty about making him wait. She hated that, too. She was in pain. She got frequent UTIs. But, she thought pain during sex was normal, so she kept doing it. And sometimes she would black out while it was happening.

One day, he told her he wanted to come over later and have sex. She dreaded it all day. When they were together, she tried ignoring his advances but he started pleading. She gave in and they went upstairs.

She described the feeling of leaving her body and watching herself have sex from outside herself. It became so painful that she yelled out, but he kept going until he finished. Afterward, she lay motionless on her bed. When he came back from the bathroom, she broke up with him.

She was struggling and finally opened up to her parents a month later, and her mom told her there was no point in doing anything. She didn’t even seem to believe it was “actually” assault or rape.

This woman was telling me her story seven years later. She hadn’t forgotten about it, she didn’t get over it, and in fact, it was impacting her quite negatively. She was engaging in destructive behaviors, having panic attacks, and losing weight. And sex? Painful to even think about.

So was it rape? Was it sexual assault?

Yes and yes. It was an overall sexually abusive and manipulative relationship, and the fact that she even had to ask the question says a lot.

What makes this story particularly heartbreaking are the layers of betrayal and gaslighting this young woman experienced:

First, she struggled with guilt that was taught to her through her religion. The lessons she learned about her sexuality being shameful, her virginity being virtuous, and having sex would make her impure.

Then she struggled with emotional blackmail and pestering from her boyfriend. Being told things like she "owed" him, it was "expected," and she was being unfair by making him wait.

Finally, she struggled with gaslighting from her parents. She was told there was no point in taking action, and that what happened to her didn't “count” as assault.

None of this was her fault. She was let down and betrayed by the very systems and people she trusted to take care of her.

Purity culture creates the perfect conditions for this kind of abuse. When you're taught that:

...you become incredibly vulnerable to coercion and assault. You don't have the language or framework to recognize what's happening. You don't feel entitled to your own boundaries or even know what boundaries are. You've been primed to prioritize someone else's desire over your own safety and comfort.

And if you do try to name what happened, you may very well be met with dismissal and even blame. Purity culture teaches that "real" assault looks a certain way (violent stranger in an alley), not like a boyfriend pressuring his girlfriend. So the lesson gets reinforced: saying no isn’t an option.

If you're reading this and recognizing yourself in these stories… let me just say… purity culture failed you. And now you're taking the first step toward unwinding and healing that trauma, and I can’t say enough times how inspiring that is.

Religious trauma around sexuality is real. It affects your nervous system, your ability to feel sexual desire or sexual pleasure, and your capacity to form healthy relationships. The traumatic experiences of growing up in religious environments that shame sexuality leave lasting wounds.

You might find yourself:

These aren't personal failures. They’re not your fault. They're the predictable results of harmful religious teachings about sexuality.

Healing from purity culture trauma takes time, and there's no single path forward. But here are some things that can help:

Educate yourself. Learn about human sexuality from actual sex educators and researchers. Books like Emily Nagoski's Come As You Are can be transformative in understanding desire and pleasure without shame.

Find your people. Whether it's a therapist or sex coach who understands religious trauma or online communities of others on similar journeys, you don't have to do this alone. Connecting with others who understand can be incredibly validating.

Practice self-compassion. You absorbed these messages during your formative years from people and institutions you trusted. You're not broken. You're not damaged goods. You're someone recovering from spiritual beliefs that harmed you.

Redefine what sex means to you. Purity culture gave you narrow definitions of sexual activity and sexual purity. You get to build your own beliefs now based on consent, desire, communication, and respect rather than shame and obligation.

Set boundaries without guilt. Sex is never owed, period. Not even to a spouse or partner. Learning to say no without drowning in guilt is a crucial part of healing and maintaining safety.

Celebrate your sexual self. Your sexuality is not shameful. Sexual desire is not sinful. Sexual pleasure is not wrong. You’re allowed to experience and enjoy sexuality on your own terms.

You deserve intimacy without shame, pleasure without guilt, and sexuality without trauma.

Purity culture taught you to disconnect from your body, to view sexuality through a lens of sin and obligation, to prioritize others' desires over your own boundaries (or your own desire over others’ boundaries). Unwinding those beliefs isn’t easy, but it is possible.

You don't have to carry those messages anymore. You can decide who you are and how you'll let others treat you, regardless of what society or religion taught you.

The journey from purity culture to sexual wholeness isn't quick or linear. There will be setbacks and difficult moments. But every step you take toward understanding your own desires, setting boundaries, and releasing shame is a step toward freedom, and let’s be real … toward FUN!

I know this probably wasn’t easy to read. It certainly wasn’t easy to write.

And I know it can be devastating to deconstruct the internalized harmful messaging of religious dogma. But if you’re anywhere on this journey, then I just want you to know I have immense respect and admiration for you. Truly.

I hope you appreciate the strength it takes to embrace your full sexual self (wherever you land on the spectrum of sexuality), and just know that you have a cheerleader in me.

Love always,