If you grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family, finding intimacy and a healthy sex life can be a challenge. Learning how to trust another, find intimacy, and build a healthy relationship is not easy.

To open yourself up to such intimacy can be a challenge. Learning how to be in a healthy relationship, when you’ve never seen one can be difficult.

When I look back at my early attempts at dating, I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. I had only seen the broken marriages within my own family, and my grandparents’ marriage that consisted of them constantly bickering and yelling at each other.

As I dated, I tried to model my relationships off of what I read in books or in the movies. I gravitated toward the grand romantic gesture, but had no idea how to obtain true intimacy.

What I didn’t understand then is that I could not have true intimacy until I better understood myself. First and foremost, I needed to be comfortable in my own skin. I needed to accept who I was sexually, and I had decided at an early age, that I would only be sexually intimate with a woman if I loved her.

I did not want one-night stands, and I didn’t want to have sex just for physical reasons. I’m not here to judge or point fingers at what others choose to do, but for me, I wanted to be in love with someone before we became sexually intimate.

And in order to become intimate, that meant that I needed to learn how to trust another person. To strip down not only the physical aspects of a sexual relationship, but to let someone into my most intimate secrets and to allow another to see me as I truly am.

Before I could do any of that, I had to find comfort in myself. I needed to know my body, learn what I liked, and didn’t as well as to love myself.

In my early attempts at romance, I fell in love with being in love. I looked to a relationship because I liked the rush of love and how it felt to first find someone who likes you. I didn’t understand that I needed to be strong in myself and in who I was before I started dating.

In the beginning, I dated to find someone to complete me. That didn’t work.

Recently, I learned that Betty Dodson, a women’s guru of self-pleasure, died at the age of 91. Radical in her beliefs of sex positivity for women, she taught women how to be comfortable with their own bodies, and to learn the ways of self-pleasure.

Even decades later, such a topic might make us feel uncomfortable.

Having grown up Catholic, in school I had priests tell us how masturbating was a sin and how we had to “cut those thoughts out of our mind with an ax.” I look back at how such negative my schooling was, and am thankful that I’ve become more open-minded as I aged.

If you’ve never heard Dan Savage’s Savage Love podcast, I recommend that you give it a try. It might not be your cup of tea, but it might have you question and be more open to learning about sex. On his podcast, he answers all sorts of questions about sex and love. I used to listen to the podcast with my wife, but when we had kids, it became a bit more challenging to listen to with little ones around.

What I liked about the podcast is that I could hear and learn what others struggled with in their relationships, and I learned things that they definitely didn’t teach me in my Catholic school.

No matter what path you decide to take, taking the opportunity to learn more about your body and how to be intimate with another is a step in the right direction. There are books and podcasts to help you, if you’re willing to listen and learn.

What I want to share is this simple message: The unhealthy relationships we grew up in do not mean that that’s all there is. We deserve happiness and sexual intimacy.

Take the time to embrace the opportunities ahead of you.

Like what you’ve read? Be sure to check out my other posts in my Let Go and Be Free blog.