{"id":438,"date":"2014-09-17T10:04:34","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T10:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/twilia.org\/?p=438"},"modified":"2023-09-06T14:21:11","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T14:21:11","slug":"im-getting-married-and-im-afraid-of-my-wife-seeing-my-private-parts-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/twilia.org\/index.php\/2014\/09\/17\/im-getting-married-and-im-afraid-of-my-wife-seeing-my-private-parts-help\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m Getting Married and I\u2019m Afraid of My Wife Seeing My Private Parts. Help?"},"content":{"rendered":"
(Image: Robby McKee<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Dear\u00a0Celes,<\/p>\n I am a 25-year-old man. I am facing the biggest crisis in my life as I am going to get married. My brief background would make it clear.<\/p>\n When I was a kid, around 10, my female cousin (around the same age) and I would\u00a0sleep together. On one such occasion, her hand accidentally touched my thigh and she felt something bulging. She asked me what it was. In my child-like, innocent enthusiasm I opened my shorts and she saw my erect p****. She got excited and started rocking it, saying that she had now\u00a0seen\u00a0my \u2018shame-shame.\u2019 Later, in the same excitement, she told all this to her mother as though it were some achievement on her part! For this, both of us got a good spanking with a warning that it is shameful for boys and girls to see the \u201cshame-shame\u201d of one another.<\/p>\n As I grew older, I saw the same notion being reinforced in various situations. But the situation I am going to get into \u2014 marriage \u2014 demands that this shame be considered desirable, in the name of sex! And till now I have no idea how a grown-up girl\/young lady will\u00a0react on seeing a p****. Pray tell me whether she would feel shameful, angry, shocked or worse still, mock my shame-shame.<\/p>\n How do I even hope to face the \u2018blasphemous\u2019 prospect of her having to touch it with her hand? I do not see any escape from this situation I\u2019m about to enter.<\/p>\n \u2013 Ka (Not real name)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Hi Ka, usually I don\u2019t discuss sexual topics on PE because I want to create a family-friendly, G-rated environment here. However after reading your question, I think it\u2019s important that I address it. Firstly, I don\u2019t see this as a sexual question but more of a personal development situation tied to\u00a0a sexual situation. Secondly, I think it\u2019s precisely because many people, especially those in conservative cultures, avoid discussing\/understanding sexual topics openly\u00a0that results in predicaments like this. This is unfortunate, so my aim of featuring this question today is to create a conscious conversation around your predicament \u2014 one that many others, especially those in\u00a0traditional cultures, are probably facing.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re a young teen or a parent whose\u00a0kids are reading PE, know that exposure\u00a0to this topic (discussion about private parts, sexual organs and the like) is inevitable, and that it\u2019s better that you and\u00a0your child read\u00a0 \u00a0about it here first as opposed to growing up with an undeveloped understanding about it and learning things the hard way later.<\/p>\n Perhaps I best start off with\u00a0a\u00a0childhood story.<\/p>\n Some of you may have read from\u00a0some of<\/a> my<\/a>\u00a0articles<\/a> that I have an elder brother. While my brother and I care for each other, we pretty much don\u2019t talk, sort of like how things used to be with me and my parents<\/a>. It\u2019s been this way since we were kids, and if I were to trace it down to an incident, I would say it was when I was in Primary\/Grade 3 (and my brother was in Primary\/Grade 5; he\u2019s two years older than me), and when my mom yelled at us and rebuked us very harshly\u2026 after she caught us showering together (in a sibling way of course).<\/p>\n Now, the thing is that up until then, we were really close. Super close. Showering together was a normality for us\u00a0then; it was fun and we would play around and splash water at each other etc. So when my mom rebuked us that day, I didn\u2019t understand why. Neither did my brother, I think. Subsequently whenever I invited my brother to shower, he would say that we shouldn\u2019t\u00a0and that we would get scolded by mom later. I would be disappointed and took it as my brother not wanting to spend time with me anymore. Over time, we began to distance, and then the internet boom happened, and almost all every kid\u00a0in the world began to recede into his\/her bubble\u00a0with IRC chat and what not.<\/p>\n Was my mom at fault? No, not at all. When I later reflected on the incident as an adult, I realized why she did what she did. It was a normal thing that most moms would have done. If I were her, I probably would have freaked out too, though I would have counseled my kids and explained why.<\/p>\n Now, fast forward to\u00a0many years later. I grew up from kid-Celes to adult-Celes.<\/p>\n As adult-Celes, I sometimes worried about the day I\u00a0would have a boyfriend \/ be physically close with a guy, because\u00a0of my fear about how the guy would perceive my body\/private parts\/etc. This had nothing to do with the childhood incident above\u00a0but rather my own negative body image<\/a> due to media\/societal conditioning and what now. This is something I shared in my\u00a0body image series<\/a>\u00a0and have since overcome. My\u00a0negative self-body-image encompassed my entire body and naturally included my private parts as well since they are part of my body.<\/p>\n I used to have a negative body image, as shared in my body image<\/a> series (Image: Vadim Pacev<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So I would occasionally worry\u00a0that I wouldn\u2019t be appealing\u00a0or attractive enough to my future boyfriend, whoever he might be, and that I needed to keep my body in tip-top shape\u00a0\u2014\u00a0like being physically svelte, going for brazilian hair removal, shaving, having minimal body hair, etc. \u2014 to mitigate my concerns and also out of personal hygiene\u00a0and self-care.<\/p>\n And then I got\u00a0together with Ken (who is now my husband<\/a>), and\u00a0realized that all my fears for all these years were\u00a0unfounded.<\/p>\n All my\u00a0concerns, fears, shame, etc. I\u2019ve ever had about my body, he doesn\u2019t share them at all<\/em>. In fact he thinks it\u2019s ridiculous that I could ever have any of this thought, and to him I\u2019m the most perfect and beautiful girl with the most perfect body that he can ever want in a\u00a0woman. While I had previously busted a lot of my negative body image and concerns, being with him\u00a0made me further realize that\u00a0whatever fears and concerns\u00a0I had about my body are totally silly, stupid, out of place, and were every bit false and in my mind.<\/p>\n My point of sharing these experiences with you\u00a0Ka is that whatever fears we have about our own body \/ sexuality<\/a> \/ private parts are likely unfounded, ridiculous, and based on nothing but long-held cultural-yet-nonsensical beliefs. If we break down your current predicament,<\/p>\n Notice how these four fears\/concerns\u00a0are based on nothing but the notion that\u00a0it is shameful for males and females to see each other\u2019s private parts? A notion that\u2019s part of an age-old belief\u00a0(I\u2019m guessing you\u2019re from India\u00a0based on what you\u2019ve shared and your name which I didn\u2019t reveal here\u00a0\u2014\u00a0from my experience, this thinking is prevalent in more traditional\u00a0Asian cultures but not so much in western countries), but a notion all the same.<\/p>\n And how did this notion come about? Probably decades\u00a0or centuries ago, when a bunch of people decided that unmarried males\/females seeing each others\u2019 private parts should be\u00a0considered taboo because of possible implications like triggering of lust, unplanned\/unprotected sex, underage sex, unwanted pregnancies, or even rape. And this belief, this taboo,\u00a0might have come about because there were real cases of such things happening \u2014 meaning it started with a positive intent\u00a0\u2014 so people started thinking\u00a0\u201cIt is shameful for opposite genders\u00a0to see each others\u2019 private parts.\u201d Subsequently perhaps this belief degraded to \u201cOur private parts are shameful objects that cannot be seen by the opposite gender or anyone at all\u201d and even possibly \u201cWe are shameful for having private parts.\u201d Of course, religious views and conservative cultural views might have\u00a0played a role too.<\/p>\n If we look at the male and female bodies\u00a0objectively, there is nothing to be ashamed about them \u2014 any part of it. Our bodies are a natural part of the world. For\u00a0those of us who are religious, our bodies were created by God; for those of us who are non-religious,\u00a0our bodies are simply a natural creation of the universe. Why on earth should there be anything to be feared, shamed, mocked, scorned, or sneered\u00a0about our bodies, when they are really\u00a0the holy temples of our minds, hearts, and\u00a0souls?<\/strong><\/p>\n Hence, if you feel shameful about your body in any way Ka, don\u2019t. Because there is nothing to feel shameful about it. The only reason why any of us would feel shameful\u00a0about\u00a0our body, any part of it, is because of\u00a0our\u00a0childhood stories<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 stories where we were told when we were young that our body or\u00a0private parts are\u00a0disgusting, taboo, unworthy, unholy, unsightly, undesirable, undeserving, or even unnatural. And that\u2019s why we\u00a0then grow up perceiving them\u00a0as such.<\/p>\n\n
Showering with My Brother<\/h2>\n
Growing Up with Fears of My Future Boyfriend\/Husband\u00a0Seeing My (Naked) Body<\/h2>\n
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Our Shame and Fears\u00a0about Our Private Parts \/ Body<\/h2>\n
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Our Bodies\/Private Parts \u2013 Nothing to be Ashamed About!<\/h2>\n