What if your sexuality isn’t something to fix? How to reconnect with your desire, pleasure, and sexual self

By Andrea Battiola, EdS, LPC, LMHC

When something changes in our sexuality, we often start asking questions like: What’s wrong with me? Why don’t I want sex as much as I used to? Why is it harder for me to get turned on? Why don’t I enjoy sex the way I used to? Why don’t I feel comfortable in my body? Why don’t I know what I like? Why does sex feel like something I should want rather than something I actually want?

These are important questions, and sometimes there are very real things that need attention. Pain, medication, hormonal changes, relationship difficulties, trauma, stress, depression, anxiety, and countless other factors can affect our sexuality. But I think there’s another question that’s worth asking before we decide that something is wrong: What if your sexuality isn’t something you need to fix? What if it’s something you need to understand?

There’s a difference.

When we approach sexuality primarily as a problem to solve, we can become very focused on getting ourselves back to some previous version of “normal.” Back to how much we used to want sex. Back to how our body used to respond. Back to how confident we used to feel. Back to how easy sex used to be. Sometimes that desire to get back to the way things were makes perfect sense. But what if the goal isn’t always to get back? What if the goal is to become more familiar with where you are now? Or to move into a new way of being?

Your sexuality doesn’t exist in isolation from the rest of your life. It changes as you change. Your relationships change. Your body changes. Your priorities change. Your stress levels change. Your understanding of yourself changes. The things you want change. The things you tolerate change. The things you’re curious about change. Of course your sexuality might change, too. And that doesn’t automatically mean something has gone wrong.

Your sexuality has a history

One of the things I often explore with clients is their sexual story: the collection of experiences, messages, beliefs, relationships, and expectations that have shaped how they understand themselves sexually.

We all have one. Some of those messages may have served us well. Some may have helped us feel safe. Some may have given us language for understanding ourselves. And some may have left us carrying shame, fear, guilt, insecurity, or expectations we never consciously chose.

We absorb messages about our bodies, about what makes someone desirable, about who is “supposed” to want sex, about how much sex is too much or too little, about what good partners do, about what pleasure is supposed to look like, about what we’re allowed to ask for, and about what we’re allowed to say no to. Eventually, these messages can become so familiar that we stop recognizing them as messages. They just feel like the truth.

That’s part of why understanding your sexual story can be so powerful. Not because your past determines who you are, and not because you need to spend the rest of your life analyzing everything that happened to you. It’s because it’s difficult to make intentional choices about something we haven’t taken the time to understand.

You can recognize where a belief came from without continuing to live by it. You can understand why something feels uncomfortable without deciding that you’ll always feel that way. You can appreciate what protected you at one point in your life while recognizing that you may not need that same protection now. And you can discover that some of the things you thought were simply “who you are” were actually someone else’s beliefs all along.

Your sexuality isn’t a finished product

I also don’t think sexuality is something we’re supposed to figure out once. There’s an idea that somewhere along the way, we’re supposed to “find” our sexual self, as though there’s a fixed version of ourselves waiting to be discovered.

But I think some parts of sexuality are learned through paying attention. Through noticing. Through experimenting. Through giving yourself permission to experience something differently. Through learning what your body responds to. Through becoming more familiar with what feels good, what doesn’t, what you’re curious about, and what has changed.

That doesn’t mean forcing yourself into experiences you don’t want, pushing past discomfort, or deciding that you need to become more sexual. It means becoming an active participant in your own sexual development. You get to be curious. You get to change your mind. You get to discover something you didn’t know before. You get to realize that something you once wanted doesn’t feel right anymore. You get to decide that something you’ve never explored is worth being curious about.

You also get to develop a relationship with your sexuality that isn’t based entirely on whether you’re currently having sex. Your sexual self can be a part of your life even when you’re not having sex. It can show up in how you relate to your body, how you experience pleasure, how comfortable you feel taking up space, how you understand desire, how you move through the world, how you connect with yourself and other people, how you give yourself permission to want things, and how you recognize what feels good and trust yourself enough to notice when something doesn’t.

So how do you actually reconnect with your sexual self?

This is where I think curiosity becomes much more useful than self-criticism. Instead of immediately asking, “How do I fix this?” you might begin asking, “What can I learn about myself here?”

That question can lead somewhere very different.

Here are a few places you can start. You’ll need some paper, a pencil and 3 different colored highlighters or markers:

1. Uncover the Messages

Think about the different places where you learned about sex and sexuality, and identify the messages you received from each source. I like to break this down into a few different categories to help focus your reflection.

What messages did you learn from each of these groups about your body, sex, relationships, and sexuality?

1. Family
2. Friends & peers
3. Culture: religion, community, country, etc.
4. Media: magazines, music, movies, TV, social media, pornography, etc.
5. Your own body and experiences
6. Other sources

Don’t worry about whether a message seems “important” enough to write down. We’re trying to do a brain dump here, creating mental white space. Sometimes the messages that seem small or obvious are the ones that have become the most deeply ingrained.

2. Sort What Still Serves You

Now that you have a clearer picture of what has influenced your beliefs about yourself, your relationships, your body, and your sexuality, you have a choice about what you want to carry forward.

Go through your list and mark each message with one of three colors:

Green: These are the messages you want to reinforce. They serve you, support the person you’re becoming, or reflect beliefs you’d like to hold more strongly.

Yellow: These messages feel fairly neutral. They aren’t particularly helpful or harmful, and you don’t feel a strong need to change them right now. They’re okay as they are.

Red: These are the messages you want to question or begin letting go of. They may reflect fears, shame, expectations, or beliefs that were passed down to you but don’t actually fit who you are today. These are the messages that don’t serve you and perhaps never did.

3. Rewrite the Messages

Now comes the part where you get to become more intentional about the story you’re telling yourself.

For your green messages, ask yourself: What would help me live more fully into this belief? What could you do, practice, or pay attention to that would reinforce this part of yourself? Is there someone in your life who could celebrate, support, or remind you of these beliefs? Think of them as your partners in crime, people who can help you give more space to the parts of your sexuality that already feel good and authentic.

For your red messages, start with compassion. Try to approach the version of you who learned that message with some tenderness and grace. That belief may have made sense at one point. It may have helped you feel safe, accepted, protected, or connected. You don’t have to shame yourself for having learned it in order to decide that you don’t want to keep carrying it.

Then ask yourself two questions:

1. What story do I want to tell myself now?

If the old message was “Good women don’t want too much,” what would you rather believe? Maybe it’s “My desires don’t make me too much.” If the message was “My body needs to look a certain way to be desirable,” perhaps your new story is “My body doesn’t have to look a certain way for me to experience pleasure, desire, or connection.”

Your new story doesn’t have to feel completely true yet. In fact, it may feel uncomfortable or unfamiliar at first. That’s okay. You’re practicing a new way of thinking, not trying to convince yourself of something overnight.

2. What are some small acts of resistance?

Changing a belief doesn’t only happen by thinking differently. Sometimes we have to give ourselves new experiences that contradict the old message.

If you learned that talking about sex was shameful, maybe an act of resistance is having an honest conversation with someone you trust. If you learned that your pleasure should always come second, maybe it’s allowing yourself to notice what you want before immediately thinking about what someone else wants. If you learned that your body needs to look a certain way before you can feel desirable, maybe it’s practicing being present in your body rather than evaluating it.

These don’t have to be big, dramatic acts of rebellion. In fact, the smallest ones are often more sustainable. Each time you make a choice that is a little more aligned with the person you’re becoming, you’re giving yourself evidence that the old message doesn’t have to run the show anymore.

And remember: the goal isn’t to replace every “bad” belief with a shiny new positive one. It’s to become more aware of the messages you’ve inherited so that you can decide, with intention, which ones you want to keep, which ones you want to question, and which ones you’re ready to leave behind.

Conclusion

Your sexual story isn’t something you have to erase or overcome. It’s the story of how you became who you are, and every part of it has something to teach you. Understanding where your beliefs came from gives you more room to decide what happens next.

You may not be able to change what you were taught, what you experienced, or what shaped you. But you can become more intentional about what you carry forward.

Your story shaped you. It doesn’t have to define you.

 

Andrea Battiola, LPC, LMHC, Ed.S., is the founder and psychotherapist at Peak Couples & Sex Therapy and the creator of Peak EDU, an educational platform dedicated to making high-quality, evidence-based sexual wellness resources more accessible. Since founding Peak in 2016, Andrea has grown the practice into a specialized virtual group of highly skilled clinicians serving clients across Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland, and Washington state. She believes that sexual health is mental health and is passionate about helping individuals and couples build more connected, intimate, and fulfilling relationships. Through therapy, digital education, workshops, and speaking, Andrea helps people move beyond shame, deepen connection, and create relationships that reflect their values and desires.