For religious reasons, I’m 30 and still a virgin. (I’m not committed to lifetime celibacy, however: I’m getting married in May.) But some of the “education” I received about sex as a young adolescent did lead to difficulty in attempting even non-proscribed forms of affectionate contact (kissing and such). I was not sexually abused, but sex was often explained to me in terms of power, self-assertion, and possession: the male desires sex and so seduces or even coerces the female into giving it. Since such impositions of will were (and are) distasteful to me, I could not bring myself to ask a woman for anything. The result: my first kiss came when I was 27, and it was unexpected and initiated by the woman. And I had a panic attack.
Long story made short: I had to reinterpret sex (and all physical intimacy) NOT as something that someone else has which I take, but as something which I have and can share.
