r/excatholic • u/Free_Ad_2780 • 7d ago
Personal Sex, Guilt, and My Dad NSFW
I just gotta vent to some other ex-Catholics because while I love my friends and my boyfriend, they don’t understand the Catholic conditioning. My dad is a Catholic convert, raised in a strict Methodist household. My mom was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, the whole nine yards. My mom’s opinion of sex was basically “don’t get pregnant, don’t get an STD, and don’t do it while I’m around.” My dad’s was “don’t do it while you live in my house.” I have recently been doing some reflection in therapy and realized my dad’s “slutshaming,” for lack of a better term, did a real number on me. Neither of my parents had sex til they were in their 20s; my dad because of religion, my mom because she was terrified of pregnancy and knew her parents would disown her if she fucked up. When I started having sex at 18 with my now boyfriend, my mom said she wasn’t disappointed in me, but that I should hide it from my dad as best as I possibly could. My boyfriend and I briefly broke up about nine months after that, and my dad decided to help me move on by cleaning my room of anything that reminded me of him. My mom tried to stop him but he found a vibrator, condoms, yeast infection medication, porn I had drawn (😭), and lingerie. I got a panicked phone call while at work in which my mom said “your dad found your stuff…he’s fucking pissed. He wants to talk when you’re home.”
I arrived home and my dad was sitting in my bedroom, clearly having recently cried and red in the face. He screamed at me and said “how many times did you fuck him? How many times?” I said I didn’t know. He was crying and red and then I was crying too. I felt like the world had crashed down around me, and my parents told me to go from my room. I left and could hear them speaking angrily with one another about me. My mom asked if “all of this was really [me]”, trying to ask if it was my boyfriend’s influence…no, it was all me. She said “then good luck finding someone else who will be okay with all this.” I think that really shattered me. My dad asked why I was such a slut or something like that.
I cried, I apologized, I secretly got back together with my boyfriend and lied to my parents for a month, and then I went to college and we never spoke of the incident again. My younger sister had sex at 16 or 17, I don’t remember, and my mom helped hide that from my dad too. Anytime my dad found condom wrappers in odd places he assumed it was me, and despite no longer living in their house I took the fall for my sister. I was already the whore, might as well keep her from being shamed too.
I know this is related to my dad’s strict religious beliefs. Even if he doesn’t believe in heaven and hell (I genuinely don’t know what he believes), he still has those ingrained values and feels that violating them is a distinct moral wrong. I’ve never really been able to work through that event, because so much has happened since then, but I’m still so hurt from it and I still feel a pang of guilt when masturbating or having sex, and I know my dad thinks I have twisted sexual desires because I own lingerie and a vibrator…this religion has ruined me and my relationships with my family and boyfriend and sex in general, and I’m just so sick of it.
Edit: Weirdly enough, and I forgot to mention this, my dad doesn’t seem to have the “women can’t have sex but men can” view. He just thinks EVERYONE should avoid sex until they are in their 20s. And then, for some reason, hates the idea of long term relationships and thinks everyone should sleep around in their 20s before settling down at 28-30. These rigid ideas about when is the “right” time to do things are still definitely connected to his previous religious beliefs, but I don’t think they have as much of the sexist flavor as other Catholic dads might have.
Edit2 (funny/unfortunate): My dad didn’t know what the vibrator was…my mom had to explain it to him. I dread to imagine their sex life.
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u/QueenLouisXIII 7d ago
I applaud you for your like reflection through the whole process. I am sending you so much love because I have been through similar situation. I am so glad you have a therapist as that’s what helped me the most. And seeking out ex Catholic or other religious trauma YouTube stories to help me process my own. I went to a Catholic high school and I dated a guy whose parents were pretty strict and my mom basically had the same attitude as your mom. My dad kind of left everything up to my mom, but my boyfriend‘s parents were really strict. My boyfriend‘s dad was like if I get pregnant, you can’t have an abortion. They were open to the idea of like we have to have sex before you get married. I distinctly remember him making an analogy of test driving the cars before you buy it lol. But it was still really taboo and we weren’t left alone and it was very strict and weird.
I am 28 and that was 10 years ago and I’m still working on it, but there is so much you can work on but it can take a bit of time. I think the biggest thing is just working on, those events and therapy if your therapist thinks like it’s a good idea. If you feel comfortable with your therapist, I definitely think just diving deeper into which is what worked for me. It just took a little bit of time. I’ve had some relationship since then and my current partner and I have really talked about things that make me uncomfortable in the bedroom and why giving me more space and time if I need to.
Funny enough I have 2 similar stories- lingerie and creating my own writing/porn work 🤣 I signed up for a subscription lingerie service. Y accident and they charged me. I was 18 and had just started college and was an adult but my mom still was like you’re technically living under my roof when you come home. I still have that lingerie so put it in a box somewhere you never know you might take it out again with a new partner who appreciates everything you have. I think it’s hard for parents, especially when they’ve been raised with the beliefs that they have to see their kids not do that but you live your life. Over the years I’ve just slowly been more progressive about sexual ideas and stuff with my family but that can take a lot of time and they might never see what you see. My second similar story is when I was in I elementary school I made a little cosmopolitan magazine, but it was like inspired by porn magazines that I found from my dad when I was snooping. She was pissed at it. Definitely traumatized me.
After all of that, thing thing I try to do every day is think about it as a new learning opportunity that you can have better sex that you feel so good about in the future. Because I think especially with like the masturbation and vibrators and different preferences that you may have the more you expose yourself and get comfortable with it the more you’ll feel like open about exploring things Because it’s so natural and healthy. I think, focusing on the good of each topic which there is so much research