Charlie was the oldest of three children raised in a middle-class suburb of Boston by well-meaning, hard-working parents. Because his family lived paycheck to paycheck, Charlie was often left on his own after school before his parents arrived home by 6. He was a well-behaved, conscientious child left responsible to look after his younger siblings.
As a teenager, Charlie became tired of this adult-like responsibility and as puberty arrived, he became more interested in exploring internet porn rather than taking care of his little brother and sister. At first, his curiosity was peaked when a friend showed him the easy availability of porn images. Before long it became his afterschool secret–a daily habit that expanded into compulsive masturbation and eventually unintentional self-harm of his genitals.
His relationship with porn became more and more time-consuming resulting in less contact with friends and family. Charlie became more reclusive, grumpy and disconnected. By the time he left for college, he began to realize that he just didn’t feel like his old self anymore. The engaged, fun-loving Charlie had gotten lost in the seductive world of porn.
Where did you get your sex education? In the pre-HIV world of the 1970s, my public school “health teacher” arrived in my 6th grade class and showed us colorful slides of body parts that were anatomically-correct but rather one-dimensional and confusing. There was little or no discussion about intercourse, contraception or STDs – and of course nothing related to same-gender sex. As I understand it, things really haven’t changed much in the past forty-five years, and the idea of sexual pleasure is not commonly discussed.
In the Netflix series Sex Education, the protagonist, Otto is a curious teenager whose mother is a sex therapist with a home office where she offers seminars focusing on the wonders of the vulva. Vicariously, Otto picks up on some of her sexual wisdom and expertise, and he is dubbed the “sex kid” at school. He opens an underground business to dispense advice to his naïve but sexually-active cohorts. Although Otto is a virgin himself, he tries to reassure others in the school and does so with moderate success.
If Charlie had spoken with Otto about his compulsive porn habits, maybe his fate would have been different. Yet, the lack of sex education from families and schools often leaves kids with misconceptions and profound isolation. How might this be different? In Part Two of this article we will take a look at some strategies that most of us were not given as teenagers. As mentioned earlier, sexual health is one missing link of sex addiction recovery, and it’s never too late to begin your sex education.
