I grew up with statements like:

If someone’s not a virgin when you meet them,
they can’t commit to a marriage
When men act on their lust, it’s rape
You better not have caused that stain on your sheets on purpose
We don’t really talk to that aunt. She’s been divorced. And she did it twice!
Do you have anything you want to ask about sex?

There are so many others I can’t even count them.

I had no idea these statements—and the beliefs they created—were doing any harm!

But they were doing harm. Great harm:

fear and mistrust of my wife’s and my commitment to each other
being ashamed of my natural sexual urges
embarrassment about my body
inability to freely and wholeheartedly choose to love my wife—rather than from obligation and expectation
not knowing what healthy sexuality even looked like

When I look back now, the scariest thing is that these statements—these thoughts—seemed just fine. And one of the reasons they seemed just fine is that they seemed normal. I had heard ideas like that so many times in our American culture that I never questioned them.

Perhaps some of these statements sound familiar to you.

Likely you have your own beliefs you may have never questioned or explored.

Diana* was a 52-year-old woman from Denver. When her parents took her to church, it was Lutheran. When she chose to go to church, it was whatever church was nearby her home. She was brilliant, and highly self-aware…3 college degrees, including a bachelor’s degree in Psychology.

Diana came to me seeking assistance with her professional relationship with men. Though massively competent, she had been fired 3 times in 10 years for insubordination to a male supervisor. I could feel the shame underneath the rage as she spoke about male executives.

It didn’t take us too long to trace that shame back to her first sexual encounter at age 15, when her then boyfriend told her, “If you love me, you’ll have sex with me.” It was a story she had never told anyone—not even her previous therapists. I asked her why. She told me that me being a Rabbi gave her permission to talk about something she had thought was “ungodly”.

And my commitment to sexuality and sexual shame being “just another topic to talk about in counseling—just like any other shame, fear, resentment, anxiety, grief, etc,” apparently set me apart from Diana’s previous therapists—many of whom (and certainly not all) likely suffer from sexual shame and are therefore challenged to discuss it with their clients.

Her parents had been either unable or unwilling to talk with her about sex—they had simply told her: “Don’t do it and don’t talk about it.” That was the extent of her sexual education and adult guidance.

Every influential man in her life became that boyfriend. Everything an influential man requested of her became that boyfriend’s plea for sex. Every time she responded (well, actually—reacted) it was an act of rebellion based in repressed sexual shame.

And what was most painful to realize was that Diana felt such shame about an act which she had no emotional structure, support, or guidance to handle at 15 that she had repressed the memory for nearly 40 years. In fact, she had so strongly repressed the memory that we spent nearly a month of sessions simply helping her feel safe enough internally to allow herself to remember details.

When the story of that act came to light, Diana’s shame around her sexuality came pouring out like a river. Divorces…body shame…extramarital affairs…closeted nudity…all of these came flooding out into a space safe enough for her to share these things she believed to be so shameful she should never even speak of them.

And as these stories came to light, Diana began to heal. And she began to heal quickly. Not only her mind, but her body began to comprehend that her feelings, her thoughts, her urges, and her needs were totally normal. The only thing problematic about any of them was the stories she told herself…the stories with which she shamed herself…the stories with which she judged herself.

The whole process took less than six months. Diana began to be vulnerable enough to let love in to her current relationship, and the thoughts of divorce evaporated like the sun dissipating the morning fog. A substantial amount of this shame was created by self-destructive eating habits and stored in her body as fat which is how the body stores calories when under stress. She released 22 pounds.

Diana decided that nudity wasn’t for her—that in her case it was an act of silent rebellion which no longer served her. And perhaps most importantly Diana was able to truly apologize to two previous husbands, to truly forgive herself for affairs that were a misdirected attempt to assert her autonomy. With that self-forgiveness she was able to make a much stronger commitment to her current relationship than she ever thought possible.

It wasn’t movies or pop songs that communicated these thoughts to me—or to Diana. These thoughts—and the beliefs that stem from them—came from a much more problematic place. These thoughts came from loud-but-hidden well-intentioned voices that supposedly knew what was right and what was wrong. These were the voices that date back hundreds and hundreds of years to an era of fundamentalist Puritanism.

But these voices still speak strongly to us. They pervade the sexual values Americans claim to have—but often disregard. And Americans who don’t have these values often feel that they should.

These voices speak silently—in the most dangerous way possible—by cultivating unquestioned beliefs.

As my personal journey continued, and as I began to be comfortable talking about my own sexuality, an amazing thing happened in my counseling practice:

Again and again and again I heard the seemingly unbelievable statement from client after client after client: “I’ve never had an open, non-judgmental conversation about my sexuality with anyone who has any knowledge or training. But somehow you being a Rabbi makes it o.k. to talk about it.”

Only about 5% of my clients were Jewish—about the same percentage as the general population near me who would come to see a therapist.

But hearing this statement again and again and again…hearing about the sense of permission and trust… helped me understand just how pervasive pre-enlightenment fundamentalist Puritan beliefs—beliefs held by Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Athiests, Agnostics, and seemingly everyone else who walked into my office.

The pervasiveness of these beliefs astonished me—except for knowing that I, too, had shared these unquestioned beliefs.

I reflect that my own psychotherapy and Rabbinic training never talked about sexuality—as far as I can recall, not one single time. I was astonished to find out that medical doctors only receive an average of 4 hours of training about sexuality in the entire scope of medical school—and these 4 hours are supposed to cover everything they are supposed to know about sexual conditions and diseases. I am horrified by the number of stories I have heard about doctors’ inability to have the same bedside manner around issues of sexuality compared to other issues their patients face. The taboos that eliminate this topic from educational curricula—at least the curricula for healing professionals—needs to change. It’s absence is literally killing people.

I understand that those who raised me—parents, teachers, rabbis, doctors—were doing their best, were simply repeating what they had been taught, and had certainly never asked themselves any of the questions in this book. I don’t blame them. Rather, their unconsciousness is a perfect example of why bringing these questions into the light is so important.

I offer my experiences, thoughts and insights, as well as some stories from my work with clients, because I dream that not one single additional person should unearth repressed sexual beliefs; that not one single additional person should feel the regret of decades spent in subconscious rebellion; that not one single additional person should ever go through this pain again.

*All client names are fictitious, all client stories are amalgams of various clients’ stories, and any identifying information from these stories has been excluded.

Rabbi Yitzhak J. Miller was a congregational Rabbi for nearly 15 years before focusing full-time on his counseling practice. His experience with women’s sexuality comes primarily from clients, and his experience with men’s sexuality comes primarily from his substantial involvement with men’s groups and men’s organizations. His experience with the absence of open sexual discussions comes primarily from his personal experiences and with the resistance he encountered to having these discussions or teaching or talking about sexuality during his time as a congregational Rabbi.

With his initial psychotherapy training at Stanford and UCLA medical centers, he is now nationally board-certified as a professional counselor by the American Psychotherapy Association, and is certified as a sex educator by the San Francisco Sexuality Institute.

For more information about Rabbi Yitzi, go to www.YitzhakMiller.org