Purity Culture, Virginity & Sexual Shame: A Sex Coach’s Healing Story
In this podcast, I share my personal journey of growing up in a fundamental Christian family where women’s bodies and sexuality were governed by strict purity rules.
I reflect on how those teachings shaped the way I saw myself, my body, my worth, and my early sexual experiences and how deeply they taught me to associate desire with danger and shame. There was immense pressure to remain a virgin, paired with fear that if I didn’t comply, I would become undesirable, unworthy, or unlovable.
Even after I left the faith, those beliefs didn’t simply disappear. They lingered in my nervous system, in my relationships, and in the way I related to pleasure, intimacy, and my own body.
This episode is an invitation into that unraveling and into the self-compassion required to heal from such restrictive conditioning. It’s about learning to soften toward the parts of myself that were shaped by fear, and about reclaiming a relationship with my body that is rooted in safety, choice, and self compassion.
This post includes the full podcast episode embedded below, followed by the transcript for those who prefer to read. The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
You’re welcome to listen, read, pause, or step away whenever you need.
Content note: This episode includes themes of fundamentalism, purity culture, sexual shame, negative sexual experiences.
Podcast Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
00:35 Strict Rules and Body Image Issues
03:02 Teenage Years and Struggles
05:49 First Experiences and Consequences
10:03 Healing and Self-Compassion
11:51 Final Thoughts and Support
You may also like: I Spent 20 Years Wishing I Wasn’t a Woman and Why Women’s Circles Matter: How Circle Led Me Back to Ritual, My Body, and Myself
Transcript
I’m A Sex Coach: I Grew Up With Purity Rules and Religious Conditioning
Hi, I'm Sabina Wilde, Sex Coach and Educator, and I'm super excited you've stopped by my channel today. So I thought it might be good if I share a little bit about what it's like to grow up in a fundamental Christian family. This could also apply if you come from a Hindu or Muslim or Jewish family, really any culture or religion that has really strict rules for women. And so when I talk about strict rules for women, I'm talking about purity rules.
How Purity Culture Shaped My Body Image and Sense of Worth
So as a young girl, it became very clear to me that my value was tied to my virginity, and also that I was responsible for men not sinning, which looking back, I cannot believe how outrageous that was, that my body, my natural body, was considered a stumbling block, and that if I dressed in a way that was a little bit provocative or flirtatious that it was considered arousing and by arousing men, I was sinning.
And so that led me to having some pretty serious body image issues. So I remember, I'm still am, to be honest, so uncomfortable about cleavage being present. Like my actual breasts being visible, wearing a tight top was a bit scary because that conditioning was so strong that he will lust after you and therefore you are sinning. And so much of the responsibility of others was placed onto me. And so that is so unhealthy, this idea that I am responsible simply by existing in this female body for the reaction and sin of another.
A Sex Coach’s Perspective: How Religious Control Impacts Young Girls
But being a small child. You can't question this. This is what you are told. This is what's echoed by the church, by your youth leader, by your friends - your entire community is telling you the same thing. Meanwhile, you look at other girls from other families that aren't growing up in the same, Christian or fundamental community that you are and they dress very differently. And I remember thinking like if only I could be that free. But at the same time, I felt uncomfortable for her and I was judgemental towards her. So it was this very difficult place of being like, I want that freedom, but I'm also gonna judge her. And in the end, it made me feel very separate from other women who had a very different experience to me who were growing up in a very secular, more sex positive, more open, regular Australian family.
Intimacy Sex Coach Insights: Virginity, Desire, and Fear in Adolescence
And so as I hit my teens, I was really uncomfortable in this body. I was given all of these messages around my worth being tied to my virginity, and that in order to be desirable in the future, I had to make sure that I maintained my virginity, because if I didn't, then no man, no good man, no man of high value would want to marry me.
And so not only did I have this fear complex around. Being worthy and desired in marriage. I also had this additional complex that like marriage was the most important thing, that getting married was the most important thing and that my actions now as a girl, were going to impact my perceived worth and desirability later on.
Online Sex Coach for Women: Growing Up Sexual but Unable to Explore
It was so difficult because I was growing up in an Australian high school culture, everyone from the age of 1314 was talking about their first kisses. They were, telling me about their boyfriends and their first sexual experiences, and I had absolutely none.
Yet, I was a really sexual person. I had these desires, I just wasn't able to, explore them at all. And I was so fearful and confused by how can I have all of these feelings but not act on them. And I can't flirt because I don't wanna be perceived as causing someone to stumble.
The Cost of Sexual Suppression and Delayed First Experiences
And it was just this really complex situation of seeing my friends having these experiences and falling in love and having boyfriends and all these first experiences and I was just on the sidelines watching and one, waiting and thinking, my God, I'm not gonna have any of these experiences until I'm married. And that was only, 14 or 15 and that was so challenging. And so I didn't have a first kiss, when I was 14 or 15 or 16, and I wasn't allowed to date the boy in geography class that really liked me and who I had a massive crush on.
Online Intimacy Sex Coach: When First Sexual Experiences Aren’t Safe
And instead of rebelling instead of saying no, I'm 16. You can't tell me who to date. I just went along with it and I listened to my parents and I didn't date the cute boy in geography class. And I didn't have these really innocent, sweet experiences at, 15, 16, 17. Instead, my first kiss was drunk in a nightclub in Melbourne, in some dirty, disgusting nightclub. And from memory, I don't even think it was just one guy I kissed that night. I was robbed of my first kiss being a sweet, fun, innocent coming of age experience, and instead I had this nasty drunk and forceful, disgusting. I remember feeling absolutely disgusted after this, experience in this smelly dark nightclub.
How Purity Culture Creates Shame, Secrecy, and Risk
There was so much pressure and internal divide within myself around staying pure, staying a virgin, remaining desirable, being a good girl, having this fear of God watching me over my shoulder sending me to hell because I've had sex before marriage. All of that was so present in my life that I had to like almost write a mental pros and cons list moving forwards in my sexual life.
And it led me to having these really harmful at times experiences, and I do believe it was because I didn't have these healthy, respectful, age appropriate natural experiences when I was younger. Instead, when I had them, I was older and I didn't have them in a safe environment. They were when I was living overseas, or they were, like I said, drunk, late at night. People I didn't know. It was so different to if it had been the boy from geography class, for example. And so these early experiences of my sexuality were really tarnished and laced with a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. They involved a lot of additional danger and risk taking because there was that element of secrecy involved.
Sex Coach for Women on Shame, Grief, and Sexual Trauma
There was a lot of shame. I couldn't talk to my mom about it. I didn't really have the space in my life to have those really, sex positive conversations and feel supported. And so these early experiences were not very positive and I think about how that's affected me as a woman, as a sexual being, and there's a lot of grief around that. There's a lot of shame that I've had to release over the years. There's a lot of anger that my sexuality was policed and controlled. By my parents, by the community I lived in and grew up in.
Leaving Religion but Carrying the Conditioning
And even when I moved away from God in my teens it was so ingrained in my psyche that I still felt that God was looking over my shoulder despite the fact I didn't believe in God anymore.
It's so deeply ingrained that the fear, the shame, the thoughts of no man will ever want me, this conditioning around, marriage being your most important priority in life, the thing you must achieve. And if not, you are a failure. You are not beautiful enough, not smart enough. All of those things, it led me to feeling like I, I wasn't worthy and I wasn't good enough, and I wasn't lovable and at the same time.
I was so angry that I hadn't had a say in my own body, and that I'd been led to believe things that were just not true. And so it's been a really long journey to coming back to a place of self-compassion. Around my sexual story, compassion that I didn't know any better, that I didn't rebel, that was me trying to stay safe. That was me trying to survive, being accepted in my family because, when you're a young child, you act according to your level of belonging and perceived love and security. And so I couldn't push back because I didn't feel safe. This has been such a big healing journey.
Online Intimacy Sex Coach for Women: Healing With Self-Compassion
It's been one of my journeys when it comes to my sexuality, but I understand how hard it is to grow up in a culture where a woman's worth is directly related to what lies between her legs. I intimately understand the fear, the confusion, the anger, the jealousy, the frustration, the pain, the angst that comes with this journey and how hard it is to grow up like this when you know your friends or people at school have such a different experience to you and it's just so foreign to them that they cannot possibly understand what it's like to.
To be a virgin when everyone else isn't (or you think everyone else isn't) and it's not the case at all. When you look at statistics, loads and loads of teens lose their virginity when they're like 17, 18. It's not 12 or 13, but it's easy to think that you are the last virgin on the planet, and it's such an uncomfortable thing to be, and so I really wanna say that I'm here for you.
I know this experience intimately and I am always going to speak on this topic because it's something that the secular world almost forgets exists for so many women around the world, because for most women in the West, this is not their story anymore.
Why I Speak About This as a Sex Coach Today
I want you to know very clearly that this story is mine and that I've overcome it and that it's a part of me, but it no longer shadows the way I live my life or affects my sense of worth or my connection to my body or my sexuality. So if you want check out any more of my work, I have a few blogs on this topic I Spent 20 Year Wishing I Wasn’t A Woman… and Why Women’s Circles Matter
It's something I'm super, super passionate about and I'd love to be able to support you if you would like to work on this with someone who's been there before. Thank you for stopping by sending you so much love, Sabina.
For the Woman Ready to Come Home to Her Body, Reclaim Her Eros & Befriend Her Soul
If you feel the pull to reconnect with your body, soften into your femininity, and experience the kind of healing that comes from being deeply witnessed, I invite you to join The Wonderfully Wilde Women’s Circle, a monthly online gathering opening in 2026.
Get Started
If you’d like to explore deeper one-on-one support, you can learn more about Online Sex Coaching for Women here.
And if you want embodiment practices, rituals, meditations, and stories of feminine reclamation, you can explore the full Sabina Wilde Blog here.
With wilde tenderness,
Sabina Wilde x
