My wife thinks sex is dirty – she thinks good girls don’t do “bad” things.

Heidi: As we’ve seen, being in a relationship can bring up issues from childhood. Some of us have some minor sexual hang-ups, some of us have big ones, and many of us have regular old hang-ups that get in the way of letting go and enjoying sex.

Ian: In Dr. Aline Zoklbrod’s thoughtful book Sex Smart, she examines how childhood shapes one’s adult sexual life, and she divides home environments into the seven following types based on how sexual topics are handled. While these are not set in stone, it’s good to look at these and see where you fit. It’s time to get rid of all our sexual baggage and start keeping our own shared storage shed.

The Ideal Environment: In this happy home, sexual curiosity is encouraged, questions about sex are answered with age-appropriate information, and privacy and independence are respected and actively cultivated.

The Predominantly Nurturing Environment: This environment is similar to the Ideal Environment above, albeit with some glaring gaps. For instance, a parent or sibling suffers from intermittent periods of depression or illness, or a divorce and remarriage cause a break in the seamless functioning of the Ideal Environment.

The Evasive Environment: In this scenario, the parents generally avoid the subject of sex and foster an environment where asking about sexual matters is uncomfortable. This is often consistent with a family where the parents are not openly affectionate with each other, even if they are affectionate to their children.

The Permissive Environment: At the other end of the pendulum is the home where sex is discussed too openly, with parents providing too much information too soon. In such a home, parents generally share intimate information with their children about their own sex lives and actively encourage their children to experiment sexually at too young an age to appreciate the emotional and psychological consequences.

The Negative Environment: In such a home, non-marital sex is not merely avoided but treated as immoral, providing a fertile nesting ground for homophobia, misogyny, and sexual problems in later life, including fear of masturbation, inability to achieve orgasm in women, and premature ejaculation in men.

The Seductive Environment: In this scenario, relationships between parents and children or siblings are not overtly sexual, but are tinged with an inappropriate level of sexuality, including the routine discussion of age-inappropriate sexual matters.

The Overtly Sexual Environment, or Abusive Environment: Characterized by inappropriate sexual contact between a parent and child. Just to be absolutely clear, this inappropriate contact does constitute sexual abuse, even if the child often doesn’t recognize it as such, or blocks it out. Whether the abuse happens just once or occurs over an extended period of time, is inflicted by a member of the immediate family or extended family of friends and relatives, growing up in an overtly sexual home can inflict long-term damage that impedes the ability to engage in healthy adult sexual relationships.

Growing up in an overtly sexual environment is just one of the ways children experience sexual trauma. People who grew up in abusive environments (which may not have necessarily been sexually abusive) often experience anxiety, lack of trust, fear of touch, and other symptoms that affect their adult intimate relationships. Every year, millions of children in the United States are the victims of either direct or indirect domestic violence and have been hurt by a parent or watched a parent get hurt.

If you’re in this situation, it’s extremely likely that you might not have thought about the connection between the non-sexual trauma you may have experienced as a child and the sexual intimacy issues you may be dealing with in your adult relationships. Many people who suffer from sex addiction, or conversely have no sexual desire, often find that they came from backgrounds that inspired fear and anxiety in relation to intimacy. The relationships they witnessed around them inspired distrust and unease rather than comfort and security. Many people are not on the extreme ends of the spectrum but have difficulties with intimacy nonetheless. Other traumas, such as a sexual assault or rape or a non-sexual assault that occurred outside the home during childhood, can also create lifelong intimacy issues unless they were properly addressed with parental support, understanding, and family and individual therapy.

In the case of serious traumas, treatment simply falls outside the purview of this book, and I would recommend you see a qualified therapist. Consider this as a starting point for talking to a professional and discussing your issues openly with your partner.