I remember the day so well – I was 10 or 11 years old, and it was a sunny but not overly hot day outside. I was laying in the hammock that was strung between two trees and masturbating. I didn’t understand what I was doing, or how it helped me, I only knew that I had learned about it a short time ago and it felt so good. I would masturbate for a bit, and my body would do funny things and about a minute or two later, I’d want to start over again.

Looking back now, I probably had four to five orgasms and was close to being done when suddenly my mother stood beside the hammock and dumped me out of it. “You horrible girl” she yelled at me as she dragged me back to the house. “I’ve told you not to do that. Its bad, and you’re a bad girl.”

I knew what was coming – another beating with dad’s belt. I was scared, and yet somehow, I felt like I had a bit of power too. I took the beating like always, because it was never wise to fight mom, but afterwards, I thought about the feelings in the hammock and how good I felt. I needed to find a way to do that more often without being caught.

I’m now 40 years old, and as I look back at my life, I see how much I allowed my mother’s actions to teach me shame about the beautiful gift of sex. Masturbation was something that was bad and ugly, and to “come” meant leaving something which would make me get caught, and she’d know that I’d been “touching my pee pee” behind her back. I tried to hold in any reactions because an orgasm (even though I didn’t know that word) was wrong. It was something you shouldn’t have or experience.

I masturbated up until I was married, and after a few months of marriage, my husband learned how to give me orgasms, and I never really needed to masturbate any more. Once in a while, I’d feel the urge, but not for long. My husband was always willing to take care of me even though it seemed to take forever for me to reach an orgasm. He suspected I was multi-orgasmic because a few times I would need him to massage me after we’d finished, but he never pushed me about it.

We had twins, and as we reached the age where our children might want to explore their sexuality, I sat down with my daughter and explained to her about masturbation. I didn’t want her to feel my shame, because I’d come to realize that it can be a natural part of growing up. I did point out to her that my one concern was that it could become so addicting that she’d want to spend hours every day doing it – much like I did as a teen. I explained that when it got to the point that masturbation was taking away from the rest of her life and consuming all her thoughts that she might need to get help or step back a bit. Why? Because I believe that anything that controls us – whether it be alcoholism or a sugar-addiction or even masturbation, needs to be brought under our control.  However, I tried to make it seem very natural and nothing bad.

But for me – I still held back on orgasms. I would start to come, and my instinct would be ‘hold it back, hold it back…it will get on the sheets…mom will see it.” In fact, to this day, whenever I go home to visit my mom, she reminds me of how I ruined her sheets (and she still has them) by masturbating and staining them.

A few weeks ago, we added toys to our sex life. As my husband suspected, I am multi-orgasmic. But he recognized the fact that I was still holding back on coming, and that inside of me I still felt it was shameful. He thought about making us a hammock that I could masturbate in without being afraid of being caught – to try and replace that shameful memory with a much nicer one. I couldn’t stand the idea, though – the thought of being in a hammock made my heart race, and I felt like there was no way I could do it.

We finally had a breakthrough a few days ago. It didn’t take a hammock or anything special. We were making love after he had stimulated me to orgasm several times. I had been holding back, but as he was in me and talking to me and telling me how much he loved me and how warm and wonderful I felt, and as he started describing my cum in such wonderful ways, I suddenly let loose and came. I couldn’t believe the feeling of just laying there and coming, and knowing it was ok.  I had tears in my eyes as I realized that it was ok to feel this way, and it was ok to come even if it meant the sheets needed cleaning, or I was messy.

Since then, I still sometimes have a bit of trouble letting go, at least for the first few orgasms.  However, I now tend to reach a point where I can finally let go and enjoy that release and not worry about the cleanup or what my husband (or anyone else) thinks.

The shame has gone, and has been replaced by utter joy.

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