Exploring Sexual Preferences After Purity Culture

ByMegan Von Fricken
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This article discusses the journey of exploring sexual preferences after leaving a purity culture and emphasizes the importance of reclaiming choice and developing a personal sexual ethic outside of religious constraints.

Additionally, it offers guidance on reconnecting with one’s body and addressing the complexities of sexual desire post-deconstruction, encouraging a patient and compassionate approach to self-discovery following religious deconstruction.

As someone assigned female at birth and who was then raised with extremely rigid gender norms, I learned early and thoroughly that there was a very specific playbook when it came to my sexuality.

After leaving Evangelical Christianity and deconverting from much of my religious programming, I still had to grapple with the reality that I was in a purity culture marriage (you can read more about that HERE).

Unfortunately, many members of the religious harm recovery community find themselves in a similar position—often married quite young without getting to explore their sexuality prior to saying “I do.”

The goal of this article is to help you begin thinking about ways to explore your sexuality now that you’re out of the religious group that dictated exactly how it was supposed to look.

I understand that exploring your desires and sexual preferences after leaving a religious cult can feel confusing and maybe even overwhelming… I understand this because I’ve been there myself.

But if you’re able to extend patience and compassion to yourself during this process of sexual exploration and discovery, you’ll probably find that it brings about significant peace and healing on the other side of purity culture indoctrination.

What We’ll Be Covering:

Why Exploring Your Sexuality Matters After Deconstructing Your Faith

Exploring your sexuality after leaving a religious cult matters because it helps you reclaim choice, rebuild trust with your body, and create a sexual life that reflects your values instead of someone else’s rules.

After leaving a religious cult, many people realize they never had an opportunity to explore their own sexuality.

So now, you may want to develop more clarity around orientation, desire, kink, intimacy styles, or what kind of relationship structure actually feels true for you.

Or you may not feel sexual at all right now and wonder if that means something is wrong with you (nothing is wrong with you).

The reality is that you’re stepping out of a system that conditioned you to silence desire, mistrust your body, and follow rigid rules about how sexuality and identity were meant to function.

Which means exploring your sexuality after deconstruction is often a radical act of self‑reclamation in your overall healing journey.

Why the Impact of Purity Culture May Vary

Purity‑culture indoctrination is, of course, a nuanced topic because purity messages will impact people differently depending on their temperament, trauma history, gender, orientation, race, disability, class, and the level of religious pressure they faced.

Each person’s starting point will look different.

For example:

  • If you’re queer or questioning orientation or gender, you may be unwinding years of messaging that framed your desires as dangerous or “disordered” instead of as normal parts of who you are.
  • If you are a person of color, you may be navigating messages that hypersexualized your body, erased your desire, or made saying no feel especially risky in your community or relationships.
  • If you grew up with ongoing trauma or in an authoritarian family system, your nervous system may default to shutdown, people‑pleasing, or hypervigilance around sex, which can make desire feel far away or unsafe.
  • If you live with disability, chronic illness, or pain, your exploration may center less on frequency or specific acts and more on finding positions, pacing, and environments that genuinely work with your body’s limits.

Noting all of these variations in our stories is important. And it’s also important to validate the unique ways in which you were impacted due to your gender, orientation, race, and other identities.

The goal of this article is to help you get started with this process.

It won’t solve the many systemic challenges you might be facing, but it will keep naming the ways those systems shape how we experience our sexuality.

Understanding Sexual Desire After Purity Culture Indoctrination

After years of being taught that desire is dangerous, it can feel confusing to venture into territory where sexual desire is prioritized.

You might feel drawn to explore kink, question orientation, consider non‑monogamy, or wonder what pleasure could look like outside a straight, married framework.

This type of sexual curiosity is natural and healthy. In fact, it’s a key indicator that helps you begin to connect with your truest desires.

Sex therapists often say that desire is information.

It tells you something about your needs, your values, your fantasies, your relational patterns, and your body.

Writers like Emily Nagoski, author of Come As You Are, often frame this as learning to listen to your internal “yes,” “no,” and “maybe” signals instead of treating them as moral verdicts.

Desire can point you toward what feels connecting, what feels confusing, and what absolutely does not feel right.

When you feel safe enough to explore something new, that’s likely a sign that parts of you are thawing from years of fear and shutdown.

Because purity culture created so much shame, even around private thoughts, allowing yourself to experience curiosity without judgment is a sign of progress.

You do not have to act on anything you are curious about—simply let yourself notice it.

Cultivating a Non‑Religious Sexual Ethic

As you start becoming more curious about your sexuality and allowing desire to come to the surface, it’s important to also start developing a new sexual ethic.

For many folks, one of the most destabilizing parts of leaving a high‑control religion is realizing you don’t have a framework for healthy sexuality outside of religious rules.

This is because we were only taught what to do or not do, while more nuanced conversations about consent, communication, pacing, pleasure, boundaries, or comfort were completely ignored.

This section will help you begin to understand what a sexual ethic is and how to cultivate one that feels aligned for you.

What is a non‑religious sexual ethic?

Ethical, consent‑based sexuality exists outside of religion.

While purity culture centers on external rules—what kinds of sex are allowed, with whom, in what order, and under which authorities—a non‑religious sexual ethic is more inclusive, holistic, and sex‑positive.

Instead of asking “Is this allowed?” according to a belief system, a sexual ethic considers whether something is ethical in terms of consent, impact, and care.

The questions become:

  • Do all people involved have full, enthusiastic, and ongoing consent?
  • Is anyone being coerced, shamed, manipulated, or pressured—socially, spiritually, or financially?
  • Are we being honest about our intentions, risks, and limits?
  • Are we respecting each person’s autonomy, body, identity, and boundaries?
  • Is there space for pleasure, curiosity, and change over time?

Within that framework, you can care deeply about integrity, mutual respect, safety, and emotional connection while also exploring kink, queer partnership, non‑monogamy, celibacy, or simply sex for pleasure.

What matters is not whether a particular act is “pure” or “good,” but whether everyone involved is informed, willing, and treated with dignity.

Sexual‑health resources such as Scarleteen emphasize that a sexual ethic is less about rigid rules and more about how we care for ourselves and others in practice.

Cultivating a clear sexual ethic allows you to move from rule‑keeping to relationship‑keeping, focusing on consent, communication, and care as the primary markers of a positive sexual experience, rather than conformity to rigid, puritanical rules.

Core values of a consent‑based sexual ethic

A few grounding values that many sex therapists and consent educators encourage are:

  • Consent
  • Honesty
  • Clear pacing
  • Care for partner and self
  • Awareness of power dynamics
  • Mutual pleasure
  • Choice without fear

These values map closely to widely used consent frameworks like “enthusiastic consent” and “FRIES” (freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, specific), which you’ll see echoed across secular sex‑education spaces.

These values, and the above framework of FRIES, offer structure without reproducing the rigidity of the old system.

In practice, these values ask not just what you are doing sexually, but how and why you are doing it, and whether everyone involved has the power to genuinely opt in or out.

They leave room for differences in desire, capacity, and trauma history instead of assuming everyone should want the same things at the same pace.

They also ask you to notice how factors like gender, money, race, disability, or immigration status can influence whether someone feels they can safely say “no.”

When you treat consent, honesty, and mutual care as an ongoing practice, your sexual ethic can flex and grow with you instead of locking you into a new set of rigid rules.

How a sexual ethic shows up in everyday situations

This kind of ethic can feel abstract until you start applying it to specific situations.

The following examples show how consent‑based values translate into everyday decisions about sex, dating, and relationships.

  • Casual hookup
  • You both name what you’re available for that night, agree on safer‑sex practices, check in about alcohol or substance use, and make it clear that either of you can change your mind at any point. You leave knowing what happened was chosen, not coerced.
  • Early‑stage dating
  • You talk about pacing before sex is on the table, name any trauma or religious background that might impact comfort, and agree to slow down if either of you starts to feel flooded. You treat emotional safety as just as important as physical touch.
  • Long‑term partnership
  • You revisit your sexual dynamic over time instead of assuming it should stay the same “because we’re together.” You make room for changing desires, health shifts, kink curiosity, or lower libido without turning anyone into a problem to fix.

Where to learn more about consent and sexual ethics

If you want to deepen your thinking about consent‑based practices and sexual ethics, you might explore:

  • Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski for understanding how context and stress affect desire
  • Tell Me What You Want by Justin Lehmiller for research that normalizes fantasy and helps reduce shame
  • The Every Body Book of Consent by Rachel E. Simon which offers simple, grounded consent education that works for all ages
  • The Ethical Slut by Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton for exploring ethical non-monogamy, communication, and boundary-setting in sexual relationships
  • Secular consent-education sites like Scarleteen which provide clear scripts, scenarios, and communication tools

Keep in mind, an ethic rooted in consent, care, and honesty will flex as your life changes.

The point is not to find the “correct” set of rules, but to keep coming back to whether you and anyone involved feel safe, respected, and free to choose.

Gay couple looking at each other and exploring their sexual ethic after purity culture

How to Begin Exploring Your Sexuality

The following sections are meant to offer guidance as you begin this process.

These are not steps you need to complete in order, nor are they meant to be prescriptive.

Instead, think of them as invitations to notice what feels true, what feels tender, and what might need more time before you engage with it.

You may find that some of these ideas resonate immediately while others feel irrelevant or overwhelming right now.

That’s completely normal. Take what helps and leave what doesn’t.

You don’t have to figure it out immediately

After leaving a restrictive environment, you might feel pressure to “figure out” your sexuality as quickly as possible.

You might feel rushed to define your sexual orientation, decide whether your marriage still aligns with you, or choose how to express yourself sexually moving forward.

From a nervous‑system perspective, this urgency makes sense.

When everything familiar has been stripped away, your brain may reach for a clear label or plan as a way to feel safer: “If I can just figure out exactly who I am and what I want, maybe this will stop feeling so disorienting.“

But as many sex therapists and trauma clinicians point out, desire and identity often emerge over time through experience, not through sheer mental effort.

You have permission to explore slowly, and you have permission to ask questions without locking yourself into answers.

Think of this season simply as a period of gentle data‑gathering about what feels true over time.

Curiosity plus compassion creates more clarity than urgency ever will.

Let the process lead, not the outcome

Where you land sexually will evolve as you learn yourself.

Some days you may feel open and curious. Other days, everything may feel too big or too tender.

Your desires may change over time as your body feels safer, your nervous system settles, and your relationship to pleasure grows.

Instead of assuming there is one “correct” destination you must reach—a particular level of desire, a specific relationship structure, or a fixed identity—you gradually learn what feels enlivening, tolerable, or draining in real time.

This is especially true if your desire has historically been more responsive than spontaneous, meaning it tends to show up in safe, connected contexts rather than out of nowhere on command (Nagoski, 2015).

Trying to choose your final destination now is another form of control and is actually repeating the pressure purity culture created, just in a different way.

To help you stay process-oriented rather than outcome-oriented, periodically ask yourself questions like:

  • What feels sustainably good or neutral in my body right now?
  • What feels like too much, too fast, or too exposing?
  • Where do I notice myself overriding my own signals in order to meet someone else’s expectations—or my own idea of who I “should” be by now?

What matters is noticing what feels aligned in the small moments and making choices from presence, not pressure.

Begin with your own body before involving anyone else

One of the most common places people get stuck after purity culture is reconnecting with their own body.

You were likely taught that your body was either dangerous, shameful, or existed primarily for someone else’s needs.

Rebuilding a felt sense of safety, curiosity, and agency in your own skin is foundational work.

This section explores why starting with solo body awareness matters, what that can look like in practice, and how to adapt these ideas if you are navigating trauma, chronic illness, disability, or other access needs.

The goal is not to perform sexuality or force arousal. It is simply to practice being present with your body without judgment.

Why starting with your own body matters

Many sex therapists, including researchers like Emily Nagoski and Lori Brotto, emphasize that connecting with your own bodily sensations is a foundation for healthy sexual functioning.

Before you can know what kind of sex, partnership, or kink is right for you, you need some sense of what your own body feels like when it is safe, open, and curious versus stressed or shut down.

Starting with non‑sexual body awareness helps you build that foundation without the pressure to “perform” or prove anything.

For some people, this might start with something as simple as noticing the feeling of warm water in the shower, the weight of a blanket, or the way your muscles soften when you exhale.

When reconnection feels painful or confusing

For many people raised in high‑control religion, the body became either an enemy to suppress or a tool to manage others’ comfort.

Unfortunately, this means that reconnecting to your body can bring up grief, anger, or numbness before pleasure.

Sex researchers often talk about “arousal non‑concordance,” which is when your body’s physical responses and emotional experience don’t match (Nagoski, 2015).

You might notice your body responding with physical arousal while your brain feels scared or disconnected. Or you might not have a physical arousal response in emotionally safe situations.

Both of these are examples of arousal non-concordance and are common among folks who have experienced prolonged sexual shame.

In addition to arousal non-concordance, you might also notice trauma responses like freeze, shutdown, or dissociation when you try to get closer to your body, especially if touch has been paired with fear or obligation in the past.

Try approaching these moments with curiosity (for example, “What is my body trying to tell me?“), which will help you integrate information instead of shutting down.

Adapting practices to your access needs

If you live with chronic pain, disability, health conditions, or trauma, adapt any practice to what works for your body.

Because standard “body‑awareness” exercises often assume mobility, privacy, and predictable energy levels, you might need to modify them.

In mindfulness‑based sex therapy, what matters is the quality of attention, not maintaining a specific posture. Also, short five‑minute check‑ins are just as valid as longer practices.

Any step that helps you feel more oriented to your sensations without spiking pain or overwhelm is meaningful work.

This might look like doing a brief body scan while lying down, focusing only on the areas that feel neutral or okay, or simply checking in with your breathing while using mobility aids.

Gentle starting practices

The practices below are meant to offer a few gentle entry points for reconnecting with your body in ways that honor your pace, your access needs, and your current capacity.

You might try one for a few weeks, or you might find that simply reading through them helps clarify what feels right for you at this stage.

  • Five‑minute neutral body check‑in.
  • Once a day, notice three neutral or pleasant sensations in your body (warmth, pressure, softness, texture) without trying to make anything “sexy.” This builds familiarity and safety.
  • Context inventory.
  • Make a short list of what helps your body feel more at ease-lighting, time of day, clothing, whether you are alone or not-and let those preferences guide when and how you explore.
  • Curiosity journaling.
  • When you notice a spark of curiosity-a fantasy, an image, a wish-write it down without judging it or planning to act on it. Treat it as information, not a to‑do list.

A few things to keep in mind

If your history includes sexual abuse, assault, or coercion, some of this may stir up more than you want to navigate alone.

Trauma‑informed sex therapists and researchers consistently emphasize that titration—taking very small steps, then pausing to see how your body responds—is more effective than trying to push through.

It’s completely valid to move more slowly, to skip certain practices, or to work on this only in the context of trauma‑informed therapy or coaching.

Exploring sexuality after purity culture is not about forcing yourself through memories you are not ready to touch.

Instead, it’s about rebuilding a sense of choice, including the choice to stop, change direction, or rest. The goal should always be getting familiar with your body and rebuilding body safety on your terms.

If at any point this work starts to feel like something you are “supposed” to push through rather than something you are choosing, that is usually a cue to slow down, widen your support, or step away for a while.

Putting the Pieces Together

I hope after reading this article you recognize that exploring your sexuality after purity culture is mostly about gaining clarity around your values and reconnecting with your sexuality in a way that feels fully aligned on the other side of religion.

If you take nothing else from this, let it be that your curiosity is a valuable guide, you can take all this at your own pace, and your body’s signals are providing you with valuable data about what’s working or not working.

You’re allowed to change your mind and renegotiate old agreements as you build a sexual ethic that centers consent, care, and honesty.

Ultimately, exploring your sexuality after purity culture is about creating a life that feels truer, kinder, and safer in your actual body and relationships.

In addition to the resources mentioned above, you may also want to check out:

  • Better Sex Through Mindfulness by Lori Brotto offers practical, research‑based mindfulness tools to help you reduce sexual anxiety, reconnect with your body, and cultivate desire on your own terms.
  • Desire: An Inclusive Guide to Navigating Libido Differences in Relationships by Lauren Fogel Mersy and Jennifer Vencill is a queer‑inclusive, trauma‑aware guide to understanding mismatched desire and building a sex life that feels collaborative and sustainable.
  • Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel explores how long‑term relationships navigate desire, intimacy, and autonomy, offering language to understand why erotic energy can feel complicated after years of purity‑culture conditioning and giving you tools to build a sex life that honors both emotional safety and erotic curiosity.
  • Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy by Jessica Fern applies attachment theory to consensual nonmonogamy, offering frameworks to understand how early relational patterns shape adult intimacy and providing tools to build secure connections across multiple relationship structures.

A couple other articles I wrote on the topic of purity culture include:

References

  • Brotto, L. (2018). Better sex through mindfulness: How women can harness the power of the present to cultivate desire. Greystone Books.
  • Easton, D., & Hardy, J. (2017). The ethical slut: A practical guide to polyamory, open relationships & other adventures (3rd ed.). Ten Speed Press.
  • Fern, J. (2020). Polysecure: Attachment, trauma and consensual nonmonogamy. Thorntree Press.
  • Fogel Mersy, L., & Vencill, J. (2023). Desire: An inclusive guide to navigating libido differences in relationships. Hachette Go.
  • Lehmiller, J. J. (2018). Tell me what you want: The science of sexual desire and how it can help you improve your sex life. Da Capo Lifelong Books.
  • Nagoski, E. (2015). Come as you are: The surprising new science that will transform your sex life. Simon & Schuster.
  • Perel, E. (2006). Mating in captivity: Unlocking erotic intelligence. Harper.
  • Simon, R. E. (2020). The every body book: The LGBTQ+ inclusive guide for kids about sex, gender, bodies, and families. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
  • Scarleteen. (n.d.). Scarleteen. https://www.scarleteen.com
  • Religious Harm Recovery. (n.d.). How religious trauma affects your nervous system. https://religiousharmrecovery.com
  • University of Sydney. (n.d.). What is enthusiastic consent? The University of Sydney. https://www.sydney.edu.au
  • IDC Professionals. (n.d.). FRIES consent model. IDC Professionals. https://idcprofessionals.com

Some Possible Next Steps:

If this article resonated with you and you’re wondering where to go from here, you might consider the following options:

If you’re ready to do some focused work around religious deprogramming or nervous-system recovery, and you want to work with someone who “gets it,” you might consider working with me one on one.

I am a trained psychotherapist and now offer clinically-informed coaching for clients world-wide who are trying to make sense of their experience with religious indoctrination and heal at a deeper level.

Learn More

If you found value in this post, consider sharing it to your favorite social media platform or send it directly to a friend who could benefit from the content.

Religious harm thrives in the dark, so the more we can all work together to shine a light on some of these issues, the more likely it is that others will find the same freedom from coercive control that we have found.

The Religious Harm Recovery Community is place to get connected with ongoing support.

  • On Mondays, you’ll receive A Note From Megan, where I share personal stories, reflections, and lessons from my own recovery after high‑control religion.
  • On Fridays, you’ll get the Religious Harm Recovery Digest, an educational newsletter on themes like religious trauma, purity culture, childhood indoctrination, and more.

Both newsletters are designed specifically for folks recovering from religious indoctrination.

The community is currently evolving and getting connected to the weekly emails is the best way to stay informed about what’s currently available and what’s on the horizon.

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