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Sex life...should I have told mom? should I come clean and honest?
16 year old female...I began hooking up very young, pretty much as soon as Middle School started and didn't stop. If you'd like to pass judgment, you should understand I grew up in an unstable home and suffered through numerous mental health issues, and my beginning encounters were not completely consensual.
But I never told my mom a thing, and I wasn't honest about it until very soon when I got chlamydia which, for obvious reasons, forced me to be honest. Which I still wasn't-I tell people who ask I've hooked up with 3 and that's what I told the doctor, I spread it out and made one closest (I was honest about my most recent affair). People figure the rest out from rumors and people shit talking. I made it seem like a one time mistake rather than something that I see was inevitably going to happen...
The reason I named a few hookups is to make my lies more realistic, that's what I do with everything. Even therapists and shit. I just can't own up to it. My mom was all sad and shit about how she "missed my first kiss" ... when I was 13 I acted like I had my first kiss with a kid I was seeing. I reminded her of that, but I guess she didn't remember.
I've had a big wakeup call getting an STD and knowing this one is curable, a lot worse could've happened. I got every recent candidate to go get tested. I'm already known as the easy, slutty girl but maybe that will change. It's not that I'm a sex addict, I'm an attention addict.
I'm just asking, even for those of you who don't have problematic sex lives... should I come clean and honest?
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Maybe give some free advice about: Families?
It's good that you are lucid about your reasons for sex seeking. Sometimes we just need some sort of human companionship and we can't feel like we can't find that without someone being attracted to us. Or at least, that's my experience.
Will telling your mom help you? That's the real question. The truth is our parents don't always have to know everything about our lives, especially our sex lives. If you feel like it would help or that she could give you wisdom, go for it. If you feel like she would shame you or retaliate, don't.
But going back to my first point. The most important thing to do right now is build a stable sense of self and self esteem. And keep introspecting. I also feel like, if this is your form of escape, you need to figure out what you are escaping from and deal with that. Escape into fantasy is short term and you need long term solutions.
Cheers! Hope I could help <3
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Yeah tell her because she will show you how she worked with it .
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When you mention an unstable home, my mind can only guess what that really is spelled out: dysfunctional, a parent who is a drunk, on street drugs, too busy for you and ignores you and/or being sexually abused by a parent.
It sucks that there isn't a really good system for help of teens with a very bad home to go to. Anything else is better. You said you are an attention addict. I do know that kids who have a home where they are not given any attention are verbally abused, their needs not taken care of such as food, clothes, etc, will begin to do one of two things, one being what you do, start sex early and try to find the love you are missing from parents at home, in sexual relationships. Unfortunately at that age, males are not ready to get into a real love relationship and equate love with lust. The experience of sex for them is a stronger want than anything else. But as you said, you are getting attention.
The other neglected, un loved kids, try to find this love not from boys but at friends homes. My niece has now graduated but most of her HS days, one of her girlfriends spent more time at my sisters house than at home. She was treated as another daughter with attention care and love. She also went couch surfing at other friends homes. She finally confided in my sister that when younger and Mom was around, the home was already dysfuntional. When Mom died or left, it was only Dad and he began to sexually abuse her as a teen. She did not want that happening so the only time she went home is when her Dad was at work for change of clothes and such, otherwise she ate at all her friends homes. This is what she did until she became an adult at 18 and could choose what she wanted to do with her life. Well, there is one worse option, just leaving home to live on the streets because due to how bad home was, the streets to them was better.
Now about coming clean, telling all the truth, of why you started doing this in the first place, I can't say it can all be blamed on mental health issues. If there is no mental illness at all, then your behavior and symptoms may be seen as part of mental illness by a therapist. It may be a good thing to start at the beginning, what home life is like and when you first started and then all the stories after. You don't share this with just any old therapist but with one you finally meet where you feel a connection with them, you trust them, feel they care about you and you know you can share, not for the sake of sharing to tickle their ears, but to actually get better. The best way I know of is called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or CBT and any therapist, counselor, Psychologist who has those intials after their name, is a person who knows how to try working through and undoing some distorted thinking and seeing if a person gets better. even Depression can be healed this way for 90 % of people. Only a very few actually need meds because they have a true mental medical condition that nothing else will help first. I am sharing this so that you know you can ask for someone else if you don't feel close enough to click with your therapist to the point you want to trust them. And you might just keep asking any adult you come across, that you want help from someone licensed and good at CBT.
When minds are forming as you grow up, certain traumatic things in childhood will affect the growing brain and it is no surprise that your mind will do what it has to do to cope. I know this from my own life. Although I was brought up in a l oving home, I married a man at age 20 who fooled my family and me...we thought he was a good man. He wasn't. From as soon as a month after the wedding, he began to verbally abuse me and did so every day, 24/7 for the 30 years I stayed with him. I had a normal mind, not twisted by bad childhood, but still the mind came up with its own way of coping when he went into a tirade, yelling at me, verbally cutting me down, etc. I began to go elsewhere in my mind. I no longer saw him or heard a word he said. I got so used to doing it that I automatically began to do it at times I did not need to. So after a divorce, a friend who used to be a counselor in the army pointed out to me my coping mechanism and how they could see my mind going eleswhere when they were talking to me. Just know that what ever it is that you are coping with, real mental health disease or just the symptoms of them caused by your upbringing and home life, you need a therapist who doesn't believe that giving meds is the answer to all patients they see.
When you are with the right Dr. you will feel ready and good about sharing. So as I am saying, sharing is good and coming clean, but only with the right Dr for you.
My guess is that until the mental needs you have are taken care of properly with the right Dr. for you, that choosing what you do sexually is not going to change. Why? Because I am guessing it might be your coping mechanism and you can't let it go until all your other cares are taken care of. Maybe you will never quit having sex, but you may become selective and search for a long term boyfriend/lover, a guy you can trust to choose only you and not been having sex with other girls behind your back.
If in the future you do get a disease, you don't have to tell the parents, just make an appt with the Family Dr unknown to your parents. There is a law of privacy and confidentially with Drs now over anything of a sexual nature, your sexual parts, the HIPPA act, where you can tell the Dr. you do not want the parents to know and you can still get treatment and no one can tell your parents. If your parents are part of the reason you are the way you are, if I were you, I wouldn't tell them either. In two years you will be considered an adult though and unless going to college and continueing as a student, you will likely not be covered on parents insurance anymore. That means any mental health care, if still needed, will be up to you to cover and that would mean working a job where you have great insurance to cover it. For that reason alone, it is best if you can get 2 years of really good helpful therapy right now because if you are one of the 90% who suffer all sorts of mental conditions, you could be cured in that amount of time easily if you applied yourself to doing what the Dr. asks you to do homework wise, meaning things/actions that help you break free of coping mechanisms and distorted thought patterns.
I am not one to tell you what to do, and am only sharing something I know works because CBT helped me to be cured of extreme social anxieties. I had it as far back as I can recall, preschool age on through HS. It was my last year of HS when I got so fed up with being so uncomfortable and wanted to be more outgoing like my Dad, that I was willing to get help.
So again, to answer your question, yes you should become clean and honest but its wasted words on the wrong Dr. for you. Their personality is as important as what they know. If I do not like a Dr.s personality and can't click with them, I try another Dr. I had no confidence in any of the general medical Drs. in the last clinic I went to so I called insurance and found another clinic with a Dr. I do trust not just because I click with his personality but he says the right things that have me feeling I can trust my medical care in his hands. Sharing your thoughts and hurts and very personal stuff is even harder than a physical problem so you have to be pickier about who you are working with. If You do trust and like your current Dr. then share it all because they need to know what started this all and it goes back to how you were raised, or if any family in history had mental health issues, and may went undiagnosed. It is enough that a therapist gets an idea of their behavior to know that yes there is a mental health issue there but that alone can't define which one or ones they are afflicted with. I had a brother who was schizophrenic, so I have heard some of this stuff along the way.
Don't let anyone tell you that you are a bad person for looking to sex for the love and attention you crave. Humans are created to automatically look out for their basic needs and one is to feel secure and loved and that you are important to someone. Since you came on here in the first place asking your question, I know you won't be stuck in this place for ever. YOu have an inner strength you may not be aware of or that hasn't come to the surface yet enough to be obvious but you are already seeking other opinions and viewpoints so I see a bright future to you dear. Hugs....Dragonfly
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