Past sexual baggage impacts how we feel about ourselves. Whether your were rarely asked out on a date, or felt like all boys were interested in, was your body. Maybe we used our body to feel important and turn a boys eyes, or maybe we have experienced rejection and now hide to protect ourselves. Most of us have some kind of sexual baggage that has changed how we feel about our body. An important step in feeling beautiful is to recognize and heal from past sexual baggage.

My Story

At college I majored in Engineering. Classes filled with boys maybe had one other girl in class. Even with the odds highly in my favor, dates were practically nonexistent. Another sign of just how unattractive I was.  So I focused on my studies.

My senior year in college I met my husband at a bar with a mutual group of engineering students. From that point on, God started crossing our paths on campus. Months later, when Jim finally asked me out on a date, I fell head over heels in love and announced to my roommates, “I am going to marry him”.

When I met Jim, I was a virgin but I knew he had 2 serious past relationships. So I figured if he was going to fall in love with me, I needed to initiate sex. I was the one that brought up the conversation about sex, got on birth control and helped plan for the big night.

The Impact

After years of never feeling like my husband thought I was beautiful, the pieces began to fall in place, and I started to  understand the reason why. Since I fell in love first and since I initiated sex, I had 2 choices. I could believe that …

1. Jim was trying to be a better man and do things different
2. Jim was not really attracted to me. I just made a good practical choice for a wife.

Something that I’ve learned after teaching sex classes to over 600 women, is that it is a rare thing for women not to have baggage about our attractiveness that impacts our marriage. We may have been being whistled at – or not. Maybe men used  us – or we felt ignored. Our husband might have pushed boundaries or struggled to keep their eyes pure.  We may have used our body to get guys…

We are not going to go into sexual baggage, but I want you to understand that sexual baggage can profoundly affect what we believe about our bodies and our beauty. There are reasons we feel the way that we feel. When we face our past and unravel those reasons, then they don’t hold so much power.

Nobody is to blame for my past experiences, they just happened. They helped to create empathy and compassion in me. But they also caused me to believe lies about myself. Even when Jim told me he was crazy about me, I didn’t believe him.

Understanding my past baggage has helped me to believe the truth. My husband is crazy about me and thinks that I am absolutely beautiful. Vulnerably talking through our past has helped me to believe the truth.

Have you sorted through baggage that impact how you feel about your desirability or beauty?