Finally Healing The Shame I Was Taught

Shame found me before desire ever did. I grew up in Germany, in a German family, but the world around me was layered with Russian and Turkish cultural currents - neighbors, friends, classmates whose families carried their own strict codes about what a woman should be. The message was consistent across all of them: your body is dangerous, your hunger is wrong, and if you feel something you are not supposed to feel, you swallow it. You smile. You behave.

For years, I did. I minimized everything. I was taught that a woman's worth was tied to her body count - the fewer men, the better. Women did not count, of course. So the definitions softened. Petting - just touching, no penetration - well, that does not really count. My desire got the better of me, but I controlled myself enough to not take that final step, so no new tally on the list. As though my worth was a scorecard and every honest experience subtracted from it. I learned to shrink my truth into categories that made other people comfortable. I learned to lie to myself so that I could be acceptable.

The double standards ran so deep they felt like nature. Men with multiple women were admired. Women with multiple men were destroyed. But women with women - that was fine, even exciting, because it served the male gaze - at least the version of it that society typicalises. I watched these rules play out in every circle I moved through, and even as I rebelled against them, I absorbed them. They got into my bloodstream. I could challenge them intellectually and still feel the guilt crawling through my chest at three in the morning.

And escorting - that was the ultimate taboo. The idea of sharing intimate hours with inspiring, respectful people in exchange for compensation felt completely off limits. Not because I did not want it. Because I had been told that wanting it made me less. But here is the question that burned through every wall I had built around myself: why do women give their sexual energy away for free? Going home with a stranger from a party was somehow more acceptable than meeting a fascinating man or woman with intention, with boundaries, with mutual respect and honest exchange. The world said the free version was forgivable. The intentional version was shameful. I never understood that math. I still do not.

Some of my relationships failed because I was always honest. I spoke my desires out loud when I felt them, transparently, even when it terrified the person sitting across from me. Most could not hold it. At some point, I found myself drawn to Christianity, to a free church community that offered something I was craving - belonging, structure, love for something larger than myself. And with the church came an amplified shame. I cannot fully explain it even today, but I felt a genuine love for something bigger, something indescribable. My sexual desire became much quieter during that time, though it never fully disappeared.

I had phases that took me from two years without any sex at all to phases where I chose paid intimacy with two or three men. And I loved all of them. Not in the way the world expects you to love, but honestly. Each of them shaped who I am today. Each taught me something about what I want and what I do not. They gave me the awareness to choose more carefully now - with more mindfulness toward external influences, societal patterns, and the weight of other people's expectations.

I wish I could tell you the shame is gone. That I woke up one day free of it and never looked back. But that is not how healing works. It is not a clean line from broken to whole. Even now, even in a relationship built on radical transparency, communicating openly still takes courage. There are mornings when I have to remind myself that wanting what I want does not make me damaged. There are conversations with my partner that still require me to push through a wall of inherited guilt before I can say what is actually true.

But I push through. Every time. Because I have learned that the alternative is silence, and silence is where I disappear. I spent enough years disappearing. I spent enough years making myself small so that the people around me could feel comfortable with their own contradictions.

What I know now is this: a transparent life - one where you say what you feel, want what you want, and refuse to perform a version of yourself that was designed by someone else's fear - is one of the greatest luxuries you can achieve. It is not free. It costs you relationships that cannot hold the truth. It costs you approval from people who need you to stay small. But what it gives you back is yourself. Whole. Unedited. Alive.

I am not healed. I am healing.

In love, Mara