ONE® Dirty Little Secret: Why do I feel guilty about my boundaries?

It seems like we blinked and lo and behold, it’s the last day of Sexual Health Awareness month! It’s been quite the whirlwind adventure for us this Sept and we’re so happy to welcome new friends to the community to breaking the taboos when it comes to love, sex and our bodies.

One of our highlights for the month was definitely being part of ONE® Condoms’s ONE® Dirty Little Secret panel with other sex-positive advocates from the region last Sunday. From boundaries, consent, STIs, communication, sexuality, sex ed and even how to measure for the right sized condom, it was an honour to share the pulpit with Sisilism2.0Dustin Phuc NguyenMuc HealthcareDr Rachael Winston and Jun from ONE® Condoms. Thank you again ONE Condoms for the opportunity!

With almost 2 hours whizzing by as the OG host Jasmine King moderated and asked us YOUR hard-hitting questions, one of the themes that kept repeating was the idea of voicing one’s needs in a relationship without ‘feeling guilt’ or ‘making the other partner feel bad’. It was fascinating yet unnerving at the same time that we’ve been conditioned to sometimes take on behaviours that might be detrimental to our own needs – because we empathize with our partners or are fearful of losing them. Here’s a snippet of the panel and our opinions on why we feel this guilt and how do we get over it.

When was the last time you felt guilty asking for something?