Topic Tuesday // Significant life changes for young adults // 19 Sep, 7pm AEST

Hello @NikNik, @Ngaio-ROP

I am a step mother of 4 children who are adults now aged 25, 27 , 29 and 30

Hey @Shakeelah25 Good on you! What an awesome question!!

This sort of stuff does NOT get talked about nearly enough. Especially in mental health circles. It's like if you have stuff going on it's 'inappropriate' to be thinking about your libido etc. But it's such a huge aspect of who we are.

Firstly, I'd like to dispel the myth that everyone else goes through this stuff in puberty. Puberty just marks the beginning, prior to that we are fairly asexual beings. So people's libidos come to life anywhere from teens to twenties. In fact, some women talk about 'coming alive' in their mid thirties. And is addition, our bodies are changing all the time, medicines, hormones, diet etc. all effect us.

Secondly I'm wondering how comfortable you are talking about the 'nitty gritty' in the forums? I'm very open so I'm super happy to discuss it all, but if you wuld prefer to email, I'm sure we could work that out. It's up to you.

This is a tough situation @outlander And I'm really sorry you're having to manage it.

I think issues like this used to be easier because the solution of simply moving out was far more achievable. Nowadays young people need to stay at home because life is way too expensive, especially if you're studying.

My first suggestion would be to see if you can start reframing the relationship. It's hard when they are our parents but not impossible. Because basically, you getting in trouble is them having a different opinion. What if you started to say to yourself "I am stepping into my adult, I am meeting them on equal ground where we all have a right to our opinion. Just because they tell me what I do doesn't matter, doesn not make it so. That's JUST their opinion."

Coudl you see yourself repeating something like that until it started to feel true?

You mean talk about the arriving libido issue @outlander?

Thanks so much for response @Ngaio-ROP.

I don't mind talking more about it, only because its anonymous haha. But seriously, I became super electrified in my body this year and I started to understand why there are so many teenage pregnancies. Because I guarantee if I felt this way at 16, I would end up pregnant myself so now I feel bad for the judgement on younger girls.

This year I met up with a guy that I didn't know because I needed to get the feelings 'out' in a sense. This is very uncharacterisitic for me. But its interesting because even though I really wanted to engage with him I was drawn back because it was my first time making out and being 'felt up.' I felt so bad afterwards and told him I couldn't see him again. It was a very confusing and hard situation for me. We didn't 'do it' fyi. 🙂 Thanks for listening.

Not at all! So the best approach to your bdy basically 'waking up' is to wake your mind up with it.

What I mean by that is, get to know who you are in that arena. What does your body like? What makes you feel good?

And by far the safest way to ask and answer these questions is on your own. It's not a great idea to bring someone into that space when you still aren't fully awake. If that makes sense.

Take your time. there's no timeframe but the one you make up in your head. If this takes you forvever, so be it.

Find out what's out there. There are some great books that cover issues like this.

Don't let porn set a benchmark for you. It's like starting out wanting to know about love and using romantic movies are your guide. It's make believe, completely. Never forget that.

And when you're ready, consider inviting someone into that space. But not until you feel like you're ready to maintain good boundaries and feel good about giving consent.

How does that sound?

I promise you @Shakeelah25 we've all been there. Good on you for trying but please don't give yourself a hard time for the confusion.

I double promise you, we all know that space very well.