Scarleteen

What's a toxic belief that you've had to "unlearn" that has to do with being in a relationship? Something that maybe you were raised to believe about what you're worth, or how you should/or shouldn't have sex? How did you realize that it was a toxic belief, and what did you do to try and unlearn it? (Or are you still unlearning it?)

One of the biggest things for me was the idea that if I asserted my preferences or told someone that I didn't want to do something, that they wouldn't see me as sexy or desirable anymore. I think that I might have learned it because in my first exposures to sex (read: TV/movies/porn), I never saw anyone actually communicating boundaries or saying no. (Much less queer or disabled folks or survivors or anyone for whom sex might require a little more communication than what you might see in a basic porno).
And it's still kind of a struggle - having faith in myself and my own value, and realizing that I deserve to communicate and have my own preferences respected regardless of what other people might want in any given moment. One thing that helps is thinking about someone that I love or really like - if imagine someone else communicating a boundary to me during sex, I know that I wouldn't immediately shut down and not find them attractive anymore. I might feel a little disappointment over not doing whatever it was that I wanted to do, but I'm still attracted to them, and I still want to do other things! My attraction to and love of someone else isn't dependent on them saying yes to me all the time; so neither should anyone else's towards me.

I totally thought my having value as a person would somehow come from having sex.

Soooo not true, and totally dangerous, despite how prevalent it is as an idea.

Now that I see how it factors into people pressuring each-other into sex, I just cringe to think how I had absorbed the same thing.

How I realised was just by being in feminist spaces, and thinking of sexuality differently, and being on scarleteen at 17 to start unlearning such a harmful idea.

A toxic belief I've had is that I was responsible for my partner.Like: what they eat,if they showered, did this person do their homework,does he need me to do this for him. He eventually moved in because he didn't want to be home and had no where else to go. Having this belief just made me feel like the weight of the world on my shoulders because I was treating this person better than I was treating myself and the relationship eventually became destructive and unhealthy because we were not taking care of ourselves. but we were scared of losing each other because we have become so attached to one another.