Just because you have acknowledged that your upbringing contained unfair limitations and restrictions doesn't mean that you aren't still a product of them, despite a desire to change. You made the first step, but the guilt and shame remains. That will take some time to work through.

To draw a parallel, I was raised in a much more conservative Christ-centered faith than I am now, and I still feel guilt if I miss even one Sunday. Others who were raised Quaker do not feel this way at all.

My advice to you is to continue to work to find a balance between your new self and the old prejudices, knowing that time really is the only reformer.

I still a virgin, but my personal belief is two people who consented to have sex in a safe manner Why should we bash them? have no right to tell people how to live their lives unless they are hurting others. Sometimes it helps to have perspective and remember why you had sex and why you don't regret it and keep those reasons in mind when you family mentions their personal views on sex.

Um... get some better friends? Unless you're actually trying to maximize the number of people in your life who think you're actions are bad.

I experienced some really confusing feelings after I had sex for the first time. It was a reaction to all of the societal and even my personal beliefs about virginity...I somehow felt that I had lost this really big thing. I think it can be a very big, emotional experience for some people, certainly when you have all of those people in your life telling you that what you did was wrong. I personally talked with my friends and the bf at the time about how I was feeling and wrote about it to get the feelings out on paper. My mind was reeling for a day or two, but I found that that helped me a lot.

I think you first need to discover WHY you feel so much guilt from this.

Were you really ready to have sex for the first time or were you convinced you were ready? Was it everything you expected it to be or was it disappointing? What do you expect to happen now?

One regret I've heard from people (male or female) who had sex for the first time was that they don't think the relationship will last. In that case, you have to remember to only have sex because that's what you want then at that moment and not based on what you expect to happen later. Thats a setup for disappointment.

I understand what you're going through. Admittedly, my perspective will be a bit colored by my gender, but I understand.

My story is very similar. I was raised in an extremely christianist household by a father who was and is a failed penecostal minister and a mother who resembles Gracie Allen on a hot day. I was raised to believe that sex was only permissable in the bedrooms of married people. My first experience was with a lady I met at a party the week before I deployed, and for years I disasociated sex from love and felt dirty after sleeping with someone. I had an idea that sex and love were seperate which inadvertantly led me to fall in love with a woman who had severe PTSD because of earlier abuse and couldn't have sex at all. That relationship ended badly, as do most first relationships, because I was still working out issues from my past and from my upbringing.

These issues -concerned as they are with our upbringing, our past, and with our very identity- take time to work through. Doing so takes time and in order to square this circlea person has to question constantly. The issues involve more than just a person's feelings about sex, indeed, they involve questions of personhood and history. Ultimately there are two questions, the first is "what part of my ubringing do I value enough to keep?" And the second is "what parts of my ubrigning are a hindrance to my personal growth?" Reconciling these questions can take a lifetime if a person is so inclined, but it's necessary if we are to make peace between the person we once were and the person we are now.

I'm sorry I don't have any books for you to read. However, I do have a question that has helped me to emerge from the place where I felt guilty for having sex. The question is "what type of person do I wish to be?" For myself the answer is that I wish to be a kindhearted, generous, warm, and loving person able to endure with equnamity the things that life through my way. I eventually realized that feeling guilty about sex wasn't helping me with the answer to my question so I stopped feeling guilty.

I hope this helped.

The most important thing to remember: You made your own decision about your own body. No one made them for you, including your family or significant other. I wish I had some other advice to give you, but remember and take pride in the decisions you make for yourself. And hell, you even enjoyed your first time! Many women are not so lucky. :)

I totally get where you are coming from. I grew up in a really conservative, evangelical, "true love waits" type community, and there is a lot of shame connected with pre-marital sex there. This may sound unhelpful, but I think that the more time passes, and the longer you have to really reflect on the fact that you should not feel guilty because you did nothing wrong, then your guilty feelings will lessen and eventually disappear. You have to allow yourself time to sift through the many thoughts and messages in your head until you find your own feelings. In the meantime, write about it, talk to supportive friends, and affirm yourself as much as possible. You are not dirty, you have done nothing wrong, and you have not lost some irreparable part of yourself. Those type of thoughts are the propaganda of the purity squad.

I've always been afraid that I would feel the same exact way after having sex for the first time. I think it is important to remember that you really did nothing wrong and you obviously enjoyed it, so that's great.

Ironically these feelings should ease the more you have sex. Sex gets built up to be such a big deal by individuals and society, that it ends up becoming this really big deal for the first time (even though I don't think it should be). So naturally you feel all sorts of feelings before and after your first time.

But I promise you that after you've done it numerous times you won't think about these things at all, because by then sex will just be a normal part of life that you are comfortable with and accustomed to. It won't seem like such a big deal anymore, which will make the guilt go away, and then you should be able to focus on enjoying it and not feeling guilty about it!

Get in touch what you think and feel and don't worry about what other people say on either side of the issue.

I actually created a web community to deal with this specific issue - female sexual shame. It's closed to the public and female-only. If you think you might benefit from a supportive community of women who share similar (and different) feelings/experiences, then think about joining WET Transformation and posting your story. You can sign up under a fake name if that makes you feel more secure being honest. You might be surprised by how many women share your conflicting feelings.

I was raised Catholic and I have felt deeply ashamed of my sexuality as a result. What helped me was, ironically, learning more about my religion. Specifically, it helped to learn that Judaism, Christianity, and later Islam all supplanted older religions where sexuality was a vehicle of worship. Think about it. Our first concept of God was a Goddess. Where does new life come from? A woman's vagina. Duh! The oldest priests were priestesses and their sacrament was sex. It makes sense then that the newer religions would need to vilify the main sacrament of the old religion. We are all products of that history. It is also central to the creation of patriarchy. If men were to become powerful they needed to control and appropriate female sexuality and fertility. This is why women are sluts and men are studs for the same actions. This is why women are coerced, forced, or shamed into chastity - so that men can rest assured that your body will only make their babies and pass on their last names. It's time to wake up, all of us. WE are the givers of life and we are more than that. We are human beings.

It's natural though not healthy to feel guilty for breaking your parents' rules after you've grown up. They gave you your first moral grounding, and while you're free to reject their philosophy and choose your own now, you can't blame yourself for it being an awkward and painful process.

Everyone--- thank you so much for your comments. (and sorry it took me forever to write back....i was on a after-Christmas retreat with my family, cause I didn't get enough of them last weekend!)

You guys made some GREAT points- and I will be seeing my boyfriend (for the first time since the sex 3 months ago) next week and I am definitely planning on talking to him about this. Many of you pointed out that our society puts so much emphasis on the first time girls have sex, that I might've expected something huge to happen. I think that could be part of it-- I almost expected to wake up feeling different....but I didn't. I just felt closer to my boyfriend. And the sky didn't fall down (which, admittedly, a small part of me said would happen. The indoctrination was deeper than I thought!).