Is Purity Culture Negatively Impacting Your Sex Life?

* Trigger warning: This discussion mentions sexual assault, religious trauma, struggles with body image, and eating disorders.

Tuesday nights in the early 2000s for me involved a little extra mirror time: an extra spritz of the Victoria’s Secret LoveSpell Body Mist, a few extra passes with the flat iron over my side bangs, a few extra moments picking out which pink Hollister henley to wear. 

This was youth group night, the extra dose of church I went to that was specifically for teens.

Youth group was a place full of contradictions. Teens with raging hormones were told to “keep it in their pants” until marriage, while also receiving a wink-wink nudge-nudge that church was a great place to find a future Christian spouse. 

The youth pastors — often trying to appear relatable with their pick of skater hair, puka shells, frosted tips, or skinny jeans — led worship songs that were often just U2 or Coldplay covers with Christianized lyrics.

It was a space of both sexual repression and obsession, a microcosm of the larger 1990s-to-2000s pop culture landscape, where purity culture coexisted with a dizzying mix of sexualization and shame.

I’m writing this article based on my own experience being raised in Canada within a Mennonite Brethren Christian context, and from my exposure to Evangelical Christianity from my time spent living in the United States. 

My hope is that you’ll be able to pull out what resonates for you from this article and leave out what doesn’t.

What is purity culture?

While the societal effort to shame and control women’s sexual expression is far from new, it became particularly visible and codified with the rise of “purity culture” in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

Emma Cieslik, a religious historian, describes purity culture as “… a systemic set of ideologies enforced by religious communities through educational programming and events that place the brunt of sexual responsibility on young men and women.”

Growing up, purity culture wasn’t just a belief system. It was the air I breathed. It felt like an unquestionable truth — something that had always been and always would be. 

But as I grew older, self-exploration and unlearning became central to my journey. I began to question the narratives I had been taught, recognizing their impact and considering whether they truly served me.

This journey ultimately led me to my training in the field of sex therapy, where I now explore the ways these ingrained messages shape our relationships, identities, and sense of self — and how we can reclaim our own narratives.

Have you been influenced by purity culture?

You didn’t have to grow up in church to be exposed to purity beliefs. The messaging was everywhere in millennial pop culture and broader society.

The media played a significant role in reinforcing these ideas, especially in how it treated young female celebrities. 

This era pushed the impossible standard of young women who were sexy but not having sex.

Purity rings, which symbolize abstinence before marriage, were slipped onto the fingers of pop stars like the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, and Selena Gomez.

Meanwhile, the paparazzi ruthlessly tore apart any young woman who was thought to be having sex, reinforcing a rigid, punishing double standard (think Britney and Justin circa 2002).

The media reinforced the “good girl” ideal, rewarding female characters for innocence and modesty. Movies like A Walk to Remember and shows like 7th Heaven and Lizzie McGuire celebrated virtuous, chaste heroines.

These messages were further embedded in institutions with abstinence-only sex education. This often included harmful metaphors about “losing” virginity and purity-based value systems.

Many schools enforced strict dress codes that placed the burden on girls to control boys’ urges. Girls were told to wear conservative clothing to protect boys from becoming aroused by their bodies, reinforcing the idea that male desire is uncontrollable.

Together, these cultural forces shaped a generation’s understanding of relationships, morality, and self-worth.

Harms caused by purity culture 

If you grew up with purity culture, here’s how it might have affected you.

Shame, shame, and more shame

Purity culture provides a very narrow range of what type of sexual expression is acceptable. Anything that is outside of a heterosexual marriage is viewed as dangerous, sinful, and shameful.

Normal sexual attractions or curiosity can be labelled as the sin of “lust.” In some cases, talking or even thinking about sex is off limits.

I once went to a church service in Florida where the pastor said if you have even one impure thought, you might as well cheat. This makes you feel shame for just being human.

Masturbation, casual sex, premarital sex, and queer sex are all considered bad.

Any sexual behaviour for the purpose of pleasure alone — and not for strengthening relationship bonds or for procreation — is also viewed as wrong. Healthy masturbation is labeled dirty.

Even feeling pleasure outside of sex (like from food, rest, or artistic expression) can become connected to shame.

All that shame can lead to some serious mental and physical health issues.

It can lead to viewing the body as strictly good or bad, resulting in control-based behaviors such as disordered eating, problematic exercising, and obsessive thoughts about physical appearance, found Rebecca Wolfe in their 2024 doctoral dissertation from the University of California, San Francisco.

Body-mind separation

In purity culture, the body is seen as a problem to be solved. You learn to ignore and disconnect from yours.

Women’s bodies are labelled as “temptations” and dangerous risks to their own purity and that of others. 

We see this message in values of modesty, strict dress codes for girls and not for boys, and in the victim-blaming questions directed at sexual assault survivors about what they were wearing.

This can result in women feeling over-responsible for managing the desires of boys and men, and fearing their own sexuality.

You may learn to cope with this burden by disconnecting from the body. It becomes something to control or hide rather than trust or enjoy. 

Body-mind disconnection can look like struggling to stay present, difficulty feeling your emotions, or being overly intellectual. When you’re trained to ignore or fear body sensations, especially sexual feelings, it can be difficult to sink into pleasure. 

Your body sensations are also your biggest way of knowing your boundaries, and so this mind-body separation also makes it difficult to know your limits.

Unrealistic expectations about sex in married life

One of the greatest ironies of purity culture is the promise that your reward for holding out on sex is an incredible sex life once you’re married. Sadly, there’s no magical switch that flips once you utter the words, “I do.” 

There can also be a pressure to be “good” at sex immediately, since this was taught to be the “reward” for purity or the proof that a spouse is truly a soulmate. 

Great sex isn’t something that just happens – it’s built on a multitude of factors including communication, trust, self-discovery, and experience.

These unrealistic expectations about sex can be incredibly anxiety-inducing. Fear and anxiety can manifest physically in the body.

As a result of this anxiety, people may experience painful intercourse, erectile dysfunction, difficulty with orgasm.

Purity culture also enforces dubious messages about gender roles, portraying sex as a duty in marriage. 

Purity culture tells men they’re innately sexual. On the other hand, it teaches that women have no innate sexual desires of their own. And if they did, it would be shameful.

Instead, women’s satisfaction is supposed to come from taking care of their family, including the sexual satisfaction of their husband.

Gender-based limitations and harm 

Purity culture often places the responsibility of sexual gatekeeping on women. 

It’s taught that men are naturally sexual, visual creatures. Women are taught that their bodies are tempting to men and it is their responsibility to cover up.

This can lead to objectifying (even unintentional) of women’s bodies, disassembling them into “dangerous” parts: spaghetti-strapped shoulders, legginged-legs, or filled bra cups.

In this script, men are powerless against their own desires.

Some men may feel uncomfortable and ashamed of their desires. Other men may adopt a sense of entitlement around sex, believing that their wives are fully responsible for satisfying their desires.

Women can learn to self-objectify, in which they may be preoccupied about the appearance of their bodies and walking the razor’s edge of being attractive but not “slutty.”

There can also be a struggle for women to feel ownership over their own pleasure or sexuality. They learn a wife’s duty is to show up, look pretty, and please their husband.

There’s a double standard where if a man “sins,” it’s the woman’s fault for being too irresistible. We see the most violent side of this in victim-blaming of sexual assault survivors. 

Perfectionism 

The concept of “virginity” is presented as a person’s (overwhelmingly a woman’s) most valuable quality. In purity culture, virginity equals self-worth in all-or-nothing terms. It’s something that can be lost but never gotten back.

If you grew up going to a church with purity beliefs, you might have been exposed to some of the horrifying “educational” exercises of comparing having sex to being a chewed-up piece of gum, used tape, or a rose that lost all its petals. 

Even outside of religious spaces, abstinence-based sex education reinforced similar shame and fear-based narratives of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and teen pregnancies, while omitting crucial topics like consent, communication, gender identity, and (god forbid!) pleasure.

Striving for purity can feel like walking a tightrope over a burning lava pit.

One stumble might lead to rejection from your community or full-blown eternal damnation. The cost of impurity can feel too unbearably high to risk.

This can drive people to perfectionistic tendencies around sex.

The most obvious example of this is the expectation to wait to have sex until you find the one perfect person to marry.

At any age, this is an incredible amount of pressure, but with the teens this messaging is most often directed at, this message forces adult decisions on children.

Suppression and erasure of LGBTQ+

The intense heteronormativity of purity culture is incredibly harmful to queer people.

When people grow up learning that anything other than heterosexuality is a sin, many people will consciously or unconsciously repress any of their desires or attractions that deviate from this.

There can be a deep feeling of self-hatred or shame. You might even hide key parts of your identity in an effort to maintain connections with others in the same culture.

It can be complicated or impossible for LGBTQ+ people to separate their faith from the trauma this causes and maintain any of the helpful community aspects of church.

Healing from purity culture

It’s totally possible to heal, but it can take time. Here’s how to find a path forward.

Think about how you’ve been impacted by purity culture

Sex and relationship expert Emily Nagoski has a wonderful exercise to go through this process in her book Come As You Are.

She uses this fantastic metaphor of a garden to represent how the messages we’ve internalized about sex show up in our lives.

We come into this world with our own plot of land that has been chosen for us, she says. As we grow up, the media, our communities, and our families plant both beautiful messages about sex and bodies (flowers) and harmful messages (weeds). 

It can be incredibly beneficial to gain awareness of your own garden so that you can decide which messages you’d like to water and which you’d like to weed out.

Unlearn shame-based and harmful messages

Here are some sex-positive mind-shifts you can intentionally make:

• A quick and easy sex-positive change is to stop saying “losing your virginity” and replace it with “sexual debut” instead.
• Check out Nadia Bolz-Weber’s book Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good.
• Shift from duty-based sex to pleasure-based sex.
• Keep in mind that you are not responsible for your partner’s sexual satisfaction.
• Ask yourself sexologist Peggy Kleinplatz’s question, “What’s the sex worth having?”, which she explores in her book Magnificent Sex: Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers.

Cultivate a new relationship with sexuality

Explore the sex-positive resources out there to grow and learn more about yourself:

• Learn about sex and sexuality: Find shame-free, evidence-based sources to learn. It’s never too late!
• Speak with a therapist: Work with a sex-positive therapist or sex educator — especially if they are religious trauma-informed. Here’s a directory through AASECT.
• Find likeminded others: Seek out others with similar experiences to help feel less alone and heal the shame. Erica Smith is a sex educator that runs individual and group Purity Culture Dropout programs.
• Discover what turns on your own body and mind: The website OMG Yes has educational videos breaking down techniques for female pleasure. Or try out Dipsea, which is an audiobook library for spicy stories.
• Try new sexual experiences: Explore sexuality on your own terms and redefine what sexual health and pleasure mean for you.
• Define your own sexual ethic: One rooted in consent, respect, and mutual joy, not shame or fear.
• Reconnect with your body: Practice activities like mindfulness, yoga, expressive art, or dance that help you feel your body and be aware of sensations in the present moment. It can also look like intentionally savouring food, music, or beautiful scenery.

Redefining intimacy on your own terms

Whether or not you were raised in a church that directly taught purity culture, if you were influenced by it, the effects can run deep.

The messaging around sexual purity can create anxiety about relationships, intimacy, and identity, sometimes even affecting physical functioning.

Purity culture thinking can block access to pleasure, joy, and knowing your sexual self.

However, healing is absolutely possible.

Through education, self-reflection, and questioning the beliefs you’ve internalized, you can begin to untangle harmful narratives. Awareness is the key to redefining intimacy on your own terms.

While the impact of purity culture can be long-lasting, so too can the freedom that comes from unlearning and rebuilding a healthier, more affirming relationship with yourself and others.

Book list

Here’s a list of the books I touch on in this article. Happy reading!

• Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski
• Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good by Nadia Bolz-Weber
• Magnificent Sex: Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers by Peggy Kleinplatz

**A word from the author about this article

I wrote this article from my own experience being raised in Canada within a Mennonite Brethren Christian context, my exposure to Evangelical Christianity from my time spent living in the United States as well as my experience studying and working with clients as a Certified Sex Therapist through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT).

Experiences of purity culture narratives can be found across race, culture, and religion, and my intention is to not speak for all. My hope is that you’ll be able to pull out what resonates for you and leave out what doesn’t.

In this article, I intentionally use heteronormative and gendered language (e.g., husband and wife) around sex to reflect how sex is spoken about within purity culture.

While purity culture has had harmful effects, some aspects, like recognizing the emotional side of sex or linking spirituality to sexuality, can be meaningful and even transformative for some.

Many teachers, pastors, and parents that perpetuated these messages did so with good intentions, believing they were doing what was best based on what they had been taught.

These good intentions aside, I believe these discussions are important because healing comes from learning, naming, and acknowledging the harm these teachings have caused.