‘I’ve been hiding my vibrator anxiously in the back of the closet for years’

Patricia van Liemt is a radio presenter, writer and mother of Maria (12) and Phaedra (9). Every Friday she writes striking, honest, funny and above all recognizable columns about her life and motherhood.

I think that people who talk about sex often and loudly are actually the ones who are a bit prudish. And um, if I’m being honest, I think I fall into that category. They also say that self-knowledge comes with age, well: there it is.

Prude

I recently had a very open conversation with a real sex professor. I had invited her to my radio show Let’s Talk About Sex(e), because I find it fascinating how many people are open about sex. Okay, I should say that differently, because I’m quite open about sex myself, I mean more that these people are very free in their sexual acts and can easily talk about it.

So for years I have been anxiously hiding a vibrator in the back of the closet, while most of my girlfriends have such a pleasure club very casually in their bedside table. Just up for grabs. Sometimes literally, because I’ve also seen a child come downstairs with mom’s toys.

Look at each other

Well, the sex professor asked me what I really consider intimate. My answer to that was to look into my partner’s eyes during sex. I find that really extremely intimate and immediately terrifying. When I look into my partner’s eyes, I immediately get a kind of ‘other body experience’ where I see myself lying there and find that very unattractive. Then I really think of myself as a bit of a poser. Like ‘joh you act normal for once’.

When I asked the sex professor why I feel this way, I saw her frown. She was clearly looking for an answer by replaying her own sex escapades in her head. At least, that’s what I thought I saw. But even before she had formulated an answer, I asked her if she thought that was scary too.

Read also – My husband and I have completely different sex needs. What now?’ >

Lust object

She also had to think about this question for a while, but eventually she came to the conclusion that she did look her partner in the eye during the act, but did not always do so. She also liked to do it with her eyes closed, because then she sometimes came closer to her feeling.

“Pick up a random video clip and you have an alibi why you still feel a little bit years later weird about your own sexuality. However?”

Logical, but I also wanted to include her in my own analysis. I told her that so I think I’m a very clear product of the ’90s. Where women in the media were mainly portrayed as sex objects or as self-assured sluts. I mean; pick up a random video clip and you have an alibi why you still feel a little bit now years later weird about your own sexuality. However?

The sex professor admitted to being a few years younger and had more of a zeroes upbringing, but I did have a point. Her advice was to listen less often to the wrong hour on Q-Music and to accept myself as much as possible. Well, I’ll see if that works tonight.

Would you rather listen to Patricia’s column? Which can. Every Friday between 2 and 4 pm she reads it on Wild FM.

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