I genuinely like anal sex and i’m tired of feeling bad about it

Throughout my twenties, when I stopped taking such a hard line on what sex said about my character, I still didn’t really enjoy the few times I had anal sex and figured it just wasn’t really my scene. But then something happened in my early thirties. Perhaps it was the confidence that came with age and sexual experience, but I found myself having anal sex with someone I was dating and loving it. Really loving it.

But there was still shame this time about enjoying anal, rather than just engaging in it. It went back to what liking anal sex said about me as a woman. Was I dirty? Deranged? Had I been dropped on my head as a child and this was the outcome of it, manifested decades later?

I have been suggesting it more on my own accord to get more comfortable with the fact that I like it. My partner and I did it the third time we slept together, in fact, because it was important to me that I fully embrace my sexuality, especially the parts I was once ashamed of and which still remain taboo by society’s standards. I wanted to be the one who initiated it, thereby owning both the act and the fact that I enjoyed it. I’m starting to understand now that I shouldn’t allow archaic thoughts about how a woman should have sex (which typically means vaginal only), or the narrow-minded thinking of people who condemn it, to take up space in my mind.

While I don’t need other people or pop culture to validate my feelings on the matter, it does help in some ways to feel a sense of solidarity. It forces us to realize that human sexuality is complicated and there’s no “right” way to be aroused or to get off. Similarly, not being into anal sex doesn’t make you a prude or somehow less sexually adventurous.

It’s definitely not for everyone, but for those of us who do enjoy it, for far too long it felt like it needed to be a secret. Now I know how ridiculous a notion that is.