You asked about the disconnect between my positive perception of my upbringing and my internalization of messages about sex being dirty/shameful.
I think I should elaborate a bit here. While growing up, my parents rarely, if ever showed affection towards each other, told us we were not allowed to tease them about that (we'd try and get them to hold hands etc...), and never discussed sex , although they have a happy, and sexually satisfying marriage.
I think this behavior is largely due to the culture in which they were raised. My parents had an arranged marriage, moved to the US from a country where these things weren't really discussed, and in the absence of extended family (cousins, aunts, etc...) nearby, I wasn't really educated by others either. My mom did try to have a conversation about the "birds and the bees" when I got to puberty, and I told her that we'd talked about it in school, and that I didn't want to talk about it with her. In reality, I think I was very afraid, and even in sex-ed in high school, I ignored that homework, failing my first test ever (normally I was a stellar student).
When I started dating my first boyfriend (outside of the cultural fold), my parents were very concerned because dating wasn't really "done" in their world. But because my parents wanted to be open minded (or at least try to be), they let me date (with various arguments about curfew etc...). My mom was worried that I'd have pre-marital sex, and we had a conversation in which she asked about my physical relations with my boyfriend. I told her that I had no intent to have sex until I was married. When I later told her about my first kiss (all aglow and happy), my mom looked at me disappointed, and said "I thought we had decided no sex before marriage!". Thus ensued an argument about how we each defined sex.
So, I guess there were some negative messages about sex, but I still maintain that otherwise I had a good childhood (good friends, generally happy) and a supportive family. (Additionally, my sister, who is younger than me, has none of the sexual problems that I have -- although of course it can be argued that every child's experience is different.)
My parents are completely clued in to our problems now, and are going out of their way to be available and helpful in any way that they can. My mom explained her behavior in my adolescence as being consistent with how she was raised. Her family never discussed intimacy or sex when she was growing up, and when she was married (to man she had met for less than a week), she literally knew nothing about sex. Her father took my dad aside and quite explicitly told him that my mom knew nothing and that my dad would have to teach her. Which he did.
In some ways, it's baffling to me that my parents have such a good relationship. They are supportive of each other, loving, and have been married for over three decades. They enjoy each other and have few complaints. Somehow, without any knowledge and with the messages they had, they figured out their own sexuality.
