A quick note on formatting:
I’m experimenting with writing that speaks directly to purity culture survivors while also remaining accessible to a broader audience. You’ll see some highlighted asides intended specifically for survivors — feel free to skip them if they’re not for you.
I’d love your feedback in the comments on whether this works or feels distracting.
It’s an odd feeling when someone else sees me more clearly than I see myself.
Not that it’s unusual — I’ve learned over the last few years that I got very good at masking when I was growing up.
I remember my mom was regularly flummoxed at how I could be having a category 4 meltdown, but the moment she handed me the phone for the weekly call with her parents, I would transform into the sweetest, calmest little girl. “Hi Nanny and Poppy, how are you?”
Not a hint of tears or wailing to be found.
She thought it was astonishing — even a gift — that I could show the face I needed in any given moment. She didn’t understand that it wasn’t actually positive: there were only certain parts of myself that were allowable in front of my father, so I learned to hide the rest.
If you grew up in purity culture, the details were different, but the result was the same: only certain parts of you were allowed to exist in the open.
The weird thing is that I didn’t even know that I was masking — it was such a basic part of my survival tool kit that it was invisible to me.
Today I might call it ninja-level people pleasing.
But it’s not just with other people — there are ways I don’t even allow myself to see myself.
In purity culture, being agreeable, modest, and selfless probably didn’t even register as people pleasing. It was just being a good and moral person.
My friend Liz recently joined Substack (go read her stuff, it’s fantastic). She and I met eight years ago at a podcasters’ convention. I told her that my podcast was called Good Girls Talk About Sex and she cornered me in a bathroom to announce that we were now friends.
In the last four months, a new aspect of our relationship has developed: we’re both full-fledged Heated Rivalry Loons.
We’re both regulars over on Threads — or as it’s known in the 30,000+ person Heated Rivalry group chat, tHReads (find me on Threads at @xoleahcarey.)
I see other women letting their feral flag fly, and it’s easier for me to drop the mask. I let myself be snarky, funny, and sexy. It’s easier to be that version of me there — the one who doesn’t have to check if she’s too much, too visible, too unhinged for public consumption.
That’s how I ended up flirting with one woman about exchanging sloppy wet kisses, while having frank conversations about healthy non-monogamy with another.
It hadn’t occurred to me to check in with Liz, because as far as I could tell she was having just as much fun.
Until she texted me (I am sharing this with her consent):
A few days later, Liz posted this on Substack:
A few paragraphs in, this knocked the wind out of me:
But she already is friends with that person.
Me.
But I also assume that I’m not enough to get that kind of attention, or be the one people will lose their mind over. Because I grew up in a world where acknowledging my own worth bordered on heresy, I learned to devalue myself.
If you were taught your worth lives in restraint, why wouldn’t you feel envious when other people get attention for being outrageous?
And yet … I’m the one Liz reached out to because I seem comfortable in that space.
When people meet me in person, they think I’ve got my shit together — that I’m confident and ready to take on the world. They don’t realize it’s a mask.
Somehow, both things are true:
I move through the world looking like someone who is confident and visible.
And internally, I still believe I am neither of those things.
Looking confident but feeling invisible — this is the intersection where a lot of purity culture dropouts live. I talk about that a lot in this series I’m doing on tHReads.
Maybe my mask isn’t completely a lie.
Maybe it’s something I created a long time ago out of necessity … but now I can grow into it being my reality.
If you’re untangling yourself from a system that taught you who to be instead of how to be yourself, this might be part of your work too — not tearing the mask off all at once, but slowly choosing which parts of it are actually you.
Check out my Purity Culture Detox:
You’ve broken away from Purity Culture, but somehow your sex and love life still isn’t what you want it to be.
Understand why with Leah’s PERSONALIZED insight and recommendations for your specific situation. It’s like me stopping over for a visit to chat about how to get you moving toward the sex and relationships you really want!
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