About sexuality and sex life

Cancer and its treatment can affect how you feel about your sexuality and sex life.

Knowing your body and sexuality can help you understand how cancer and its treatment might affect you.

What sexuality is

Sexuality describes the feelings and physical characteristics that form your sexual identity.

Several things can influence your sexuality, such as:

• genetic make up
• personal sexual experiences
• religious and cultural beliefs
• upbringing
• hormones

These influences vary so much from person to person, it is difficult to define what sexuality means.

Your sexuality plays a big part in your actions and reactions to others. It is a very important part of who you are and how you behave socially. Wanting to feel close to others, enjoying physical touch and caring for others are all part of your sexuality.

When most people talk about their sex life they are talking about having sex. But your sex life is not just about having sex. It involves how you feel about yourself and your sexuality. It also includes how you feel about your body, your desire to have sex, and being touched and loved.

Our sexual organs play a big part in our sex lives. Parts of your body respond to sexual stimulation. Unless there is a problem, it can be easy to take this for granted. 

Cancer and sexuality

Having cancer and treatment sometimes causes physical changes to your sexual organs.

This can affect how you feel and react to having sex. This can be very confusing and difficult to cope with. It can sometimes make it very difficult to respond to your partner during sexual activity.

It's important to remember that everyone is different. There is no right or wrong way to feel about your sexuality and sex life. How you feel sexually can change and grow.

We all have times in our life when we do not feel too confident about ourselves or don't feel very sexual. It can be difficult to communicate with the people close to you. These feelings won't last forever and it's possible to work on changing this. And finding new ways to communicate your feelings to your loved ones.

It may help to get to know how your body normally works. This helps you understand how things might change if you have cancer.