Being sexually healthy begins before sexual activity takes place and may include learning about your sexual and reproductive organs, going through the changes of puberty, learning to deal with the menstrual cycle, and so on. Young children learn about their sexual organs through exploration and may begin stimulating them because it brings them pleasure. This type of exploration is quite normal.
After puberty and sexual maturation begins, there may be some changes like ejaculation for people with penises and testes. People will need to learn how to start taking good care of their sexual and reproductive organs (see the Female and Male reproductive system posts). And people will want to develop a healthy sex life . This can include a variety of sexual activity, with other people or not.
Scientists started to study sexual response in the 1950s and 1960s and developed several ways to understand how human bodies react during desire, arousal and orgasm. Read more here – https://www.ourbodiesourselves.org/book-excerpts/health-article/models-sexual-response/. Often, sexual response starts with desire, which is something that happens in our brains when we think about something arousing, or we feel close to our partner, or we experience sensations (which includes images or sounds) that we find exciting.
When we decide to have sex with other people, it is important to communicate about sex and set expectations with each other. People may want to discuss what they like and don’t like, consent, and safer sex. Read more here – https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/sex-and-relationships/sex/how-do-i-talk-my-partner-about-sex.
