To think having really loud, noisy sex when your children are just a few feet away is creepy and wrong?

[ManonBlackbeak]

Im working through a few unresolved issues relating to my childhood at the moment, and this is something that's suddenly come to the forefront of my mind. Im firmly prepared to be told that Im being unreasonable or stupid.

Throughout my childhood and teen years my parents would have really loud sex at night when DB and I were in our rooms just a few feet away. I'd love to say that they assumed we were asleep, but often they knew full well that I was not as they'd pop their heads around the door to say goodnight before getting down to it!

Im not one of these people who thinks my parents never had sex, or should never have done it but there was very little in the way of discrete. We are not just talking the sound of a headboard banging against the wall either, we are talking about full on loud porn movie like shrieking from my DM.

The more I think about it the more weird and sort of off it seems. I don't have kids, but if I did I'd be horrified if they ever over heard me having sex. Actually I'd be pretty red faced if anyone did. But then the next morning DM would face us as always with zero embarassment.

Without drip feeding. DM is difficult, Im starting to believe my upbringing was a bit toxic. I believe she has undiagnosed mental health problems, and she was unpredictable, moody and emotionally unavialble to me. She also didn't respect my boundaries and would barge into my room without knocking, look through my things etc.

I cant get my head around it. The more I think about it the more I feel it wasn't right IYSWM?

I heard my parents have sex at night (late) whilst walking by their bedroom door. Found it funny and embarrassing. Definitely not abusive in this context.

I can't imagine having sex with my DC sleeping in the room. Something inappropriate about it, to me. However, I daresay couples across the world are having sex (hopefully, quietly) with kids in the room due to lack of living space.

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/08/where-children-sleep-a-round-the-world-tour-of-bedrooms/243303/

I do think it's weird and wrong, yes.

I'm sure lots of parents are accidentally heard by their kids, when they are unaware the noise is carrying or think the kids are fast asleep. But I think it's gross to have noisy, screamy sex when you know full well your children can definitely hear you and I do think it's borderline abusive. It's definitely putting kids into a situation where boundaries are being crossed.

Heard mine at it. At about 16 got fed up one night and shouted" you know i can hear you right?" They hushed up a bit. My room was next to theirs, dont think the others heard.

I know of 2 couples who , shall we say ive heard in action. Ive said i can you (light hearted, know them well enough to say) im pretty sure their kids can hear too

I think that if I was living in a house or flat share arrangement and one of my housemates was shagging their boyfriend or girlfriend and making that much noise I wouldn't put up with it. I'd have to say something because it is really inapproriate.

My parents did that. My mother, really. She moaned as if she were dying. I can still 'hear' her, nearly sixty years later.

That’s grim.

I didn’t like DTD when DS was a newborn and in the same room as us awake. I used to worry it would be his first memory!

Yes it's inappropriate. I think most children do hear things they shouldn't sometimes but if the parents have made no effort to cover it up and are being so brazen then I do think it verges on abuse.

Finding my Dad’s condoms when I was 11 or 12 was bad enough!

I was thinking they probably thought you were asleep but you say they knew you weren't. Possibly they didn't realise quite how loud they were being. I know I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Yes it is inappropriate to have noisy sex when children are in earshot.

It's more than inappropriate; it's abusive. Exposing children to your sexual activity is abusive. I'm really sorry that happened to you.

The distance doesn't matter. It's horrendous if your children can hear you, whatever their age. I lived with my mother for a while recently. Enormous house. Her in one wing, us in the other. Very uptight prim and proper lady by day. But at night and after a couple of bottles of wine... A real screamer!!! Woke me and my toddler up. It was horrendous! She's in her 70s btw. I may be 40, but trust me when I say that I am now traumatized!

Exactly @ManonBlackbeak how do you bring up that conversation with your parents? As a child/young teenager, to be put in the position of having to ask your parents to stop having such noisy sex? I never could have. And if I picture that conversation now, I'm pretty certain they would have laughed at me and made a joke of it and carried on doing it anyway.

When my mum and dad split us, he'd bring us back home on a Sunday, talk to Mum for a bit in the kitchen then they'd "sneak" off upstairs and have very loud sex. My sister and I were sitting in the living room underneath. Then Dad would pop his head round the door, say bye and Mum would spend the rest of the day crying he'd gone back to the OW. Every Sunday.

I saw sex as something grubby after that for a very very long time. I was 13.

I’ve heard it - heard my in-laws at it too. I don’t have a feeling about it one way or another. Not sure how i feel about it now either. We usually wait till the kids are asleep though.

It's abusive, innappropriate exposure to sexual activity can be considered part of abuse that social services consider as emotional abuse. As you've said it's not respecting boundaries and the family boundaries that mean you don't want to hear parents having sex and as parents, you shouldn't want your children hearing you either! Accidentally overhearing parents being discrete is obviously different.

I think it's awful too, I heard my mum all the time with one of her men,.walked in once too when I'd had a bad dream.
This is why I will never have mine or my kids beds with the headboards against adjoining walls! You've got to be discreet. My 12 yr old knows we have a kiss and a cuddle but he asked the other day where he was when his sister was created 🤭. As he knows how baby's are made and thinks his parents have only done it twice to make two kids! We must have kept it quiet enough all these years. My kids will be mortified when they realise we might have done it more that twice, 😂😂

My neighbours do this. I hear the woman literally screaming / howling. I've never heard anything like it. My teenagers can hear it too. They have a Dd who is 12 and I cannot fathom how they either don't care if she hears or think she can't hear.

My DP’s took me on hol when I was 15, we shared a room. One day they told me to go off on my own for a couple of hours so they could have sex, they were quite honest. I was both mortified and really worried, we were abroad and I didn’t really know where to go. I cannot imagine ever in a million years even thinking of doing that to my DC’s.

Selfish sods.

I also always knock on my kids doors and ask if they're decent, before I go in because my mum never did that, have done since they haven't needed me to get dressed

I was thinking they probably thought you were asleep but you say they knew you weren't. Possibly they didn't realise quite how loud they were being. I know I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

One of them popped their head around the door when they went to bed until I was in my teens. Just to say goodnight and check I was awake or asleep I suppose. They definitely knew when I was awake.

Im not saying they shouldn't have had sex in their own home, its the lack of discreetion and absolutely no attempt whatsoever to be quiet which is off. I genuienly don't believe anyone naturally makes that much racket when they are having sex, the poster who said her mother moaned as if she were dying has it spot on. Except in my DM's case she sounded like she was in severe agony as well as dying.

I think it's not on. I used to hear my parents but they were very discreet no screaming or any noises, just the bed moving, that was bad enough.

It's hard now my children are teens, but I try to make sure neither of them can hear anything.

Yes, TisforTired. I think had I brought the subject up it would have been treated as a joke or DM would have hit the roof and gone into a sulk. I honestly don't think they cared one jot that I could hear them.

I suspect this was part of a general family culture of control, riding roughshod over personal boundaries and not allowing you as children to have any dignity, privacy or right to individual preferences - if so, then it was most certainly abusive and about power. Completely inappropriate and damaging behaviour.

^^^

This. Exactly the same for me and this is the underlying thinking behind it. My parents also did it a few feet away in a caravan when I was in my late teens, my mother used to swan about covered in love bites like it was something to be proud of. Disgusting really, selfish bastards the pair of them. No wonder I was a nervous wreck of a child.

Grim. I’m thankful that the only evidence I have that my parents have had sex is the conception of me and my brother. And he insists they adopted me.

Never heard my parents once and they were happily married for 51 years! DH and I are masters at silent sex. I’d hate my DC to have to feel like you did. Sympathies.