Appearing to cry whenever someone comes near her on the show, one of the Virgin Island stars has explained the heartbreaking reason why.
Taylor is one of the 12 people on the wild new Channel 4 show who head for a ‘hands-on’ course in intimacy on a luxury retreat.
Ahead of going on the show, the 29-year-old said she had ‘never had a positive sexual experience in her life’.
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And it’s clear from the first episodes that she found things quite overwhelming at times, often getting emotional during the different tasks and one-to-ones with the specialists.
She appeared on This Morning earlier today (13 May), alongside fellow participant Jason, as they defended the show and opened up about their experiences.
Despite the contestestants saying the specialists are able to guide them through intimacy and keep them ‘safe’, the presenters couldn’t help but pick up on her emotions.
Host Ben Shepherd described the Virgin Island process as ‘extraordinary’ as he addressed Taylor: “These are very personal, intimate things you’re sharing.
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“And even the slightest suggestion that someone’s going to come close to you, you break down in tears.
“You were so emotionally caught up in what was going on.”
The participant explained that she is ‘fine’ with hugging her friends and is ‘very tactile’ with friends and family.
“But it was the act of being desired that made me really, it kind of put the fear in me,” she said, of how she would feel before going on the Island. “I’d freeze up and I’d start like, choke crying. But for me I am quite an emotional person.”
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Taylor said it was a sort of ‘freeze in the headlights moment’ that she kept on ‘running into’.
“And it was just constant,” she added.
This then translated into how she would react on the island, as she recalled a moment shown in tonight’s episode with fellow participant Tom. The pair were doing a breathing task during a group workshop, led by Dr Danielle Harel, were they had to stare into each other’s eyes.
“Before I started, she [Danielle] said to Tom, ‘Taylor might cry’ and I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to cry, he’s just looking at me,” she recalled of the moment, filmed roughly a year ago. But she did end up crying almost instantly when she did the exercise.
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Ahead of the series, she explained she had spent her whole adult life ‘wondering why I found sexual things so difficult when others didn’t’.
Taylor said the course on Virgin Island ‘started as an intense experience and continued into a MORE intense experience’.
“It was terrifying to be confronted with the intimacies and sensations of a sexual world but it was also exciting and empowering to feel like I was actually able to engage and develop as I progressed,” she added.
Having worried she ‘will be alone forever’, she described the course as ‘emotional’ as it ‘revealed a lot’ about herself that she wouldn’t ‘have been confident to explore independently’.
“Once we got used to the craziness of what we were doing; it became fun to try and guess what we would get up to next. We even began to look forward to whatever awkward activity we would do next,” Taylor said.
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“I absolutely loved some of them, enjoying experiences I would never have had the opportunity to do otherwise, while others challenged me and my emotions and made me grow as a person to do what I thought was right.
“Overall, every session - big or small – helped to make my experience better and I was able to fully engage with the opportunities I was offered.”
Virgin Island continues tonight at 9pm on Channel 4.
Topics: Channel 4, TV and Film, This Morning, Mental Health
Jess Battison