Once upon a time, I was a prude. I was frigid and sex was just a thing I was obligated to do to keep my husband happy. It was a source of great contention and conflict. And all the while, I just asserted that it was something I wasn't wired to enjoy. Not that there was something I was hiding and not resolving which could lift this self-imposed oppression.
There was a brief time when I first met the man who would become my husband that I truly cut loose and enjoyed sex. Not because it meant I got attention from boys who were beneath me for once, but because I was honestly enjoying having sex. And I couldn't get enough. We would lay about his apartment all day long, never putting on a stitch of clothing, drawing on each other's bodies with marker and fucking whenever the whim took hold. But before long, we mutually agreed that neither of us could sustain this sort of schedule and we needed to get jobs and be adults most of the time. And the sex waned, and waned, and waned some more until it became a source of conflict for us.
I would go through periods of time when I'd try to analyze it, try to force myself out of frigidity. But all things surface in their own good time. I couldn't force it to surface so I could face it and be done with it. Or maybe I just didn't know how to go about it. I didn't even realize what I was up against at the time, so I couldn't even really formulate a battle strategy. Those periods were short, only lasting a few weeks at time. Looking back, it seems so clear what was hindering me. The source of all this sexual blockage. This chaste prison I created for myself where every sexual advance on me felt like a violation, even if it was my husband, the man I pledged my soul to forever.
This silent demon I had been wrestling with was a childhood peppered with memories of sexual violations from my brother. He was four years older than me and often left in charge. My home without my parents in it was a terrifying place to be. I don't know when it started or when it ended. The timeline, the memories that give it context are all gone. There are only shreds of memories of the abuse itself left. The remnants of what I haven't been able to shed. All of my firsts, robbed from me over and over and over. And all I can think is how unfair it was. How if he had seen it from my point of view, he wouldn't have done it. We've never spoken about it. He used to threaten me if I told anyone. I guess that stuck for 20-something years.
Last year, I wrote out everything I could remember. And I didn't stop there. I chronicled my entire sexual history. Every instance of fooling around. Every mistake in a car parked at an overlook way past my curfew. Every sleepover that opened my eyes to my true sexual identity, even if I would just get scared and bury it again for a long time. Every boy I let fuck me just so he'd stay around. There really aren't that many, to be honest.
I shared my secrets with my inner circle, my best friend and my husband, which I guess is more of an inner triangle. Then I shared it with a stranger. And something started happening in me. I realize it was happening anyway, but writing all of it out somehow was like doing an exorcism. I took all of those regrets and all of that guilt and I imprisoned it on the page, effectively pulling it out of me. And then I started taking nude photos and it all sort of went sideways from there, in the most beautiful way. My whole body image began to change. I stopped seeing all the flaws and before long, everyone else did, too. I was also able to see my body as a sexual object again for the first time since giving birth to my son.
I started to be honest with my husband about my sexuality. It's been rocky and I'm sure there's more rockiness to come as we continue our journey. We're just getting started, really. But so much good has come of this and we are truly blossoming into something wonderful together. He is able to let go of his resentment of having a frigid wife for so long because he realizes now what I was up against, what we were up against as a couple. He's been more honest with me, more exploratory, indulging some of his own fantasies and there's a strong streak of sexual dominance emerging in him. My streak of sexual submission is responding very well to that. But we both seem to be able to switch roles very easily. Our energies just respond to one another because we're communicating on several different levels. We're not holding back and hiding certain parts of ourselves. It's taken twelve years for us to finally let go of that last little bit of ourselves we were keeping secret from one another. But as we fully integrate with one another, we're finding ourselves stronger, not weaker.
As we tighten our bonds with one another, I'm finding there's more freedom to be had in being so tightly bound to someone than there would be if we had stayed the course and remained distant. Becoming two halves of one whole, always aware of what the other half is doing, there's no suspicion or resentment. You're talking, expressing discontent, working through that, and finding resolution. There's no room for holding onto grudges. It's not always going to work and there are going to be conflicts. But I don't feel like there's anything that could arise between us that we can't handle. It's what I always wanted out of our relationship, but never realized it. And all it took was me realizing it was okay to be a slut.
Human beings are so silly. Always reaching for both independence and dependence at the same time.
I leave you with Amanda Palmer's Bed Song video because this is something that will never, ever happen for us now and I can watch it and know that: