My friend in junior high used to call me a goody two shoes. I was innocent, got As, wasn’t crass, and didn’t cuss. No tattoos, odd piercings, hair dye, or the like.
Walking the straight and narrow is no accurate predictor of a person’s interest in sexual intercourse, though sometimes our culture tries to bind the two. My family never talked about sexuality. I learned all the nuances I knew about guys and girls from watching Three’s Company, MTV, and movies. Ironically, movies in my family were never weeded out for inappropriate content, so I saw a lot of skin-on-skin.
Growing up, I never imagined myself with anyone in a carnal way because just the thought of it would have made me feel overwhelm- ingly embarrassed. I imagined other people, no doubt due to some pornographic magazines I came across at a young age, but never me. But I sure liked it when introduced to it. When I fell in love in college, I learned that I love physical intimacy. Granted, I thought I’d marry the person, so because I felt morally justified at the time in what we were doing, I could psychologically enjoy it freely. Well, with a little unmarried guilt pushed below the surface.
Emotionally, there’s nothing like the feeling of being held and enfolded in the masculinity of your love’s body every night when you fall asleep. Physically, there’s nothing like other nights of being passionately kissed while they slide and thrust rhythmically in and out of you. The voluminous wetness, the sounds, the absolute unconnectedness to anything remotely resembling it in normal daily life—it’s all dauntingly euphoric.
I often thought about wishing someone or something would mandate that we have physical intimacy every night for a month (versus once every few months). It’s even biblical to stay intimate. I would remind him of a verse I had read in the bible, “… each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” I even showed him that verse, hoping he’d feel commanded by God to get down with me.
Years of prime fertility passed with little action, no matter what I tried, suggested, or even bluntly asked for. I gradually grew numb to sexual expectation and was forced to accept that it just wasn’t going to happen often. It was still in me, a quiet and unassuming desire with nowhere to go, pushed down as deeply as possible lest I should succumb to being emotionally overwhelmed all day long every day by a feverish yearning.
This is the part I’m reluctant to talk about, but I will do it only because being vulnerable and talking about uncomfortable things will help you know you’re not alone in dealing with similar blocks in the road.
When you come home from your honeymoon only to realize that your life companion isn’t interested in daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly affection or intimacy, even though you’re attracted to him and ready any time at the drop of a hat, even though you get so excited to see him at the end of every day and you can’t wait to see what those moments will turn into, and you know you don’t want relations outside of marriage, and you want your marriage to improve over the years, you’re left with very few options. Only one, really.
Self-arousal. I don’t like that at times I’ve resorted to it because it’s so symbolically lonely and asexual in many ways. Yet it’s the only way to have the release I’ve desperately needed. It’s not long and drawn out, because it’s not something I care to prolong or revel in alone. It’s simply an outlet for intensity that I’m unable to release otherwise.
Sometimes I chided myself for it and therefore leaned on it very infrequently. Sometimes I even made pacts that I would no longer consider it. I imagined that God would be disappointed with me for resorting to such indignity and turn his face away from me. I hoped he did, at least for those fleeting moments. Other times, I disconnected myself from God, emotion, and judgment, feeling it would be physically healthier for me to have the release than not.
After hoping so much and seeing so little change, it has sometimes been a sporadic necessity for my sanity. I was forced not to yearn for physical interaction since I knew it wouldn’t be requited in the fun, free, easy loving characterized in other relationships out there. But my monthly cycle has dictated that for about two days out of each month, I’m unable to ignore my aching for masculine, wet, throbbing sex all the time. I can’t get it out of my mind. I’m in a fuzzy dreamland of hormonal horniness. I can’t have those aches fulfilled in the proper way several times a day by my mate, unfortunately, but I have that one option now and then in order to quickly extinguish the overall yearning and move on as best as possible. I can’t believe I’m talking about this.
You might be thinking, “What’s the big deal? People do that all the time! You sound like such a prude; like a little kid scared of using a bad word because she’ll get in trouble.”
You’re right. I’m almost 50 years old, and I’ve never been in a circle of friends who talks freely—or at all—about it. I know it’s happening all the time in the world, but it’s not a topic I bring up in conversation with friends.
The media likes to take anything private or taboo and put it in the spotlight, but I am not the media that surrounds me. I still don’t like the idea of certain things. What’s more, I know that harmless habits can end up being more psychologically damaging than freeing. I tend to avoid anything that I think I may regret later down the road, so I lean on this as little as possible.
Frankly, I dislike the idea so much that I’ve never wanted to think much about the fact that most men probably engage in self-arousal all their lives—from infancy, childhood, or puberty and on—without ever giving it a second thought. Here I’ve lived a little mortified by it while scores of the male population on earth include it, perhaps, in their daily shower.
Growing up as a girl means having a lot of things hidden. Literally. And if no one talks about them, innocence—or ignorance—on certain subjects can last a long time.
I am completely ignorant about who does it how often, but uned- ucated about how it works, I am not. Two of my college professors made sure of that. They taught a sexuality course that was one of the largest classes on my college campus. One day, 700 or so of us came to class and were presented with videos of women from Northern Europe who had agreed to experience orgasm in order to be studied by scientists. On camera. Yes. Naked on a screen the size of a house in the biggest classroom our college had. There we were, a massive forum packed with 18-year-olds, and I wondered how any of the guys around us would be able to stand up and walk out of there without a little time to settle down—literally—without their own arousal being obvious to everyone. It was a little unfair. We girls can hide it all and walk off like it’s no big deal.
Thankfully, that class filled a lot of ignorant gaps I had on the subject of when in her cycle a woman can get pregnant. But the literal unveiling of self-arousal didn’t mean I cared to spend my time doing it. No matter how our culture might demystify or normalize it, I still don’t view it as a positive thing. To me it signifies an emptiness that isn’t getting filled with what’s actually needed.
With all this thought time spent on a lack of fulfilling marital love, I told my husband at one point that I needed him to give me a few “free” cards to go and use with someone else, just to have an outlet for my physical needs. He knew just as well as I did that I wouldn’t use them even if I had them. I chose not to even imagine previous encounters with past people in my mind because that seemed unfair. How I would’ve loved to sit and imagine long, drawn-out sex with some of the guys I’ve encountered in life, or even imagined ones, but I don’t allow myself to. The farthest I went in my mind was imagining other married couples being intimate with each other.
Neglect’s Toll on a Wife: Perfection’s Grip on My Husband’s Attention © 2023-2024 Lila Meadowbrook
