Sex and sexuality: Part 2

The truth is that sex had been a challenging part of our relationship.

I was definitely the more sexualised half of our couple. My husband would ‘not feel like it’ more than me, throwing the stereotyped ‘woman with a headache’ right out the window. I often felt that my husband was slightly disconnected when we were making love. That he couldn’t emerse himself in the physicality, and that he intellectualised it. I have a memory that he told me once that he had to be completely emotionally connected to someone in order to be ‘ in the mood’. This disconnect made me question our compatibility, and I felt so guilty about this. I told myself that this was something to work towards in our marriage. And we did. We had reached a point where it was better and it was good. But ‘regular’ stories haunted me, especially when people talked about how great it was when they were trying for children that they would have sex on tap. I really wanted children. In the process of trying my husband often suffered from impotence. We didn’t call it that..... He told me I was putting too much pressure on him, that he couldn’t just perform. I felt unwanted and lost my confidence in my sexuality . When I didn’t get pregnant we sought advice from fertility experts. One of my sisters had had difficulty conceiving, as had his mother, so I’m sure we intellectualised the problem. Luckily, I became pregnant naturally 4 times, and am lucky enough to be blessed with 2 beautiful children. But I think if I reserve the right to regret anything it’s that he wasn’t honest with me at this time.

I do remember wondering if his relative disinterest in sex was due to a testosterone deficiency. Of course I couldn’t ask him about this as all our conversations were couched in this concept that I, a child of a large family, was putting pressure on him, an only child, to have lots of children. I wasn’t honest with him at this stage as my thought became emersed in protecting him from this perceived pressure. I wonder what would have happened if I had challenged him more about this. And then I give up wondering when I hug my 2 gorgeous little people. It’s a rollercoaster.

In the first few years sex almost became the measure of how well we were doing. If we were still having sex everything must be ok. It became like a raft I think we both clung to, but increasingly over time I felt myself more and more disassociated. I felt less and less physically attracted to my husband as he dressed more and more. He was changing in his physical form and he couldn’t understand how that was difficult for me, because he felt happier and more comfortable and more complete than he ever had. I tried fantasizing for a while, but that only gets you so far. And as time went on all the boundaries I had tried to establish, to help me transition in my understanding of our relationship, were being eroded away piece by piece. And then one morning he bridged the last boundary I had; that I would not have sex with his female self. He had gone to bed in women’s underwear, and made love to me in the morning. I felt nothing and then I felt devastated and then I knew it was time to stop pretending.

I had to own that, understand it, and recognise that it was important for me to stop pretending. Utterly heartbreaking to have to verbalise it and even more devastating when my husband asked me to put a timeframe on it. All the literature and all the support sites recommend shared boundaries. However in order to have these you need to have some shared perspective. And this is the missing piece. One person’s celebration of their true self is another person’s loss. I felt that to continue to have sex was literally pulling the pint for the alcoholic. As long as there was perceived normality my husband did not need to see me in this process. He did not need to hear my boundaries or respect my requests for support. It had become his normality and he was happy with that. It had become my normality and I felt empty, isolated and utterly alone.