And then there's this moment…

As time went on, sex became somewhat easier: the shock of the pain ebbed because I knew what I was in for each time. But I wasn’t satisfied with that—I had more in mind for my sexuality—so I began reading voraciously. I read The Gift of Sex by Clifford and Joyce Penner, a book Dr. B called “a good starting place.” And it certainly would’ve been, had I been normal. I read Sheet Music by Kevin Leman, a recommendation from a friend that turned out to be really interesting, if not especially helpful in my then-current state. I read Cosmo articles. I read excerpts of The Celebration of Sex by Douglas Rosenau. I read The Act of Marriage by Tim and Beverly LaHaye (skip it). I read excerpts of Intended for Pleasure by Ed Wheat. I read articles from several websites. I even read a book about kissing. The problem with all that material was that nowhere did it describe anyone like me. Advice for avoiding awkward wedding nights, rekindling the passion for older couples, adjusting to babies in the house, and breaking sexual inhibitions abounded…but there was nothing for me. When I used indices to reread portions that supposedly addressed lack of sex drive and/or painful sex, the most I found was “Try some relaxation techniques,” or “See a doctor.” Once more I felt alone in my struggle and frustrated that I couldn’t seem to help myself. These books were designed for people whose biggest problem was ignorance or a stressful schedule. Mine was all-out dysfunction.

I seemed to be hitting the same wall with Dr. B by that point. I’d tried all the sexy music, sensual massage, and non-intercourse intimacy I could handle. I’d lit candles, I’d watched romantic movies, I’d read and written some erotica. And don’t get me wrong: Dr. B’s influence was absolutely crucial in my battle for healthy sexuality, and with his help I made some very important strides. But my sometimes-impatient self was irked when the speed of my progress cooled. Even though there were occasional days and nights on which I truly wanted to have sex, it still wasn’t “making love.” It was fulfilling an uncomfortable, frustrating duty. I was nearing the end of my rapidly fraying rope, and unfortunately, that is where the story pauses for the next year and a half of my marriage. Sex was possible but excruciating, and my enthusiasm for satisfying sex was evaporating by the minute. I threw up my hands in frustration with God for not erasing the problem.

The night I ran completely out of patience, two years into marriage, is still as vivid a memory as the chili I ate tonight. My husband and I had another couple over for dinner, and after dessert we decided to play a game (as often happens if you are my dinner guest—fair warning). Although we knew we were at a disadvantage—they’d weathered several more years of marriage than we had—we were up for the challenge of the Newlywed Game. One question the two husbands were asked was, “When was your hottest night of lovemaking in the past year?” They both recorded answers with seemingly little difficulty. However, when my husband revealed his response, his friend said, “For us, pretty much every time is awesome. You must not have had a lot of sex if you can remember a specific night.” Usually I have a great poker face, but that night I sat there stunned, staring at my husband’s friend, with whom it didn’t seem to register that he’d said something deeply insulting. All the feelings of being exposed, of fighting an embarrassing battle of inadequacy, washed over me. Burning, crimson shame appeared on my face. Everybody knows, the sickening voice in my head whispered. Everybody knows.

For me, the problem with all this sexual strife is that it’s the one thing we’re supposed to figure out entirely on our own. All any person or book ever said was, “It hurts in the beginning,” and “Figuring it all out with your partner is so much fun!” Well…what about those of us for whom it was still painful after two years? What about those of us who couldn’t figure anything out, even with a manual like Sheet Music, because it was impossible to make even the “easy” stuff work? Who are we supposed to turn to? Try to talk about sex in your Bible study, and you’ll likely make the room fidget and drop eye contact faster than you can say “scented massage oil” unless you have an unusually open group. I found that very few people, even my closest friends, were able to give me real, honest information, their words being veiled by a sense of propriety. (Not that there’s anything wrong with propriety; it’s just frustrating to hear about it over and over when you truly need answers.)

After my husband’s friend made his comment, it was literally weeks before I was able to face my bedroom frustration again. Everything had simply begun to feel insurmountable.

It's an expression.

The more I talked to Dr. B about sex, the more layers of ugliness we peeled back. We spent the first few sessions primarily on my anger and disappointment over the way things had turned out and how my brain linked those negative emotions with sexuality. And then we spent hours and hours working through all of the religious, churchy oppression I’d been subjected to. You can imagine, then, that “shame” wasn’t a foreign word in our meetings. But gradually, shame over having sex dissipated and left something unexpected in its place: shame over not having sex.

My husband and I got married on a gorgeous June day in Colorado in 2007. Our ceremony was a perfect, a family-only celebration at his parents’ house. The honeymoon, however, wasn’t scheduled until October—we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to settle into married life before going on vacation. But as I sat in Dr. B’s office less than 48 hours prior to leaving for the Canary Islands, I was stressed and frustrated that after months of trying, sex still wasn’t possible. And we were getting ready to leave for our honeymoon. “I always imagined my honeymoon as a week of walking on the beach, making love, and drinking champagne!” I exclaimed. “All I’m thinking right now is how angry I am that this once-in-a-lifetime experience is going to be nothing like what I pictured. I won’t have a honeymoon like everyone else’s.” Every attempt at sex had ended in disappointment, shame, and sadness for me, and the thought of an entire week of nothing but that was too much to bear.

“Amie, you have to decide right now that you will not have sex on your honeymoon. It simply will not happen. Your honeymoon will not involve sex. Will you admit that for me?” Dr. B was sterner that I’d seen him. My eyes welled, and I nodded. That moment was a breaking point for me. Certainly I’d felt sexually angry and helpless before, but sitting in a strange man’s office declaring that my much-anticipated honeymoon would be sexless just seemed so unfair. My marriage had not begun at all like I’d expected. Everyone, including the minister who performed our ceremony, told us how steamy the first year would be, given that we were in our twenties without having been sexually active. We’d be fighting a lot and having lots of makeup sex, we’d be missing each other terribly while at work, and we’d have the novelty of romance still intact. Married couple after married couple prepared us for that. Not experiencing anything like it, I felt shortchanged in so many ways.

Dr. B let my tears roll in silence for a few moments before pressing on. “Sex is not the only way to enjoy each other, you know,” he suggested. I returned his eye contact but inwardly rolled my eyes. “Try not to focus on what isn’t yet possible. Instead, explore each other’s bodies in ways that are.” He explained that he believes many couples lose their sense of wonder over their partners’ bodies because they stop doing this. “Take some time to really look at each other, take in the delicious physical gifts you have to offer. Just because you can’t have sex doesn’t mean you aren’t sexual, and it certainly doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy sexual pleasure. If on your honeymoon the intent is to be close and exult in the physical gifts you can give each other, you’ll have a very satisfying week. Sex is an expression, not just an act.” I wasn’t convinced, but I did leave encouraged.

I was still mentally working through all of this when the alarm went off Saturday morning. While my husband and I are both seasoned travelers and light packers, we are notorious for arriving late to the airport. That October morning was no exception, and we fairly flew around the house, trying to get last-minute issues resolved and decisions made. The whole time, my mind was also working with the sex-free-honeymoon situation I was facing and the utter frustration of it. The longer I turned the thoughts over in my head, the more I became embroiled in a maelstrom of negativity. Looking back, I realize that this was entirely my fault for not taking control of my thoughts, and every time we “expressed ourselves” over the course of the week I felt a backlash of anger and hopelessness. By the time we returned home, I felt an intensely deep shame over not being able to perform wifely responsibilities. It was time for another discussion with Dr. B. Even though I had been going every two weeks, I called and scheduled an additional appointment when we got back in town.

Size matters.

I mean my size matters. To me.

In the last eleven months I have lost 60 pounds, which I’m pretty sure is the equivalent of an Olson twin. My pants are four sizes smaller, my tops two. Kohl’s saw me an awful lot this summer: I shrunk out of most of my wardrobe and had to replenish. A number of coworkers congratulated me on the loss when I showed up at in-service earlier this month, and three former students at the ball game on Friday night said, “I almost walked right by without recognizing you!” Just a couple of days ago, a former student visited the high school and said, “You’re so tiny!” That might be a stretch, but it does bear witness to the size I was versus the size I am now. And I’m still shrinking.

Why bring that up on the sex blog? As one of my favorite babysitting charges used to say, “Well, you see…it’s involved.”

First of all, I’m sitting here writing this in a dress I never would’ve tried on, much less bought, when I was larger. But as soon as I slip it on with my high-heeled sandals, I feel very sexy and catch myself looking in the same mirrors and windows I loathed before. Honestly, I never knew what “sexy” felt like until this summer. That has a definite effect on your bedroom life—when you feel unsexy all the time, you want nighttime, lights-off, under-the-covers sex. You don’t want to see your shape if it’s at all avoidable. It’s difficult to be willing to share your body when you can’t stand the sight of it yourself.

Second, I catch myself dancing all the time. I love the way it feels to be in this body now. I love the way it feels to move. Lest you be misled, trust me, I harbor no illusions of grandeur when it comes to graceful gliding across a dance floor. But these days it’s a challenge to make it all the way through a sinkful of dishes or a ten-minute shower without shaking my groove thang. It just feels so good to be in a smaller body.

Third, I have a brand-new idea of what “sexy” means. I used to think I wasn’t sexy because I didn’t have Kim Kardashian’s legs or Jennifer Aniston’s knockers. But the thing is, sexy has almost nothing to do with measurements and everything to do with perspective. My legs will never give Kim’s a run for their money. But I feel every bit as sexy as she does when she’s on that red carpet…and probably more. After all, there are no paparazzi scrutinizing every inch of my skin. Sexy is how comfortable you are in your own skin, behind your own face, stretched into your own height. Sexy is looking in the mirror and thinking, “I don’t want to trade with anyone else today. I like what I’ve got.”

When I was a teenager, my insecurity about my body caused me to become hypersensitive and even a little arrogant about other areas, such as my grades and my music. I figured if I didn’t have looks on my side, I was going to have to do something else to get people’s attention. I’m a perfectionist anyway, so it comes as no surprise that I took great pride in my 3.95 GPA (stupid calculus) and position as accompanist to the choirs. While I was never exactly obnoxious about either of these things, I certainly didn’t pass up an opportunity to mention them if they were at all relevant to the conversation at hand. But as I grew up and even more as I’ve lost weight, I’ve noticed a much-diminished need of validation by others. I feel confident and happy with who I am and how I look, and it’s caused so much of that old insecurity to evaporate. I won’t lie: it feels absolutely wonderful to get a compliment on my physical appearance. For the longest time, that was one aspect of myself that I felt didn’t deserve any positive recognition at all. However, I’m no longer constantly looking toward others to assure me that I’m at least passably attractive. I am finally inching my way toward a healthier body image and, consequently, a healthier self-concept all around. And at least for me, that has proven an extremely important component in the battle for healthy sexuality.

I wrote erotica.

You heard me.

But it’s not what you think. Unless what you think is that I had barely written five pages before I deleted the document entirely. (If you’re a Friends fan, this is a perfect time to insert a joke about Rachel’s erotic novel, which featured typos like “heaving beasts” and “throbbing pens.”)

It all started innocently enough. I was early for my appointment with Dr. B, so we chatted a bit before getting down to business. “What was your major?” he asked. “I double-majored,” I replied. “English and French…I read a lot.” We chuckled, and then he asked the question I knew was next: “So what’s your favorite book?” I’m always reluctant to answer because people expect me to have a sophisticated response, something like As I Lay Dying or Flaubert. But my favorite book nineteen years running is Charlotte’s Web. Raising his eyebrows, Dr. B said, “All you read in college and Charlotte’s Web is your favorite? Why?” I explained that it was my first encounter with the immersive power of a story. That even though I fear and loathe spiders, I lost a friend when Charlotte died. That I was transported when I read White’s pitch-perfect sentences, both as an 8-year-old and as an adult. Open that cover, and the summer breeze swirls around you. Charlotte’s Web is why I double-majored in literature and literature. Charlotte’s Web is perfect.

When I finished my spiel, Dr. B said with an amused smile, “You certainly are passionate about books.” I agreed. He started nodding slowly and scrunched up his eyes, suddenly lost in thought. “Books, huh?” he said either to me or to himself…I wasn’t really sure, so I waited silently for something else to happen. “Amie, how about you read a little erotica?” I tilted my head and slightly frowned. How had the conversation accelerated from Charlotte’s Web to sex in 6.1 seconds? “Beg your pardon?” I asked, bewildered. I glanced at the clock on his desk, thinking that perhaps it was an abrupt segue into our session. “Well, you’re a reader, right? Books speak to you. So…read some erotica. See if that helps.”

Huh.

So the next time I was in Books-a-Million, I went to the only section I’d never ventured within ten yards of. I kept looking over my shoulder, afraid I might see one of my parents’ friends. Or worse yet—a student. (Although, to be fair, most of my students would not spend their Friday afternoon in a bookstore.) I cleared my throat, took a deep breath, and picked up a book. When I looked at the cover, my eyes grew wide, and I slammed it back on the shelf. “Oh, sweet Moses,” I whispered. I wondered for the 14^th time what, exactly, I was doing there. Then, I remembered the live scorpion, wiped the sweat off my palms, and continued my search for a good ol’ dirty book. Finally, I found a contender: the cover depicted nothing but two empty chairs on a beach—I suppose the occupants got a room before the artist was able to sketch them. I flipped through and found enough “content” to appease Dr. B, made my purchase, and fled the premises.

Upon getting the book home and sitting down with a cup of coffee (Well, what do you drink with your dirty books?), my first reaction was pure laughter. The writing was so bad. I distinctly remember the sentence, “She knew he was a good egg.” Ah. So when you’re lucky enough to find a “good egg,” you’re practically morally compelled to whisk him off to a bedroom. It appeared to me that the author was barely literate, completely lacked creativity, and knew very little about constructing non-sexual sentences. The back of the book promised that the sizzling romance would make my “toes curl.” It was closer to making my blood curdle. I closed the cover and said aloud, “I’ve had better.” Happily, I settled back into the Don Miller book I was enjoying before that little hiccup.

The next Thursday I reported to Dr. B that I just couldn’t stomach it. “Perhaps if Hemingway had had a hand in Under the Boardwalk, it wouldn’t suck so much,” I shrugged. (Admittedly, if Hemingway had had a hand in it, it would’ve depressingly ended with the main characters dying in the rain.) I had all sorts of ammunition to throw at the book in case Dr. B wondered why it was a failed assignment, but he didn’t take the bait. Instead, he had a sly grin on his face and said, “Then I guess you’ll have to write your own.” It slowly dawned on me that I’d been set up, that he’d known all along I would consider the novel trash. “Write my own,” I said expressionlessly. Then I laughed. “Write my own? Ha!” Unruffled, Dr. B said, “Look at it this way. It either helps you get over your discomfort using sexual terminology and you have a major breakthrough, OR it doesn’t work but we’re one step closer to finding a solution that does.” Ugh. I hated agreeing with him. “Who knows?” he continued. “You might launch a lucrative career as a romance novelist.” Well, that was one career opportunity I’d never once considered. He winked.

So the next afternoon, I settled down at the dining room table to compose some carnal fiction. Knowing how awkward I was going to feel, I’d picked up some Mike’s Hard Lemonade on the way home, hoping it might free my sexually inhibited brain. I rolled my shoulders back and took a deep breath of resolve. I typed “He” and watched the cursor blink for a few seconds. I backspaced. She…Backspace. I had no idea where to start. “It was a dark and stormy night”? Then, as I swigged my lemonade, I happened to look down at my lesson plan book across the table. On its cover I’d taped a Post-It bearing my favorite advice for all of life, a line by Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird. Her brother had a huge report due on birds, and as most students do, he waited until the night before to start. Sitting at his desk surrounded by avian reference books and wadded-up paper, he dropped his head in his hands and sighed. Their father came up behind him and said, “Just take it bird by bird, buddy. Bird by bird.” Remembering that advice, I coaxed myself, “Just take it thrust by thrust, Amie. Thrust by thrust.”

In a couple hours’ time, I was totally proud of having composed exactly half of a sex scene—the second half, because I was more interested in the “after-sex” part than the “before.” It took place in a log cabin in front of a lake on a snowy night in the woods, which was pretty much the most romantic setting I could think of. My scene featured no other clichés, and my hero was far from the iconically “perfect” men of erotica. Although, after making love, he did hold his lover close, touch her face, and say, “My god, you are beautiful.” That’s as romance-novelish as it got, but hey, doesn’t that sound nice, women?

Suffice it to say…the assignment was successful.

Sex is incredible.

I am thankful for and amazed by your stories of religious sex education*. Some lived through laughably awkward programs (I laughed out loud at Mrs. Cheeky’s story of the three-foot penis!), others of you went through the type of instruction I did, and some of you escaped unscathed, with or without religious influence. Ash’s experiences of hearing youth pastors discuss their sex lives or asking teens to talk about theirs are horrific. I don’t recall a single place in the Bible where Jesus dealt with sin by asking for a detailed account from the sinner. Several people both on the blog and in emails to me mentioned birthing videos. I think that is what I found saddest: churches—historically composed of pro-lifers!—recasting a private, divine moment into a scare tactic. What a heartbreaking approach. And on the other end of the spectrum from these experiences, there is complete silence. Lisa summed it up well, saying that in the opinion of many churches, “everything is about sex, so nothing should be about sex.” An anonymous commenter agreed in a way I found beautiful: “A church that is totally silent on sex will also be oppressive and damaging to people striving to be sexually mature and whole.” I so agree with Karisa and Cheryl who argue that if the church teaches about sex, it should focus on the magnificence of it in its proper place, not the problems its misuse can cause. Karisa likens this kind of sex-ed to preaching only about the evils of hell without mentioning the wonders of heaven.

However, wildly varying opinions surfaced about the church’s place in sex education, and I must admit that I don’t yet have a fixed opinion. What I can say with complete assurance is that in my case, all that religious sex-ed did for me was cause me to feel shame and guilt every time I kissed a boyfriend, awakened from a sex dream, or had sex with my husband. I felt dirty for having sexual feelings, and consequently I shoved them deep into the recesses of my mind. I was so successful that, as I mentioned before, I completely cured myself of my sex drive and ended up needing counseling to get it back. As Dr. B and I slogged through the messages I’d received about sex, I set out to destroy them. I prayed that God would give me truth with which I could replace the garbage. Here are some of the conclusions I came to:

1.              Sex is a spiritually beautiful thing. Let’s be honest: it’s not physically beautiful. Nothing about two sweaty, naked bodies rubbing and panting on each other is aesthetically pleasing. Every body on the planet has its eccentricities, and very few of us are “tens” anyway. Besides, the men I find attractive, my best friend doesn’t necessarily and vice versa. I’ve never cared much about muscular definition, abs, or a chiseled face; she sighs when she sees Hugh Laurie. But somewhere in all the scars, love handles, and inconveniently hairy moles, there is something spiritually beautiful about making love. For just a moment (well, hopefully longer than a “moment,” haha), the lonely condition of humanness melts away into the other person’s complete acceptance of you. You are held, clung to, and enjoyed by a fellow wanderer. Nothing on the earth can match it. In the Book of Genesis God claims that it is not good for man to be alone, and while I believe this has much to do with community, it is also applicable to sex. Certainly it is possible to live without it, but it’s beautiful that we don’t have to.

2.              Sex is a vital component of marriage. As I have already said, not being able to have sex with my husband made me feel incredibly distant from him. He didn’t cause this, but it was still a strong, heart-wrenching sensation. In my opinion, in the sexless days of our marriage, our relationship with each other felt no different than our relationships with others. Sure, we shared the minutiae of our lives in a way that we didn’t with anyone else and we looked primarily to each other for emotional support, but that most intimate act that is meant to reaffirm unity, cut through feelings of loneliness and inadequacy, and bring sheer pleasure and excitement into a committed relationship wasn’t there. Our relationship was missing the vitality that a vibrant romance and sex life lends. Book after book I read and person after person I talked to insisted that making love produces in a woman, among other things, a reassurance of closeness. A man who routinely makes love to his sweetheart receives, again among many other things, a bolstered self-confidence. (Forgive me for so ludicrously oversimplifying the issue, but I don’t have the space to get into the grit.) Without these needs being met, a woman is likely to feel detached and withdrawn, and her man may feel superfluous to her and others. It is difficult to cultivate genuine emotional closeness in a marriage without the presence of physical closeness. Of course, the reverse is also true.

3.              Sex is a gift from God. And gifts from God are never one-dimensional. The plan is for it to be mind-blowingly fantastic, and for that reason sex is perfect on several levels. Consider the obvious physical nature of the gift: certain components of our anatomies exist for the sole purpose of ensuring that sex and sexual activity feels good. Really good. Because of sex, we experience this delicious physical hunger for another human. An urgency pulls us to the other person and finds its ultimate satisfaction in pleasing his or her body. We can literally hold onto someone else, and as best as I can tell, that is a nearly universal desire. Then, there is the emotional component to sex that I’ve already discussed somewhat. Sex allows us to be vulnerable with another human and experience the consequent acceptance he or she shows us. What a gift, to be naked with another and mutually pleased by what the two of you see. Such a soul-deep beauty springs from that, from knowing that you are loved and desired, from knowing that someone else on the planet wants you close and wants to trust you with his or her vulnerability. God wants us to discover all of this and more. He wants us to explore our bodies and the bodies of our mates. He wants us to have playful sex, urgent sex, passionate sex…any kind of sex that brings us closer to the lover we have chosen. He has never once turned his face in embarrassment when I’ve had sex with my husband. Sex in its proper place is powerful and generates so much life, excitement, intimacy, and fun in a relationship.

I believe that youth group attendees should know these things, that we should teach them with as much fervor as we have taught STDs and pregnancy. More than anything I wish that someone had given me the information—the positives of sex where it belongs and the negatives of sex used to fill a void—and allowed me to make decisions for myself. Discussing why it is important to treat sexuality with respect is a stark contrast to, “Don’t do it because God will punish you.” This is why I loved Erin’s comment that there are plenty of non-religious reasons to be discriminating with sexual partners. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs or lack thereof, sex is a part of life that everyone reckons with, so considering the emotional and physical ramifications of sex is not an inherently religious exercise. For those who do profess a particular faith, spiritual ramifications like two of the ones I mentioned are just added on. If young people were presented with all this information, they would be empowered to make their own decisions without having to be “put in line” by their youth pastors. Of course, we are all imperfect and we all make mistakes. But I think that respecting students enough to give them a fuller picture of sexuality can only help matters.

*I refer exclusively to comments on the last post.

Sex and church do not mix.

At least they didn’t for me.

For the first 22 years of my life, I attended two Church of God churches. At Church #1, whose doors I marched through every Sunday of my childhood and for a year and a half in my early twenties, you’ll find healing, grace, and a profound sense of community. Church #2 is where I spent my adolescence, and since much of that revolved around the youth group, that is the only aspect of the church I’ll discuss here. The youth group at Church #2 was a place of emotional highs, legalistic rigidity, and statistics. It was more important to obey the rules than to have a real relationship with Jesus, for example. It was more important to bring in new people than to disciple the committed attendees. And it was very, very important not to have sex.

Like most churches, Church #2 believes in a trinity of sexual sins: homosexuality, adultery, and premarital sex. At Church #2 the third tended to be the most frequently discussed, usually during an abstinence campaign. Church #2 taught me a number of inaccuracies about sex, the gravity of which I didn’t fully realize until discussing them with Dr. B. I’ll share some of the subliminal messages I received from the youth pastor—not in an attempt to air my grievances, but to bare the reality of much religious instruction about sex.

1.              Sex is sex. This is the most detrimental of the lessons I learned because it paved the way for the rest. In sermons about sex at Church #2, no caveat was given about the difference between misuse of sex and monogamous sex. No sex seemed condoned by God. In the absence of a clause about the necessity of sex in the right kind of relationship, the resulting message is that sex, period, is sinful, not that immorality has its consequences. It’s true that when sex is used to fill a void, when it is carelessly tossed about, or when it is preceded by pressure, it will eventually lead to destruction of relationships and/or self. However, sex as an expression of commitment and love is a completely different ballgame. A gulf exists between those types of situations, one that was never addressed (to my knowledge) in Church #2’s youth group.

2.              Sex is disappointing. Over and over we were told that a virgin’s reaction after having sex the first time is typically, “That’s it?” This argument is that the media blows sex way out of proportion, leading people to believe that sex is neon awesome every time, whereas the truth is that it’s not all that. I assume the intent was to make us think we weren’t missing much. I find this unfair because as with anything in life, sex comes with a learning curve. The first time you make biscuits from scratch, they come out burned or doughy. The first time you clean your windshield, you streak it. The first time your child misbehaves, you suck at correction. That doesn’t mean you stop making the biscuits, cleaning the windshield, or correcting; it means you work at it and improve. The story doesn’t stop with “you’ll suck” (That’s what she said.). You probably won’t rock each other’s worlds the first time, but you learn. By saying sex is disappointing, you distract from this awesome gift of God.

3.              Sex is divorced from love. Never did love come up in a lesson about sex except in the context of “if he really loves you, he won’t force you to have sex.” (Of course, even this seemingly innocuous statement has an edge: if love is present, sex is not. Also, love is good; sex is bad.) Sex is not about expression here: it’s little more than the result of human biology and a sinful nature. Keep an eye on your hormones, and you’ll realize that your sex drive has to do with your youth and/or gender, not the loving relationship you’re in. Even terms like “making love”—a term I have come to prefer for several reasons—were banished from discussions about sex. No one ever told me that when you’re in a relationship with someone you love and admire, your heart fills with all sorts of desire for that person—you want an emotional and a spiritual connection, sure…but you also long for a physical connection. No one told me this was a normal and beautiful reaction to being cherished, being special to someone. Instead, I was taught that sex drive resulted from hormones or making out (or a combination of both), and that it would destroy my capacity for logical thought, fairly forcing me to unzip my shorts if I wasn’t vigilant.

4.              Sex is sinful and provokes divine judgment. The predominant arguments against sex were venereal disease, pregnancy, and emotional trauma. Any of these could be multifaceted, but pregnancy was the Big Problem. Church #2 essentially looked at it this way: 1) Choose abortion, and you’re a murderer. 2) Choose adoption, and you have to deal with the pain of losing a child. 3) As a teenager, you’re too much of an ill-prepared screw-up to try to raise the baby yourself. There was no way to win. And all this cause-and-effect was a virtual certainty: it’s God’s design for punishing sexual partners. To me, this God is a God of judgment, indeed a heartless God, who carelessly doles out life and death to teach a lesson. The miracle of birth becomes flesh-covered punishment. The heartbreak of fatal illness is your just desserts. So…have sex at your own risk, bucko.

You can see why these messages, all of which I deeply imbibed, contributed to my sexual struggles. There are others, but for the sake of space I will omit them for now. I’m sure that some who grew up in my youth group went on to have lots of great sex, but I also know I am not alone. Dr. B told me about a study he conducted with some colleagues years ago. The research team interviewed literally hundreds of people who fit into one of two groups: people who had been sexually abused and people who had been raised in sexually repressive religious environments. Would you believe that the effects were exactly the same? Dr. B’s research team discovered that both groups ended up with either sexual addiction or severe dysfunction—and sometimes both. The mental, emotional, and physical symptoms the two groups described were indistinguishable.

All of this then begs the question, “How should we teach about sex?” I don’t pretend to have the answer, but I have some ideas I’ll include in the next post. In the meantime, I would LOVE to hear the messages you received—good or bad—about sex from authority figures in your life. What has been your experience with religion and sex? How do you think we should teach about sex? This issue is really close to my heart, and I covet your insights.


EDIT: I went back and read what I wrote in my journal the day Dr. B told me about that study. I need to correct that he was not on the research team as I claimed above. He was apparently one of the reviewers or something along those lines.

And so I began talking about my feelings.

One of the first questions Dr. B asked me was, “What are your feelings about sex?” You’d think after months of obsessing over it, this would be a no-brainer. But after a knee-jerk response of, “Anger,” I had little else to say at first. What were my feelings about sex? As I thought about it, the proverbial dam broke, and I found myself emptying my head of quite a lot of thoughts.

“I’m angry—angry that my body doesn’t work, angry that God won’t answer my prayers, angry that my mind is apparently causing problems, too. I’m angry because I imagine everyone else in their lovely homes gets to have lots of wonderful sex with their partners. I’m angry because it feels like there’s a huge aspect of life that I don’t get to be a part of. I get angry when I hear my coworkers talk about sex…it seems like no one else struggles with the stuff I’m struggling with. And I’m angry that no one listened to me for so long, so I’m in this frustrating place now where I simply can’t make sex work for me. Of course, even if that first nurse practitioner had mentioned the scar tissue, I’d still probably be sitting here. But it would’ve been one less obstacle to deal with after the wedding.

“And I’m really, really disappointed. Sex is built up to be this great thing that makes you feel good, makes you feel close to your partner. I haven’t had a moment of that. It hasn’t made me feel good, and it hasn’t made me feel close to my husband. If anything, it’s been the complete opposite on both accounts. I can’t believe how stressful sex has made my life. I wish God hadn’t created it to begin with, honestly. All it’s done for me is made me feel estranged from my spouse and hate my body even more than I already did. I mean, the honeymoon period is supposed to be all sex and rose-colored glasses…we haven’t had sixty seconds of that. This marriage and sexuality business has been nothing but heartbreak, stress, and frustration since the very first days after our wedding.

“I’m scared. I read a sentence in a book by a Christian marriage counselor that terrified me: ‘If you don’t have a passionate love affair with your husband, someone will.’ I can’t! I can’t have a passionate love affair with my husband! To be completely honest, I wouldn’t blame him at all for finding someone else. I mean, he’s waited for 26 years to have a sexual relationship with someone, and I can’t do that for him. It’s not fair for him to kiss it goodbye forever. And who knows? Maybe I’ll never be able to have sex. Some women never can—I read that somewhere. It would certainly hurt me if he cheated, but in the end…I’d understand. I can’t give him what he needs. And it just seems wrong to think after four months of marriage, ‘I wouldn’t blame my husband for cheating on me.’ That’s not normal.

“But I mostly feel hopeless. I’m still determined to make this work—I really am—but my hope is waning. It seems like we’ve already explored so many options—counseling, surgery, now this—and nothing is helping. Granted, you and I have only just started talking, so I have some hope there. But I have a hard time believing that it’s this hard for other couples. It seems like talking to someone in the beginning should’ve been enough. Surely surgery should’ve been enough. It’s gotten to the point where it’s embarrassing. I feel like I missed a day in school or something, and I’m being punished royally for it. The students I teach at the high school know more about sex than I do. I feel like an idiot, like an inadequate idiot. And I feel like everyone can see it.”

After I’d finished my monologue, Dr. B nodded. “We need to talk about your past.”

Our sex life involved ten people.

Remember how I told you I hated talking about sex? Even after endless conversations with my counselors, friends, and doctors during four sexless months of marriage, I still hated talking about sex. I’d gotten used to hearing the words come out of my mouth, but the act of sharing such private information was still a chore. You can imagine my chagrin, then, when I discovered that the only sex therapist in town was a man a little older than my father. A man whose son I once kissed during a game of Spin the Bottle.

Awkward.

But I had sworn to myself and to my husband that no matter what I had to do, I was going to have a fulfilling, fun sex life with the man I married. Even if the remedy was something monstrously awful like eating a live scorpion every Saturday night, I was ready to say, “Pass me the hot sauce.” I was committed. So, since talking to a paternal man whose son’s mouth had once mashed itself against mine was still short of the live scorpion, I sighed and opened the door to Dr. B’s office. We shook hands and introduced ourselves, and he asked why I’d come in. “You indicated some sexual dysfunction?” he commented while glancing over my paperwork. Some. Ha.

I told him the story I was so accustomed to telling. Confusion, counseling, lack of sex drive, more confusion, doctors’ appointments, rage, blockage, surgery, recuperation, excruciating pain, sadness, more doctors’ appointments, and finally the call to Dr. B himself. It no longer fazed me that less than an hour ago, the man didn't know my name, and now he was privy to the most personal details of life in my bedroom. “Ah-huh,” he kept grunting while taking notes. When I finished recounting my saga, Dr. B said, “Well. Looks like we have some work to do, Amie.” I gave him a yeah-ya-think? smile and concurred. “What I’d like to do is talk about your upbringing a little, your beliefs about sexuality, and your feelings about your body…and then as we need to, we’ll work on practical suggestions for making sex work for you. We might put together a home program of sorts, you know, some tools and products you can try…We might do some reading and writing together, work through some educational materials…” He was furiously writing, and I got the sense he felt like Michelangelo looking up at a blank ceiling. Finally, he looked at me. “Alright, Amie. Sounds good?” He rubbed his palms together as if we’d just discovered positronic distillation of subatomic particles. “Sounds…great,” I said, a little overwhelmed.

I drove home wondering if the scorpion might not be so bad.

PS: Wondering who those ten people are? My husband, me, our two premarital counselors, my best friend, my mom, the nurse practitioner, the doctor, the gynecologist, and the sex therapist.

It's what a girl wants, what a girl needs.

“When you’re in a relationship, you assume your woman is there because she loves you. But you still have to work on her liking you everyday.” — Chris Rock

A few months after my wedding day, I overheard one of my husband’s friends telling him a joke: “Did you know they discovered a food that decreases a woman’s sex drive by 80% or more?” My husband shook his head, and his friend continued, “Yep. Wedding cake.”

Knee slapper. I’m glad I overheard it though. I figured, “If this is pervasive enough for there to be jokes about it, I’m obviously not alone.” So I did what nerds like me do: I sought and devoured books that dealt with the issue at hand. Many were weird, unhelpful, or even laughable; a few were absolutely fantastic. (Check out links to their Amazon pages on the sidebar.) But the sex-drive light bulb clicked on for me as a result of something else entirely.

One afternoon my husband and I were ambling around a bookstore. A thick book with an attractive, colorful cover caught my eye, and I flipped through its glossy pages. Minutes later, I lost my heart to George Carlin. Now, I don’t know what images “George Carlin” evokes in your mind, but until seeing this book, I pictured a rough-looking, sometimes-funny former (?) druggie with a vulgar mouth. All I can say is, I can’t believe that man and the one in this book are the same guy. The George Carlin Letters: The Permanent Courtship of Sally Wade* was written by George’s lifelong partner. After George’s death, Sally compiled all the letters he left her—pretty much one a day—which, in her opinion, kept their love strong for so many years. It makes sense to me: by writing them, not only was George cherishing his beloved, he was also consistently reminding himself of her extraordinariness in comparison to other women…a pretty solid method for cheat-proofing a relationship. In his letters, George sometimes poured out his heart, reassuring Sally in heartfelt language how special she was to him. Most of the letters, though, are just one or two lines, such as this one: “Teach me to be the perfect man. Love, George.” Swoon. Each letter refers to Sally by a silly nickname; “goof” seemed to be a favorite. Over and over, George assured Sally of his love, in spite of (and sometimes because of) the imperfections she saw in herself. He assured her that she was safe. He never took her for granted, instead always acting as if their relationship was still a “courtship.” He reminded her daily that he felt lucky to claim her. He considered her, flaws and all, utterly perfect. And he made sure she knew it.

I’m willing to bet that Mr. Carlin and Ms. Wade had a stellar sex life. That’s not in the book—well, I didn’t see anything about it—but I can’t imagine it any other way. It seems to me that if a woman is with a man she admires and finds attractive, if she knows she is loved and safe, if she is allowed to be herself, even when that means she’s needy or nervous or moody…it would be awfully difficult for her not to want to give herself to him. Best as I can tell from the people I’ve talked to and what I’ve read, women are seduced by things like George’s letters—gestures that let her know she’s deeply known and loved. (The difficult thing, of course, is that it’s different for each woman. We don’t all like flowers.) A man is seduced by, among other things, lingerie. My guess as a fellow woman is that Sally was more than happy to don lingerie for George a few times a week, since he was demonstrating his love so consistently to her and since she clearly enjoyed being with him so much.

Of course, sexuality is complex, and many things affect sex drive. I had myriad physical issues from scar tissue to imbalanced hormones, as well as emotional and even spiritual battles to fight. Some women, I know, contend with none of my issues, but they struggle with some of their own. Men have no control over these aspects of female sexuality, and regardless of how many letters are written or bouquets are bought, their partner’s drive will remain nil until she tackles her own issues. But if both people are doing their part to get or stay sexually healthy, if they find each other attractive, and if they are loving each other in whatever way speaks to them…I’m pretty sure sparks will find their way into the bedroom.


* Wade, Sally. The George Carlin Letters: The Permanent Courtship of Sally Wade. New York: Gallery, 2011.

If only we could trade our bodies in for an upgrade.

I had the surgery one hot morning in early August. Everything went fine, and Dr. P assured me that in six weeks my body would be ready for sex. It’s telling that my reaction when I heard “six weeks” wasn’t disappointment or even surprise…it was relief. I would have six blissful weeks of not crying myself to sleep after another failure to perform. For six blissful weeks I would not be inadequate or unwomanly or broken; I would be healing from surgery. No one expects sex when his/her partner is recuperating.

At five weeks, I started dreading the end of my blessed reprieve. I had only seven days left of legitimate sex-free living before my checkup. When I did have to go in, Dr. P did her poking and prodding, asked a couple of questions, and consequently pronounced me free of scar tissue. “As best as I can tell, you should be ready now. Go slowly; give your body some time to get used to the movements. In a few weeks, you’ll be a pro.” She could tell I was still apprehensive, so she added, “Really, Amie. You’ll get there. I promise.” I thanked her and went on my way.

Let’s just say my body wasn’t as ready as she thought. Whereas sex before the surgery had been impossible, it was now excruciating. Try after try yielded nothing but tears and intense pain. We were now in our fourth month of unconsummated married life, and I was at my wits’ end. I went from someone who almost never thought about sex to someone who could think of little else. All day, whether teaching or running errands or having coffee with a friend, my mind churned with thoughts of sex and my defectiveness. I tormented myself with disparaging thoughts about my body, my inability to perform, and my growing hatred of sex. I became angry and then scared…and then a resigned mix of both. One night after another unsuccessful try, I remember thinking, “So this is sex? People lose their minds over this?”

I was told one afternoon by a well-meaning friend that the best remedy for the pain I was experiencing was in fact lots of sex. “It only hurts for the first few times. Just go for it several times in one week, and you should be feeling good by Saturday.” She winked. This was not a winking matter to me. I gave her a courtesy smile and excused myself. Why won’t people listen to me? I thought furiously as I drove home. Do they think I’m whining about nothing? Then, I wondered if maybe I was whining about nothing. Maybe all this pain was in my mind. After all, Dr. P had assured me I was all healed up. I resolved to give it another go and, like I’d decided a few days after the wedding, just power through.

Needless to say, this didn’t work, and I found myself back in Dr. P’s office, exasperated yet again. “Are you sure everything looks alright?” I asked tentatively. I explained the pain I was feeling and the fears I had that this might never happen for me. “Hmmm,” she said. “Well, from a medical standpoint, everything seems to be normal…Perhaps you’d want to consider talking to a sex therapist. He or she could give you some practical suggestions as well as work through your feelings about sex. The mind controls an awful lot when it comes to sexuality, particularly for us women.”

By this time, I hated the way my body looked, the way it didn’t work, and the way it was keeping me from my husband. I distrusted my mind, since it now seemed to be the major source of my struggles. I felt further and further removed from my husband, since our relationship was missing such a vital component. And the slithering, evil voice in my head convinced me I was at once isolated and exposed, that everyone could see my inadequacy but no one could do anything about it.

I came to the end of my rapidly fraying rope and called the sex therapist.

"It's not just me."

I spent last week on vacation in gorgeous Florida. In the hospital. The first thirty-six hours in Orlando were perfect, but after dinner on Tuesday night, I experienced the worst pain I have ever felt. For about an hour, every breath came out a moan. The pain built so fast and intensely that my parents took me to the ER; unfortunately, by the time I got there, I was hyperventilating and couldn’t talk or breathe. When the attack finally subsided, I described symptoms to the parade of medical professionals that filed into my room, trying to solve the problem. Terminology like “acute pancreatitis” and “inflamed gallbladder” bounced around as I sat on the bed unsettled. One doctor was afraid my pancreas would quit working, while another said it was just gallstones. Since my background is as far away from medicine as one can get, I had no idea what to expect.

Sometime past midnight, Iris, a soft-spoken but matter-of-fact woman in her late fifties, knocked on my door and introduced herself as my ultrasound technician. One of the doctors had ordered a sonogram to determine whether surgery was necessary. She wheeled me to the dark ultrasound room and asked me to lie on the bed next to the computer while she began the questionnaire.

“Do you smoke?”

“No.”

“Drink?”

“A little wine three or four times a year.”

“Any surgeries?”

“One minor one, yes.”

“Site and purpose?”

“Vaginal: I had a scar tissue blockage.”

At this, her pen froze midair, and she slowly turned her head to look at me. “I’m sorry?” she asked incredulously. I repeated myself, and, having been told by a number of people how odd the procedure was, I added, “I know it’s weird. Anyone remotely related to medicine has told me how strange my case is.” I shrugged. The routine is old hat to me by now.

“No, no…” she trailed off and cleared her throat. Looking straight ahead, she said, “I have that.”

I couldn’t believe it. “Really?” I asked, with what could only be interpreted as excitement. I propped myself up on my elbows so I could make eye contact as I continued. “You’re kidding! I have never met anyone else who had it! Or, well, if I did, they didn’t tell me.”

Iris nodded. “Yeah…I had three children—naturally. And I enjoyed lots of great sex all the way up through my forties. Never any trouble there.” She chuckled a little and watched a memory briefly play out in the distance. “But…it’s been ten years…I just woke up one morning with the blockage. My doctor said there’s nothing he can do. Said if he removes it, I’ll be incontinent.” She shook her head. “I haven’t had sex in ten years, Amie. No intimacy at all…and a woman needs…” she trailed off. The tears welled, but she brushed them away before they fell.

“I know how hard it is. I truly know how you feel,” I assured her. Some time passed before she responded, but she held my gaze. “Yes, you do,” she said, still looking at me. A half-smile pulled at her lips, and she said, “It’s nice to know for once that it’s not just me.” I smiled.

After she’d asked me some specific questions about my surgery and recovery, she went about her sonogram-performing business. As it turns out, I was housing a hundred or more of the tiny devil-stones in my gallbladder. Luckily, this explained the pancreatitis, too. Although I’d have to go under the knife, Iris assured me it was a routine procedure. Before wheeling me back to my temporary room in the emergency wing, she rested her hand on my shoulder and said, “You have given me such hope. Thank you.”

~

Anyone who’s known me at least twenty minutes knows how much I love, love, love Anne Lamott. In her book Grace (Eventually), she recalls assisting in a ballet class for women with Down’s syndrome. After Anne’s visit, the teacher asked the class, “What did you think of my friend?” One of the women said, “I liked that lady! She was a helper, and she danced.” Anne says in her book, “These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced.” I think my few minutes with Iris were my ballet-class moment. If I am remembered for giving hope to at least one woman who has hurt silently the way I have, I will consider my life a success.

Lamott, Anne. Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith. New York: Riverhead Books, 2007.

The Bible explicitly describes sex. Using my name.

I have this thing about names. My laptop is named, my car is named, I call my philodendron “Phil” and my lily “Lily.” Ever since I was a child, I have perused naming books with wild abandon, learning the meanings of as many names and onomastic morphemes as possible. As such, I have noticed over the years that a person’s name almost always reveals their character. My mom’s name, for example, means “pure.” The better I get to know her as a friend, not just my mother, the more I am convinced a purer heart can’t be found. My dad’s name is another example: it means “wagon maker”—a hard worker. Of all his wonderful traits, his work ethic and willingness to do whatever is necessary to provide are unparalleled. And in all the classes I have taught in the last nine years, rarely have I come across a person whose name is a mismatch for his or her character. (And who’s to say it won’t be a perfect match later in life?) Because I am somewhat of a mystic and a hippie, I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.

My own name has two very similar meanings. The way I spell it is the female form of the French word for “friend.” I don’t want to get off-track here, so suffice it to say that friendship is something I have always taken very seriously. My introverted tendencies make me very cautious about trusting and loving, but once I do, I am sold-out loyal forever. The second meaning for Amie/Amy—the one you’ll find in the name books—is “beloved.” Imagine my surprise, then, as a name fiend, when I discovered that in Song of Songs the woman who exults in erotic love shares my name: “Beloved.”

I read Song of Songs a few weeks before I met my husband. Always before, I’d blown past it, thinking, “How awkward.” But curled up on my couch one evening, I was flipping through the Bible when I decided to try it out. Of course, at that point I had no idea the sexual difficulties I’d be battling in less than a year; I had no reason to believe sex would be anything other than outrageously wonderful. Still, it struck me that the woman’s name was “Beloved.” As someone who takes names so seriously, I felt a little as though I were reading something meant especially for me, something I needed to read. Kiss me and kiss me again, Beloved says. How fragrant is your cologne; your name is like its spreading fragrance. No wonder all the women love you! Take me with you; come, let’s run! (Song of Songs 1:2-4a, NLT). (I find it humorous that the first two things Beloved praises about her man are how good he smells and the lovely feel of his name on her lips…That is so me. Cologne/aftershave have always been my favorite aphrodisiacs, and we all know how I love names.)

While I understood conceptually the idea of passionate love, I had never allowed myself to have a sex drive. Regardless of how intense the kissing might have been with someone, I simply didn’t allow myself to be aroused or weak in the knees--I had learned at church that was dangerous. Never had I allowed myself to crave sexual union, even though I cared deeply about some of the guys I dated. Never had I said, in Beloved’s words, “Take me with you.” The idea of “come, let’s run” became completely lost on me. For years, I asked God why he “knit me together” without this essential component. I started to believe that maybe he’d said, “Let’s give her a measure of intelligence…put her in a good family…make sure she has a few talents…Okay, what’s left? Sexuality? Eh, she doesn’t need that.”

Not surprisingly, I didn’t transform into a nymphomaniac after my husband and I exchanged rings. It got much worse, given my multilayered struggle with sexuality. I prayed over and over that God would heal me physically, guide me to a healthier body image, challenge my opinion of sex, and give me (back, or for the first time, I wasn’t really sure) a sex drive. Anytime I needed reassurance that eventually these things would happen for me, I read Beloved’s words, taking them as a promise of what was in store. I chose to believe that one day I would say things like that, too. Listen to how lovely this is, for example:

I am my lover’s, and he claims me as his own. Come, my love, let us go out to the fields and spend the night among the wildflowers…There I will give you my love…new delights as well as old, which I have saved for you, my lover (Song of Songs 7:10, 12, 13, NLT).

So I have gone about this journey, reminding myself of my name: I am “the beloved.” God made me with the opportunity to enjoy my sexuality. The fact is, I believe that my destiny, inherent in my name, is to be the delight of my lover’s. My destiny is to echo Beloved’s words: When my lover looks at me, he is delighted with what he sees (Song of Songs 8:10b, NLT). My destiny is to “give my love,” the “delights” I possess, to my lover. Because I am Amie. I am Beloved.

Sometimes things get broken.

I can’t explain why I did this, but after hearing from Dr. P, my new gynecologist, that I was going to need surgery, I made an appointment with the nurse practitioner I mentioned earlier. I don’t know if I wanted a second opinion, an explanation of why she told me I was “perfectly fine” when I obviously wasn’t, or the opportunity to blame someone for my body’s refusal to cooperate. Probably all of the above, but I had no real agenda as I sat waiting for her. Breezing into the room smiling, she asked why I was there. “Already pregnant, are you?” she suggested with a wink.

“I can’t have sex,” I said expressionlessly for the umpteenth time that month.

She chuckled. “Oh, honey, I know it’s awkward the first few times, but you just have to—”

“—Make it work,” I finished, nodding knowingly. “And my body just has to relax. But what I’m telling you is not that it’s difficult or awkward. It’s not possible.” I emphasized the last sentence, so she’d catch my exasperated tone. I was getting tired of saying these words.

“I see.” She studied me and breathed a slow “hmmm.” Narrowing her eyes as she pursed her lips, she advised, “Well, then, I would suggest losing some weight. The better you feel about your body, the easier it will be to share it with your hubby.”

I cringed. I hate the word “hubby,” and in this case, it was the final straw when paired with yet another unhelpful recommendation. “Listen. I am telling you that I can’t have sex. I couldn’t even if my body looked like Beyoncé’s. My physician says I need surgery to remove scar tissue.”

She didn’t invite me to hop on the table so she could check things out. She didn’t say, “Well, I wondered if that would cause a problem.” She didn’t let on that I had said anything at all: she just repeated her weight-loss PSA, patted me on the knee, and ushered me out. I stared at the back of her head as she walked away, vowing to never step foot in that office again. Squinting into the sun as I headed back outside, I felt the infernal tears coming on. I slid into my car and rested my head on the steering wheel. All I knew about my body was: 1) It should be smaller, 2) It featured “udders,” and 3) It barred me from creating the physical union that should have been at the center of my marriage. However much I entered married life hating my body, it had doubled.

“God, You have got to be kidding me!” I raged. “We kept our bodies pure! Never did we give into temptation, never did we risk disease or pregnancy, never once did we do anything but try to please You! And this is how we’re repaid!” All the anger I felt toward the nurse practitioner, my own body, and the situation itself poured out in a messy display. “Of all people, why us?” I was sobbing and fuming, angrier than I’d ever been before. It was so unfair. I felt inadequate as a wife—completely, painfully inadequate. I in no way measured up, and although my struggles were private, I felt exposed. It seemed to me that everyone could see I wasn’t able to perform my wifely responsibilities. I was broken, damaged. But most of all, I felt unwomanly. If the part of my body that made me a woman wasn’t functioning, then what was I? If I couldn’t provide for my husband the physical intimacy that he craved, how could our relationship ever move beyond committed friendship? “Do something,” I seethed. “You have to do something here, God. I don’t know what to ask for, but You have to do something. Please, please take this away.” I sat in my car crying for a little over an hour, until I was so emotionally exhausted that there was nothing left to do but go home.

Expectations are a bad idea.

For many of us who married before having sex, our primary source of information was movies. Naturally, you hear stories now and then from friends, but in general, movie sex is the only kind we virgin brides are familiar with. Of course, there are several kinds of movie sex. There’s the sweet, starts-with-a-kiss scene in Pretty Woman. There’s the smoldering, starts-with-a-dance scene in Dirty Dancing. There are the awkward pornographic scenes in Love Actually. And other movies run the gamut of sexual unions: ripping-clothes-off sex, spontaneous sex, passionate sex, graceful sex. Somewhere within all those images, the truth was surely lurking. When we married, I assumed I had a pretty good idea of sex, even having never experienced it for myself. Furthermore, I expected to innately know how to perform the act, as one innately knows how to smile. How difficult could it be? We had complementary anatomies. No charts or graphs necessary. From the very first time, it would be complete erotic bliss.

Well…you know what they don’t show in the movies? The fish-out-of-water feeling you get when you’re trying to do it for the first time, for one. No physical activity in pre-sexual life can prepare you for the sort of gyrating you do during sex. Not only do you have to know how to move your own body, you have to do so in rhythm with another person. Nor do movies show the hesitation and discomfort engendered by embarrassment over one’s own body. They don’t show the strange noises that bodies that close sometimes make. They don’t show the array of frustrations caused by condoms or the hormonal mood swings that accompany the Pill. They don’t show how things go hilariously wrong sometimes, and you end up laughing yourselves right out of the mood. They don’t show the post-deed cleanup. And they for sure don’t show what happens when the whole thing is simply not possible.

Sex for me was heartbreaking from the beginning. Perhaps I should’ve expected it: every gynecological exam during the previous four years had been excruciating. Before my first one at 18 years old, I asked my best friend what to expect. She said, “It’s uncomfortable, but it’s not too bad.” Thirty seconds into that exam, I nearly came off the table from the pain. (And that’s saying something because I usually take pain like a man.) I spent the rest of the time crying, wondering if my best friend had understood my question, and imagining revenge on the sadistic nurse practitioner. Four years later, I was in for my fourth exam, and it was the same as always: torturously, tearfully painful. Concerned, I asked if all systems were on go for the wedding night two weeks in my future. She said, “You’re perfectly fine. Sex is fun; you’ll love it. And congratulations!”

Imagine my dismay, then, when after about a hundred tries, my marriage was still unconsummated after four weeks. Sex was literally impossible, and we had no idea why or who could possibly help. The only people I’d ever really discussed sex with were the husband-and-wife team who did our premarital counseling, so I made a coffee date with the wife and stumbled through our story. “I don’t know how to explain it…It’s like there’s no place for him to go,” I described, shrugging in bewilderment. J was the first in a long line to give me this advice: “I know it certainly hurts the first time, but once you get past that, it really will be okay. Your body will relax into it, and you’ll learn what to do. Marital sex is not an option, so you really must keep trying.” Nothing is wrong with this advice, and had I been in J’s place, I probably would’ve said the same thing to me. The fact is, it does hurt the first few times for many women, and they (we) do have to allow time to relax into it. I left J’s house with renewed intent to power through and just do it. Unfortunately, after another week of “powering through,” sex still wasn’t working for us. Sheepishly, I turned to my mother and then to my best friend for advice. Both gave me variations on J’s counsel. “It hurts in the beginning, definitely. But it’s a vital part of being married. You’ll get there.” Again, I told myself, “It can’t be this difficult. Make it work.” Crestfallen after what turned into two emotionally painful, sexless months, I resorted to crying myself to sleep. My husband and I, who had saved our bodies for each other, could not enjoy the highly anticipated experience of sexual ecstasy. Truthfully, I would’ve even welcomed pain had sex just been possible.

You have to remember, as I mentioned in the first post of this blog, I could’ve been voted Least Likely to Ever Talk About Sex by my graduating class. (Luckily, though, that superlative didn’t exist.) I have always been a private person, and this was the most private of all issues to have to discuss with others. At this point, I had talked about embarrassing sexual issues not only with my husband, but also two premarital counselors, my mother, and my best friend. Little did I know: this list wasn’t even a third as long as it was going to get. Not knowing what else to do, I added a sixth person to the list: my physician. My husband and I sat in his office and explained our situation, feeling helpless and exasperated. Dr. S referred me to a wonderful gynecologist who diagnosed the problem immediately. For reasons unknown, scar tissue had formed a literal chastity belt inside me. Surgery was necessary. To a woman who already hated her body and considered attempts at sex nothing more than an exercise in pain and failure, hearing that corrective surgery was inevitable made me recede into an inner web of fatalism.

The 7th grade sucks.

Anybody out there make it through junior high unscathed?

Anyone? Bueller?

<Crickets.>

Yeah, me either. For starters, a girl named, if I remember correctly, Presumptuous Trollop—but I’ll call her “Jasmine” in this post to protect her identity*—demolished my self-concept in about sixty seconds one morning.

Once upon a time I was an adorable baby. Everyone cooed and fawned over me and called me “lovely.” The paparazzi, meaning my mom and aunts, flashed cameras so often that my world appeared veiled by strobe lighting. My first steps were applauded, my first laugh brought delight, and my inability to pronounce Ls was exploited for its astronomical cuteness. (I’m good with Ls now, by the way.) My whole childhood was painstakingly documented by loving parents. Endless pictures of me fill albums; it seems I was always goofing off with my dad, playing school, dancing, or dressing up. Dressing up was my unquestionable favorite. It’s all my best friend K and I ever did. Whether at her house or mine, our parents would rave, “You girls are so beautiful!” Our radiant grins would bask in their words, later repeating them in front of a mirror as we practiced full-lipped model pouts. “You girls are so beautiful, so beautiful!” Since K’s family and mine were always assuring us of our beauty, it never occurred to me to be self-conscious about my appearance. I knew I was beautiful just like I knew how to spell my name.

And then came Jasmine.

Jasmine and I both had third-period choir, and since we were altos with similar last names, we had to sit near each other. But proximity should not be mistaken for friendship: we rarely spoke because I was painfully shy, and she was a loud, rude cretin. Besides, my friend A was an alto too, so I usually just ignored Jasmine in favor of A. One morning A and I were gushing over a boy I liked when Jasmine butted into the conversation. “He will never like you, Amie. God, you are so fat. I mean, you have udders.” She spat the word as she gestured toward my chest, her cronies already laughing at the joke. She, too, dissolved into giggles. To this day, I can hear her words exactly the way she uttered them (pun fully intended). I remember what she was wearing, how her hair was fixed, the expression on her face. In that moment, at 12 years old, I began to loathe my body. It’s sad that in seconds someone could destroy the confidence my family had been building in me for years, but that’s exactly what happened. I took Jasmine’s word—someone I didn’t trust or even like—over the word of every friend and family member who loved me so dearly.

As soon as I was 13 and allowed to wear makeup, I applied it with wild abandon. After all, the problem Jasmine identified was fatness, not ugliness. Desperate to attract attention to my face—the salvageable part of me—I covered my skin with an inch of foundation and blush. I hoped that if my face were pretty enough, no one would ever look below my neck again. Preferably, I would never have to look below my neck again. Many mornings before heading to school, Jasmine’s words echoed in my ears. Eventually, though, they weren’t just her words anymore: I took over the job of berating myself. “Ugh, your legs are atrocious,” I would say to myself as I put on my jeans. When a guy showed me extra attention, I’d think, “It’s just pity; he feels sorry for you because you’re fat.” Mirrors and glass storefronts became my nemeses. Even on the hottest, most humid summer days, I selected pants or ankle-length skirts to cover my embarrassing body. Anytime it was possible, I hid behind others in pictures so that only my face peeked through. Couldn’t risk capturing those udders on film: the camera adds ten pounds, you know. My body shamed me.

And that didn’t change over the years. In fact, ten years after Jasmine’s announcement, I was counting down the days to my wedding, thinking, “I will hate all my wedding pictures because of my fat body.” And even more appalling was the sex in my future. Sex, I knew, required complete nakedness with another human. To say this was “terrifying” is a gross understatement. I honestly considered the possibility that upon seeing my unclothed self, my new husband might say, “Wow, I wasn’t prepared for this. I’m not attracted to you at all,” and consequently annul the marriage. That is not an exaggeration; the message of Jasmine’s words so imbued me that I thought everyone must share her opinion. Allowing my husband to see me the night of our wedding was one of the single most difficult things I have ever done.

But do you know what happened? He didn’t annul the marriage. He was very gracious and respectful, assuring me over and over that he liked what he saw. However, this didn’t immediately solve the problem. In addition to these emotional issues with my body, very real physical complications with sex arose within days.

*Her name isn’t Jasmine, either. I really will protect her identity.

This is a blog about sex.

That’s right: a whole blog dedicated to sex.

I can’t possibly express how ridiculous it is for me of all people to have a blog about sex. Years of my life were spent on church pews, hearing about the evils of sex. I was probably sixteen before I could say the word without snickering. And even then, I had to kind of whisper it. I was twenty-two when I gave my virginity to my husband. I’ve been married for four years now, and sex is still a topic that baffles, frustrates, and intrigues me. I have a highly contentious relationship with it.

Needless to say, I’m enormously out of my comfort zone here, trying to write about something that has historically not gone well for me.

But my story is one that literally thousands of women have lived in varying degrees at various times in their lives. I know from talking to doctors, psychologists, counselors, and other care providers that although many women deal with the same issues I do, the majority of them say nothing. So I figure I have two choices: I can be another woman who suffers silently and eventually gives up, or I can acknowledge the issue and work through it, however feeble and painful my attempts may sometimes be. If nothing else, I can at least tell my story so that someone knows she’s not alone.

I am not an expert (sexpert?). Language is the only thing I’ve ever studied in any depth, so in no way am I qualified to give medical or emotional advice when it comes to sex. My goal is nothing more than to tell my story, provide information and resources that have been helpful to me, and be one voice in a vacuum of shame and silence. If only one person benefits, that will be enough. I will not post every day, perhaps not even every week, but if you’re interested, I invite you to share my story.

Let’s break the silence.