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.”
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