The Difficult Joy of Sex
When I got married about a year ago, I thought sex was as easy as falling, well, into bed.
A year on, and I’m wondering when it starts to be more joy than difficulty. We were both virgins on our wedding night. We’d masturbated a bit together since we got engaged, and my husband had masturbated with two of his ex-girlfriends, but we were both pretty inexperienced.
After the most beautiful, perfect day of my life, we had the most perfectly disastrous first attempt at intercourse. We were exhausted and nervous. It hurt like hell, and I couldn’t even fit him in. I started bleeding, but he hadn’t even managed to make it into me. He fell asleep, and I was left crying, unable to believe it was so painful, and that my new husband could do that to me and then just fall asleep, after having masturbated himself to orgasm.
I was so tired, and we had to be on a plane the next day, but I was too miserable to sleep. I got dressed and wanted to walk out on the nightmare.
Things have got better since then. But sex has been so difficult for us from the very first time right up till now, a year later. Our sex life has been pretty unfulfilling on average, with only the tiniest glimmers of what I thought sex would be like.
This is the hard sex blog that needs to be written. I hope it charts the improvement of our fledgling sex-life, and provides a cathartic outlet for some of the recurrent difficulties we keep running into.
I hear your heart.
I wasn’t going to drop you a link but on re-reading this Our sex life has been pretty unfulfilling on average, with only the tiniest glimmers of what I thought sex would be like, I think I’ll share something my husband wrote on the power of sex.
I hope you and your husband have a lifetime of wonderment before you.
Thanks Hope, I read your husbands blog post, and found it moving.
I long for that kind of intimacy with my husband.
At the moment I’m feeling pretty despairing.
I appreciate you leaving that link.
It’ll get better, dear heart. Concentrate on communication, and let the sex just come out of that. There’s SO much pressure on us to feel like our sex-lives are fantastic and dramatic… But it’s just not worth it. It’s like asking us to value the thing money can buy without enjoying our work, really. Learn to look into one another’s eyes and really see each other, and don’t be frightened of the physical act when it disappoints, as it sometimes (often?) will.
I’m guessing you’re in your twenties. Trust me: it’s going to get better. Did you know, on average, women really enjoy sex more as they age and grow more comfortable with their partners and their own bodies?
You’re incredibly courageous for writing this blog, and I’ll be visiting frequently. I see so many of my own experiences in it.
I’d say “good luck,” but luck has nothing to do with it… it’s all love.
–Jameson
Thanks Jameson,
That’s very encouraging. I really appreciate it.
Yes, I’m in my twenties. We have a whole lifetime in front of us. We just need to get out of the downward spiral of disappointments and difficulties that the first year has been, and get into the upward spiral, of little encouragements and love.
Some say the first year is the hardest. With so many adjustments all at once. I think that has been true with us. Its going to get better soon.
Thanks again for your encouragement.
I found your blog by accident, but this post in particular moved me. It sounds precisely like the pain and bewilderment I felt on my first time, so I feel very much for you.
I suffered some because of lack of knowledge and understanding, on my part and my partners’. It took me five years to learn how to enjoy sex for sexual pleasure (rather than sexual conquest, or some other complicated feeling). But then, I had no long-term sex partner like a husband to learn with. I’m convinced you can make it work better than I.
Two resources that completely changed the way I thought about sex and consequently how I had sex: 1, Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier. This book gave such a vivid and thorough description of female sex organs that I understood a lot more about how my body works. I also learned that it’s overwhelmingly common for women to have trouble with sex in their twenties, but it’s less common in their thirties and forties. 2, Go Ask Alice (http://www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/), an information website sponsored by Columbia University. Alice has received a number of questions from women who don’t enjoy sex or don’t orgasm, and part of her answer to one just lodged in my brain: Accept what you feel as pleasure. (That reminds me of your thought that your husband might be comparing real sex unfavorably to porn sex.) When I became more able to let go of pain and disappointment, and accept my body’s “glimmers” as genuine pleasure, then I started to be able to let go and really enjoy.
Wow, I’ve rambled on rather long at you for a stranger dropping in… but I know very much how you feel, and I wish you luck. Last thing: because I had so much trouble for so long, I started a website to talk about sex issues in general – because there’s so much we don’t know unless we talk about it! You don’t have to go, but if you do maybe you’ll find it useful. http://www.sexcalumny.net
thanks for your encouraging words tanglethis,
I really appreciate your empathy and advice. This blog has been amazing in the way that its helped me realise that there are others like me who have (or have had in the past) these kinds of problems. Especially because I have never been able to talk about these things in real life, and yet a “stranger dropping in” can come and brighten up my day and encourage me to remember that these are ordinary problems that a lot of people go through. Thanks for taking the time to write.
I think that even with a husband to learn sex with, we are talking a long time to learn how to enjoy it. I think we are guilty of turning it into all kinds of complicated feelings even though we could be in a good place to learn to enjoy sex together. I appreciate your comment about accepting what you feel as pleasure, I think that is important to where we are at.
I had a quick look at your site sexcalumny, and will go back and have more of a read. I read the responses people had posted to a question about frequency of normally having sex which was encouraging. I liked the intro which said “continue to unfix “norms” and endorse communication.” Thanks for letting me know about your site.
Thrush can be treated completely