Helping my wife discover her sexuality, even if I end up losing her.
Zoey, my wife, is a gentle soul.
I often tease her by calling her a "nice white lady" - playing into that stereotype.
To further enforce that image, she's a teacher in primary school.
She became a teacher because she loved children and children loved her. She knew of nothing else she wanted to do.
Yes, all around, everyone loved her for what they saw - the kind of woman no one could find threatening or offensive, the nicest lady you'd ever meet.
Yet, the backdrop of how we met came from a dark past of hers:
She was my roommate before she was my girlfriend. She answered an ad for a roommate when my old roommate moved out. It was unusual that a woman would answer an ad to move in with a single man, so I thought she'd be a butch lesbian.
Much to my surprise, she was a pretty little thing with an emo vibe about her. She wasn't very chatty and didn't seem fussed about what the apartment had to offer. I was either going to get murdered or fall in love with her - so we became roommates.
Little by little, I wore her down and got talking. One movie night together, we kissed. I pushed further and put my hands lower down on her body. She didn't seem to mind. So I continued to show my adoration for her body as I got her undressed.
She seemed inexperienced and timid. I wasn't sure if I was making her feel uncomfortable or if she was actually just inexperienced.
"Have to been with a guy before?" I asked carelessly.
I didn't mean anything by it, but she broke down in tears and got me all panicking.
I thought she was in tears because I took advantage of this poor girl, but she soon began to explain.
Zoey had a male coworker when she was in her early 20s. He called her over to his apartment as friends and made her have sex with him. He was manipulative, didn't care that it was hurting her, and completely ruined her first time.
Since then, she's been scared to have sex and saw no joy in it. She had implied that he was abusive, and so I didn't ask any questions.
Instead, I comforted her for a long while and gave her reassurance that I would never treat her like that, and that all this was in her past. She would never see that man again, and I won't bring it up unless she wanted to talk about it.
We made sweet, sweet love that night.
Fast forward a few years, we're married.
All is great, but sex is feeling rather one-sided.
We have sex, but it's only when I ask and Zoey almost never orgasms.
Passion only comes from my side. We're ready financially, but we were at the point of being too passionless to conceive a child.
But other than this, she was perfect.
We'd spend our evenings cuddled up on the couch, where she'd cling onto me for comfort, letting me know how much I was loved and that I was her one and only.
And so the sex thing didn't matter, and I thought that was the end of that.
Changes came about very expectedly.
We were watching some kind of silly film about a teenage boy wanting to have sex for the first time. This got her asking about my first time, which got me nervous - but she actually didn't seem to mind.
To distract the conversation away, I carelessly commented that I was her "second and all subsequent times man".
I realised immediately that I'd made a mistake and tried to apologise.
