Dear Reader,
This is the story of my marriage. It is a very average American marriage. We are a very average American couple. You have probably seen us in line at the grocery store, or school pickup, or waiting for a table at brunch. And yet, our marriage has one little component that makes us stand out--one that you're probably already familiar with and here to read more about. This is the story of how I experienced--or am in the process of experiencing--an honest-to-God, old-fashioned sexual awakening in my mid-30s.
Maybe you see yourself in me. Maybe you'd like to. Either way, I will bring you along for the (anonymous) ride. Most of the details contained here are true. Some of the identifying details have been changed. But what is absolutely real are my feelings and perspective on how this journey has changed my marriage and changed my life.
So let's talk about it.
I have a suspicion that all of the personality traits that define me and the ones that hold me back are rooted in the one-two combo of a Bible Belt/Irish Catholic upbringing. Guilt is a second language; a permanent chip on my shoulder. Barely repressed feminine rage makes itself known at inopportune moments. I bear the weight of a fundamental mistrust of pleasure and a deep sense of shame.
I told myself in my twenties that I had moved past the fearmongering approach to sex that I had steeped in as a teenager subject to abstinence-only sex education at the inept hands of the public school system. I pretended it didn't bother me or impact my development--I had liberal parents! I knew where to find accurate information about birth control and safe relationships on the early 2000s internet! I had gone to college and survived the baptism-by-fire of hookup culture on Greek Row with my dignity and emotional well-being (mostly) intact! I was a sex-positive, adult feminist with a modest collection of vibrators who would rather die than yuck someone else's yum--even though I classed the majority of those yums as being exclusively for someone else, and definitely not for me.