Why Some Women Might Not Like Sex

Chronicle of an Open Marriage #6

I don’t really care about the infidelity. I don’t. If my husband fell in love with someone else, if he wanted to leave me for someone else, if he wanted to sleep with— by which I mean actually cuddling up under the blankets and catching innocent and sweetly vulnerable zzz’s with— someone else, that would hurt my feelings. A lot. But sex? I’m not thinking sex is all that intimate.

My own sexual history is pretty negative and laced with a lot of mixed feelings and shame.

Sexual shame in childhood

I remember when I was very young having some strange sexual feelings about being spanked. I wasn’t spanked often (I just remember one time), and I don’t think my father was a pedophile, but maybe some sexual energy got activated during a spanking and it imprinted my malleable baby brain? Then it haunted me for the rest of my life.

As far as I can tell, that happens to a lot of people. At least, there’s a huge cohort of spanking lovers in the BDSM community. How did they get that way?

And did you ever wonder why Fifty Shades of Grey was so popular with women? I thought maybe early childhood experiences with spanking had imprinted them, too. Then I read this article about spanking which explains about nerve endings and genitalia and generally why adults should never spank children.

Other sexual memories I have from childhood are creepy, too.

There was the pediatrician who insisted on taking my temperature rectally. He might have been a pedophile, because the vibe there was definitely wrong.

There was the time Mom decided we all had to have enemas in the bathtub.

There was her tacit approval of me watching certain movies repeatedly: Calamity Jane in which Doris Day is a tomboy until John Wayne spanks her and she puts on a dress. Kiss Me Kate in which an actress is spanked by her disgruntled husband on stage during a performance of The Taming of the Shrew, to everyone’s delight but hers.

Sexual shame during puberty

When I started to blossom into a woman, a whole host of horrors ensued. I had been a happy and smart and athletic little girl with a lot of confidence and positive energy to offer the world. Then suddenly, I became some kind of target.

Men touched my breasts and ass without permission, yelled at me out of car windows, leered at me in public and generally made me feel unsafe.

Some time in my teens, I found a stash of pornography under my father’s side of my parents’ bed, including disturbing black and white BDSM magazines, a novel called “Bondage Wife For Sale” (which I read), and some 8x10 pictures of me in a bikini on a rope swing.

Then I remembered the male photographer who’d stood around taking pics of a group of us girls dropping off the swing into the river. I must have given him my home address, perhaps imagining a bright future as a model, because later he brought over some prints and sold them to my parents. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but here were the pics in my dad’s stash of porn.

Sexual shame at young adulthood

How about my first time going “all the way?” It was basically date rape with a side of unwanted voyeurism.

I had “saved myself” until 17, but then decided the time was right to lose my virginity. I told my super sweet boyfriend, and he arranged a place to deflower me — at the apartment of a randy high school teacher who had divorced his wife (and their four children) and was now dating one of his students. It was the ‘70s.

Mr. Teacher wasn’t in the room with us, but I’m sure he was listening. Because after I changed my mind in the middle of the event, but my boyfriend didn’t stop, which resulted in me crying and then wandering listlessly into the living room to be by myself, sick Mr. Teacher came out a minute later to ogle me in my nightgown and ask probing questions.

I didn’t think of that as date rape at the time. The term didn’t exist. I didn’t think it was wrong for my boyfriend not to stop when I asked him to. Neither did he, I imagine. Because men had needs, after all, and women shouldn’t stymie them. My hurt feelings were entirely my fault.

I didn’t even think of it as date rape a year later when a different man I’d been kissing in the back of his camper held me down and penetrated me despite me trying to push him off with all my considerable might. That made him my second sexual partner. I didn’t blame him for raping me. I figured he must have had “blue balls” and I shouldn’t have led him on.

Instead, I decided to date him. That kept me from being a victim. It legitimized what had happened in the back of his van. It allowed me to pretend that I had made choices, that I was the master of my fate.

I realize that not every woman has been sexually traumatized. But a lot of us have. My whole young adulthood was full of incidents like these.

The “sexual liberation” movement felt like a massive con — a way to convince women that spreading their legs was in their best interest and showed they were intelligent and forward thinking. I bought into it without examining the negative consequences to my psyche, without ever questioning why.

No one ever told me my body belonged to me, or that I had a right to say no. All the emphasis in that time period was on YES. And at some point, I weaponized my sexual encounters as a form of self harm, using sex with indifferent men and assholes to punish myself for my multitude of imaginary sins— including being born a woman.

Sexual shame during marriage

So then I got married and that was a relief. I didn’t have to have sex with multiple men anymore. I could focus on one man and try to make it work. And I do mean try, because it didn’t come natural. Because how is a woman like me, who’s been traumatized by sex at every stage of her life, supposed to suddenly see it as a good, healthy activity just because I’ve turned in some paperwork at City Hall?

Did I ever like sex? Honestly, I don’t know. I thought I did. But maybe I was pretending? Maybe I was imitating the sexy women I’d seen in movies because I wanted to be desirable? I mean, I’ve had orgasms (on occasion), and they were a delight, but almost all of them were tied up with sexual fantasies that I was ashamed of, making the whole experience mixed. Overall, I believe I have the physical capacity to truly enjoy sex, but a lifetime of trauma has prevented me from developing it.

And it hasn’t helped that sex is a massive sore spot in our marriage, because my husband wants to have more sex than I do. That’s a problem we’ve been wrestling with for years and years, yet we’ve never been able to put it to rest, despite the fact that we are both smart and good-hearted people.

Moving out of the shame

So now we’re trying an experiment. I suggested my husband seek sex outside our marriage, with men, and he was glad to comply. I described that experience in earlier stories, linked below.

I understand that this is not society’s approved plan for us: an old married couple. But when it comes to sexual relations, society hasn’t done right by me yet. And I don’t think it’s done right by my husband, either. So now we’re putting society’s expectations aside — along with the shame they entail — and exploring the landscape by our own lights.

We’re open, and ready, and curious to see what we find.

What happened next? Read Chronicle of an Open Marriage #7. Find all of my stories about opening our marriage on the list below, or about sex in general on this one. Get an email whenever I publish. Hooray!