Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Great Expectations

As my wedding day began to loom on the horizon my excitement grew and grew.  I know that many women look forward to and plan their wedding from a very early age and I was no exception.  However, my hopes and dreams about my wedding were more related to the wedding night.  For many reasons (that will become a post some other day) I had been saving myself for marriage but I also had a raging libido, held delicately in check.  My wedding night was going to be the day I could finally let go and start to participate in this act that I though so often about.  I was, in some ways prepared that things might not start out so well though.  I was not under the illusion that the first time would be magical but I was still good and ready to get the show on the road. 

My wedding day came, the day was beautiful!  There were of course a few tinny snags that tend to be inevitable but over all it was just what I would have wanted.  The reception ended, we waved goodbye to friends and family and off we drove to our hotel.  I had a little something special to wear for the evening so with nervous excitement I headed into our bathroom.  Though his reaction to my reveal might have seemed a little lack luster to me we began to kiss and fondle....and nothing happened.  More kissing, more fondling, still nothing.  No matter what we did my poor new husband just wasn't getting excited. 

I put on my brave face and logically thought about the pressure and stress.  I said something along the lines of, "It's alright, we have plenty of time to get it right." and as we rolled over to go to sleep I cried into my pillow at the disappointment of my dreams. 

From our hotel room we went to the airport to head out on our tropical honeymoon.  We spent the week basking in the sun, reading, swimming, dining, drinking, shopping and sightseeing.  Though we had lots of fun our romantic interludes were awkward, nervous and mostly ineffectual.  By the end of the week we might have managed penetration once or twice but we were unable to bring any of our sexual encounters to orgasm for him.  In fact, I was unable to bring him to orgasm at all.  Though I tried many methods.  The most we were able to achieve for him was a semi erection. 

Here I was, hormones raging, with the expectation that once I am married my husband will be hounding me for sex and that all of my pubescent urges will no longer need to be restrained only to discover that this whole sex thing isn't working like it's supposed to.

What does any woman with a delicate self esteem, poor confidence and body image issues do?  She blames herself of course.  Though we had a good trip, as a honeymoon it was, to me, a disaster!  We came home with feelings hurt, tiptoeing around one another so as not to do more damage.  I know that a mans ego is a delicate thing and this is my first piece of advice to you.  Do not say anything in a negative way.  If I would have turned to my husband that first week and said, "What's wrong with you?  Why can't you get an erection?  Aren't you a man?" I can imagine our marriage would have been very short lived.  Instead I attempted to be encouraging (though I don't know how good I was at it or how much of it he saw through) and tried to not say anything that could have made the issue worse. 

I have always been a bit of a fixer.  That is one of the ways I've been told I am "like a man".  If I am told of a problem I want to do something to resolve it.  I am also not shy.  So when we got home I went to work.  I researched our "problem" to death.  I asked him lots of questions and I tried to come up with new things to try.  In fact I might recommend you don't do things quite the way I did.  I'm afraid I might have almost been badgering him constantly.  I believe that even though I was being "positive" I was still unrelenting.  I think I was still putting lots of pressure on him even though I was doing it in an "encouraging" manner. 

My research was rather frustrating!  The only explanation I could find that seemed to fit in any way was impotence and even that didn't fit well.  They talked about how this happens in older men, or men with illnesses and neither of these explanations fit.  It started to make me feel more and more alone and worse and worse about myself.  After all, if he wasn't impotent then it must be about me.  I must not be attractive enough.  I must be ugly, overweight and repulsive.  I kept hoping that there would be another explanation or some other option.  This is when I found a sex therapist in our area.  I nervously called her and gave her some background on our situation and then settled into the idea of talking to my husband about the possibility of seeing this woman.

Thankfully my husband has always been very willing to do what it takes to stick to our marriage and make it work so miraculously he agreed to go.  We spent many weeks speaking to this sex therapist and through the exercises and tips she gave us we were finally able to build our relationship to the point where I was able to bring my husband to orgasm on occasion. 

Even though we were then able to work on our technique and become more and more comfortable with our sex life this did not fix all the emotional and mental hurts and scars that we had both built up over time.  This includes emotional issues that preexisted each other. 

I will go into greater detail about causes of some of these issues as well as how they were resolved but I wanted to share this story to show you a bit of how rough our start to marriage has been and to let you know that today we have a wonderful and fulfilling marriage relationship.  This is to let you know that there is hope and that any situation is resolvable!  We have gone on to have two adorable children and currently have a very fulfilling sex life, for both of us.

After many years of fumbling around the problems and working with a few therapists we have come to the conclusion that we just REALLY got off on the wrong foot.  A combination of inexperience, nerves, a lower drive on his part and not overly sensitive genitals all lead to years of difficulty in the bedroom.  In other words, once things went wrong, they really went wrong.  My wish is that I had been even more aware that there will, most definitely, in every sexual relationship, be some type of difficulty that will need to slowly be worked out.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, the first time is never magical.  Every couple will need to discover what works best and what doesn't work at all.  There will be a difference in your libido.  Sometimes they will be slight differences and sometimes they will be vastly different but they will, for sure, be different to some degree.  Try to take things in stride and go into marriage expecting problems.  That way, when they come along, and they will come along, you are more prepared to deal with them. 



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