What do you do if you’ve never enjoyed sex–but you’ve been having it anyway?
What if you’ve been married for years but sex has never felt great, but you’ve been “fulfilling his needs.” And now you’re getting tired of it and you want that to change?
Or what if you’ve been faking orgasm and your husband doesn’t know?
How do you start those conversations?
Today the sale for The Orgasm Course ends at midnight (so you can still get the men’s version free when you buy the womens’ version!), and over the last week hundreds of you have taken us up on our discount. Yay! (I’m hoping so many of you have breakthroughs!).
But because we’ve been running the sale and I’ve been talking about orgasm, I’ve received a number of questions from women who want sex to be better, but don’t know how to get out of this dynamic that they’ve participated in creating. One woman said:
How do I tell my husband that, after 12 years, I’ve never enjoyed sex? How do we even have that conversation?
It reminds me of another frequent question I get, like this one from a while ago:
Sex has never felt that great for me, and my husband used to get really upset about that and wonder what was wrong with me. So I started faking orgasm. And I’m tired of faking, but I don’t want to deal with all the fights if I tell him what’s been happening. What should I do?
That’s a problem, isn’t it? You can’t start working on your own orgasm until your husband knows that you haven’t been enjoying sex up until now. So let’s try to tackle these in turn, because they are slightly different issues. In one you’ve directly participated in a form of deception, but in the other you haven’t. So let’s take this in turn.
If you’ve never enjoyed sex–but you haven’t faked orgasm
You’ve never pretended to orgasm, but you also may not have spoken up about not enjoying sex–or you may have reassured him that you like having sex with him anyway.
Honestly, I get it, because this is what all the books taught you to do. Remember this quote from For Women Only?
If responding physically is out of the question, let your words be heart words—reassuring, affirming, adoring.
You’ve both been taught that sex is primarily for men (remember Emerson Eggerichs teaching “if your husband is typical, he has a need you don’t have”?). You’ve both been taught that men absolutely need physical release. And you’ve been taught that it’s important to affirm your husband in his sexual skills, whether or not you feel good.
I get this. I just picture all these young wives, getting married with little to no sexual experience and no idea what to expect, and sex not feeling good. And then you figure, “well, I guess I’m not sexual.” So you keep having intercourse regardless, because you know he needs it.
Let me let you in on a finding in our upcoming marriage book The Marriage You Want (which is available for preorder now!). We discovered something that we dubbed “The Unfairness Threshold.” Basically, women can put up with unfairness in a number of areas (sex that isn’t physically pleasurable; housework that isn’t shared; bearing the brunt of the responsibility to fix problems in the marriage) for about 15-20 years until they just can’t do it anymore. Whatever’s been keeping them slogging along, accepting unfair treatment, just gets overwhelmed by resentment. And eventually women want a real marriage, a real connection, a real partnership.
So if you’ve been doing this for 5 years, and you figure, “well, I guess this is the way my marriage will just be,” realize that you’re not going to be able to keep doing that.
And it’s so much harder to bring up the conversation the longer this dynamic goes on.
What about the other scenario?
What if you’ve been faking orgasm and he thinks you like sex?
In this case, you’ve been deliberately deceiving to make him believe something. You’ve done it altruistically perhaps–you want him to feel good about himself. Or perhaps you did it so that he stopped bugging you about whether sex was good and so that he would end sooner (that’s so common). Whatever your motivation, you have been making him believe someting that isn’t true.
And that means that you do have to apologize. Even if you did it for seemingly good reasons (to make him feel good or to let yourself get some sleep because sex was going too long), he needs to know.
Sex will never get better for you if you don’t tell him. And the more you fake it without telling him, the more resentment will grow. He’ll wonder why you don’t want sex more if you like it so much. You’ll feel like he’s ridiculous since he doesn’t even know what’s going on with you and he seems clueless. And it’s just a recipe for disaster.
So how do you tell him that you’ve never enjoyed sex?
This is hard to hear, but there is no option except to tell him.
And there’s no option except to be open and honest about it, without trying to beat around the bush.
If you want a truly intimate sex life, then you’re going to have to learn to experience pleasure, and you can’t learn that if you’ve been faking (or if he thinks your pleasure doesn’t matter to you).
Faking may “work” for a while: maybe the kids are little and you’re exhausted and you just want to get it over with and you want him to feel close to you, and this seems to accomplish that. But one day you won’t be so exhausted. One day you’re going to want sex to be for you, too.
And the longer you make sex just for him, the more resentful you’re going to feel.
You’ll start feeling like he’s absolutely oblivious and likely a little dumb. He thinks everything’s great, but you know it’s not. How can he be that clueless?
Yet from his perspective, how could he think any differently?
And the longer you go on like that, the bigger your dilemma gets. Do you tell him that you haven’t felt that great for 10 years? For 15?
How Can You Have that Conversation if You’ve Been Faking Orgasm?
Carefully. Don’t have it on a whim, or in the middle of another fight where you’re angry at him for being insensitive about something else.
Explain that you truly love him, and that you truly want to be intimate together.
But say that you made a mistake. You thought this would make him happy, but you didn’t realize how dishonest it was and how it would end up driving a wedge between you, and that’s not what you want. What you want is a really intimate and fun sex life, and you really need his help to get there.
You may need to give him some time now to grieve or to get over the deception. Take care not to get angry. I know it’s natural–“why are you so angry? I’m the one who’s been giving with sex for the last few years without getting anything out of it!” Let him have his feelings, because you were deceptive, even if it was for what seems like a selfless reason.
And if you haven’t been faking, tell him something like:
I want to enjoy an amazing sex life with you. I want to feel real passion! But we’ve been missing out on a large part of that great sex life, and I’d like you to work on this with me.
In a nutshell:
- Confess anything you’ve done that’s been deceptive
- Express your desire to have a good sex life
- Express that you believe that you’ve been missing out on something
- Ask for his participation in doing something about it
Show him that this doesn’t mean you’re giving up on sex, but rather the opposite: that you want to experience sex at a whole new level.
This is where The Orgasm Course can help.
We walk you through what’s holding you back from orgasm, looking at mental aspects, lifestyle aspects, and, of course, technique, and then help you get there.
But in our husband’s course we also talk about the dynamics that husbands may have unwittingly created in the marriage that have made it hard for you to speak up, or have made it hard for you to prioritize your own pleasure.
And right now, until midnight tonight, you get the husband’s course for free when you buy the original Orgasm Course version!
Remember: Unless you make a change, things will continue.
So if you want more for your sex life, you’ve got to speak up. And do something. And I hope we make it really easy for you to do just that with The Orgasm Course!
If you’ve ever faked orgasm, why did you start? What happened? Or how did you start talking about how you haven’t enjoyed sex? Let’s talk in the comments!
How many marriage and sex books does the average woman own? The longer she’s been married, the more she’s probably bought. She keeps looking for help year after year, hoping the newest book will finally, FINALLY offer effective solutions, but instead the books all give the same advice: do more, have more sex, give more, have more sex, pray more, have more sex, give up your rights, have more sex, make yourself smaller, have more sex, ignore your needs in favor of his, and, oh, HAVE MORE SEX.
Perhaps a woman who wants to have this conversation should pull out ALL those books, make a nice stack of them on the table, and have bookmarks in the places where this crappy advice is given in each one. (The one sheets would save some time finding these quotes.)
Then when the husband is mad or hurt, she can possibly deflect some of that TO THE AUTHORS WHO GAVE HER ALL THE CRAP ADVICE. The husband can realize that she meant well, that she was trying her hardest to be the good, obedient, giving, self-sacrificing Christian wife that the church has said she must be, if she wants to have a blessed marriage and also avoid being a sinful, rebellious person who may not actually be a Christian at all and is therefore in danger of hell. If the teaching she got was crap, how exactly was she supposed to tell, because questioning authority is ALSO a sign of sinful rebellion and impending hell.
She should also remind him that if HE’S hurt and angry, he should just imagine how SHE feels, having totally effaced herself for years or decades for HIS benefit. Because what benefit did she get? The slow erasure of her personhood, the hundreds or thousands of missed orgasms, the true emotional closeness that she thought she was going to get in marriage. Instead she had to put a shiny, happy, smiling face on her increasing emotional distress, her quite likely physical pain, and her disillusionment as to who Jesus is, because none of this was an easy burden, a light yoke, or an abundant life.
Yeah, the husband will probably get upset.
I totally agree with your second last paragraph especially there. The slow erasure of her personhood. Yep!
100000000%!!!
YES! Yeah. He doesn’t get to be angry except on the wife’s behalf. It’s not her fault, especially if she was raised in this crap (excuse my language). I remember a few months before I discovered Sheila and GSR, my church had a class for the married women about -you guessed it – obligation sex. Of course they didn’t call it that. The woman teaching the class suffered from chronic migraines (it was common knowledge to all of us), and she said that she doesn’t let her migraines get in the way of serving her husband, she does it anyway when she has a migraine because God, Bible, husband’s needs, blah blah blah. Then she ends the class with “your husband doesn’t want to feel like a chore, so don’t make him feel like a chore.”
By the point of this class I had been married 10 years and was already well beyond the threshold of unfairness. I remember being in body wracking sobs “wrestling with God” over how I was expected to show up in my marriage afterwards. During that time of my life I was still in the evangelical indoctrination, and I couldn’t see how any of what I was taught was not right. I mean, it was right there in the Bible! Of course I can see differently now, thanks to Sheila. I remember when she said, “1 Cor 7 is completely mutual. That means you matter. Your experience in the sexual encounter matters.” It was revolutionary. Not hyperbole. I had NEVER heard 1 Cor 7 interpreted that way.
So nope, I’m not apologizing. My husband was the primary beneficiary of my spiritual abuse. If he wants to get mad at someone, point the blame in the right direction. He needs to show up with compassion and grief for the decades of loss suffered by his wife. Lamentations on her behalf.
“your husband doesn’t want to feel like a chore, so don’t make him feel like a chore”
We got some pronoun trouble here.
How about this:
“Your husband doesn’t want to feel like a chore, so he should take some active steps and exert some energy so that he isn’t a chore.”
(And for those who need a chance to laugh, this may be the original “pronoun trouble”:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XlzCPxxp8Ys
Faking it wasn’t our particular issue, but speaking as a husband, yes! I’m so mad at all the authors and teachers working so hard to erase women’s personhood. So mad at myself for not questioning my entitlement earlier. And so grateful to my wife (and, secondarily, to Andrea Dworkin) for telling me how she felt and not letting me go on simply using her.
Ugh, why did we ever start giving such terrible marriage and sex advice that causes so many problems? I internalized the whole “sex is for him” bit long before I was even married, and therefore, once we were, I just settled into the routine that the most I really could really expect from sex was to feel close. And there was no reason for me to believe that! I knew from making out before we were married that I definitely had a sex drive and wanted to enjoy sex, and my husband (who was not raised with any of this garbage), would have been all for it! But once we got married, it was like all these teachings kicked in and I stopped even expecting to enjoy it, through absolutely no fault of my husband’s. (I was also on hormonal birth control at the time, which I found out completely tanks my libido, so that was another factor. It’s hard to want to experience sexual pleasure when your sex drive is completely gone.) Thankfully I never faked orgasm, and after a couple years I started to wonder why my libido was gone and why sexual activity had stopped being fun. I stopped taking the pill, then started suggesting to my husband that we try some different things for me. He was all for it! So I never really had to have the above conversation, but we caught the issue early and were working on it by year 3 of marriage.
Yes, the pill completely zapped my libido too. Thankfully i found FABM after 2 years, but it still took a while for the butterflies i felt while dating/engaged to come back, and a few years before I even knew what an orgasm felt like. Then it took so long to get there it didn’t feel worth the effort most of the time.
I do want to mention another dynamic, which is that the lack of education for conservative women may have been leading them to accept less than orgasm without knowing it. I’ve been married for 6 years and my husband is incredibly supportive, equal partner, focuses on my enjoyment and everything, but because I didn’t know what it should feel like, I would accept one of the earlier plateaus as the orgasm and end it there. A lot of it came down to the materials I had received previously and feeling like I didn’t want to burden my husband with more time and focus on me when it came so easily for him, and it seemed like a conclusion of sorts so I figured that was all there was for me. After all, the books do say that women won’t have as high an interest in sex, so I believed that was why it was less for me.
But the difference in my interest now that I am orgasming regularly is way higher. And I wish I had realized that sooner and enjoyed more earlier on.
This is so good! So true.
Can I just add to the second point that if there’s coercion involved it can be a lot more complicated. I know I used to fake it with an ex who pressured me into sexual acts several times a day and if I said I wasn’t happy with something he would sulk for days and tell me I didn’t love him and try to ‘punish’ me in other ways (like initiating sex and then stopping when I was getting into it or sometimes more severe things that might be triggering for others so I won’t say). I was conditionned to always make it seem that I was enjoying it – and this was probably also affected by the child sexual abuse I went through too. Just as I was terrified to tell my abusers that I wasn’t happy, I also felt I couldn’t tell him. And I think that telling him I hadn’t orgasmed in 10 years would’ve led to extreme consequences. He wasn’t a normal, rational person, he would’ve found ways to punish me severely and it wouldn’t have been safe for me. In my case it was more complicated because I did sometimes orgasm. But I had to completely dissociate to do so and didn’t do the sexual acts out of choice.
Especially after reading Helen’s comment, above, I’d love to see some red flags of behavior added to this post to help determine if you may be unsafe having this conversation with a husband. I think most husbands might be upset for a variety of reasons yet take a few days to absorb then can calmly discuss, but there will be some who take it to the next level. Some may punish or “discipline.” It might be helpful to link to resources to determine if that may be a problem.
One red flag would be if she’s already experiencing a pattern of him punishing her (overt or covert) for not getting what he wants.
Another would be if she *knows* there are going to be fights she doesn’t want to have to deal with. This not a thing that should cause fights; it should cause sorrow and concern.
I would say that if she has faked orgasms for years because her husband was irritated that she didn’t have them early on, this is a red flag too. When he is demanding her enjoyment of the act instead of prioritizing it, that is coercion, and it probably isn’t safe for her to be too forthcoming now.
I’ve noted before how a lot of evangelical teaching pushes women to speak in circles and riddles, rather than clearly and plainly. Then they get to blame women for miscommunication, rather than men for not accepting calm and direct words.
The same thing happens in the bedroom. Don’t teach men that they need to learn to please their wives, and that foot-dragging in that area is unacceptable and cruel. No, teach women to fake orgasm so that she can later be blamed for why the sex was bad for ten years.
Yes! Spot on. Blame shifting.
Yep, make a woman tell lies to massage her husband’s, er, ego and convince people that all is well, then when she finally tells the truth, he gets to be mad and people won’t believe her.
That sounds juuuuuust like Jesus. 🤯
Jesus spoke clearly and plainly. He may have used parables, but those parables weren’t to confuse people or make them find some secret meaning that contradicts the plain meaning; they were to enhance understanding.
Jesus didn’t like when people dissembled with Him, either.
So why have women do this, either in or outside of the bedroom?
To start the universe, God *spoke.* He is Truth. Does that not show us that words *should* be aligned with Truth?
We talk about Satan as the Father of Lies. Why do we encourage lying, talking in circles, years of “white lies,” etc., rather than truth? That doesn’t mean we get to be total jerks when being truthful, but we are obligated to have our words match reality.
I read alllllll the books and met my husband at 28 and had internalised that s*x is for men, fake it till you make it and I don’t recall reading anything about female pleasure. Making out was so much fun, I loved it!! But didn’t O during s*x when we got married.
I kept waiting and waiting, always being positive about s*x and being intimate 1-2 times a week.
2 kids, birth trauma and 8 years down the track I realised that it still hadn’t happened for me. I finally told him and he was hurt, angry, offended but there was no resolution. He didn’t check in with me again about. He said he didn’t want to talk about s*x. That was so disheartening.
Another 2 years later, s*x is ok, I feel some occasional pleasure, we always do the only position I do enjoy and I happily engage every time because it feels “nice”. When I brought it up again and shared things about the orgasm gap and things that turn me on he dismissed me saying “stop reading those articles” and how I’m not normal and there’s something wrong with me (compared to his past gf’s who apparently easily O’d every time 🙄). He said I should be instantly turned on by him, I should be aroused as fast as him, he was disgusted by the suggestion of a toy/tool and said we don’t need to make out anymore now that we are married and can have s*x.
He doesn’t read anything or research about relationships, s*x and how things can change after kids. I did and understood and made huge efforts to bring the spark back. This went unnoticed and unappreciated as he asked to separate earlier this year and he had an affair (we never actually separated). He also admitted to an addiction to p*rn our 10 year marriage, gambling and drinking habits and how unhappy he was. He said “I’m done with feeling bad, this (s*x) is not my fault, you have issues”.
He defensiveness makes it so hard to approach him with this topic. 😥 He *says* he wants to make me happy in the bedroom, but struggles to take on my suggestions.
We’ve reconciled and have a happy relationship, trying to work on our communication skills, but I’m still unsatisfied in bed. I’ve bought the orgasm course to hopefully turn things around!
Oh, Jane, I’m so sorry!
I just want to say: You don’t have to consent to being used for his pleasure if he isn’t willing to put effort into yours. It’s okay to say, “I want to have an amazing sex life with you, but I am unwilling to keep having intercourse if we only focus on your pleasure and not mine. Until you’re willing to work at also bringing me to orgasm, so that we both have fun, I’m not willing to keep having sex.”
Like he is depriving YOU. And that’s not okay!
Due to being separated and divorcing, I haven’t had to have sex in nearly a year. I’m thrilled! It’s something worth celebrating! It’s too bad there isn’t some kind of chip or ring or something to show how long it’s been. Maybe I should just throw a party! (Kidding.)
But seriously, that’s how I’m FEELING about the fact that I don’t have to have sex anymore. I love it!! Freedom, autonomy, agency!! I am my own person and not a receptacle for someone’s penis. I’m not an object to be used. I’m not someone to be objectified to the max by the person I married. I can wear leggings around the house without getting groped and then having to have sex. I can go to sleep when I need to, any day of the week. Nobody touches me when I don’t want. Nobody touches in any ways that I don’t want. It’s glorious! I love it!
My reactions to loving not having sex is the end result of having read countless Christian marriage/sex books for over 20 years. & for listening to the same types of marriage/sex advice from church people:
-you can’t tell him no
-you can’t tell him you don’t like anything (because it’ll hurt his ego–I guess MY ego/feelings don’t matter!)
-fake it til you make it!
-tell him how amazing he is (even if he’s hurting you)
-learn to like what he likes (even if it crosses your boundaries)
-nothing’s off limits if HE wants it
-it’s your job to obey him!
-be joyful, even if you aren’t into it
-make sure he feels like a king (even if he’s treating you badly–again, I don’t matter!)
If I never have to have sex again, what a joy that will be! (And that’s really ironic considering how badly I was looking forward to sex before I got married. I saved my virginity and then later regretted not sleeping around before, because all I saved myself for was miserable one-sided sex. At least if I’d have slept around I could’ve at least had SOME good sex in my lifetime.)
This all makes so much sense but also makes me so mad. I hate what’s been stolen from women!
I totally understand how you’re feeling. But I hate that this young woman, who was owning her sexuality and looking forward to sex, had that completely stolen from her by a man warped from bad advice from the evangelical church that led him to be entitled.
It’s all so ugly.
But I am glad that you’re doing well!
Here’s a virtual party: 🥳 🎉 🪅 🎊 🍺 🍻 🍾 🥂 🎂 🍰
Now go have a real one!
Thank you both so much. It really is a shame that the church is stealing so much from women. It breaks my heart that I’m not alone, that so many people have had so much stolen from them by people who should have taken care of them and built them up.
What do you do when you have had painful sex, one-sided sex for two decades, and now your body reacts like a victim of assault as a visceral trauma response? How can you once again feel safe with the one who hurt you, even if he was brainwashed with these horrific teachings? I cannot seem to get past him causing me pain for his pleasure, because the church taught him I was his only lawful outlet. He had no choice but to use me… or so the teachings implied. There are many more layers to it with trauma in his past, but now I’m left trying to get “excited” about sex with a body the feels disgust at its core. The church stole my sexuality and my youth, and they lied. The lied to a young girl just trying to love God and so the right thing. I seriously wish we had never gone through premarital counseling and gone to any of the seminars. I love Jesus, but the church leveraged so much shame upon me for just being a woman and stole my autonomy for the pleasure of men.
I’m so, so sorry. That’s so tragic. We do have a series on rebuilding and what that would look like, and it may help you.
Thank you so much for your compassion and reply. I will check it out. It’s just super hard when part of you emotionally has the desire, but your body is like NO WAY. I’ve been studying polyvagal theory to see if there’s a way to get the trauma response to lessen. Blessings to you, Sheila. Your work has been instrumental to me in beginning my healing. Just knowing it’s not all my fault has released so much shame already.
Hi Torn, my wife and I have gone through a similar experience of understanding the terrible teachings and rebuilding them, I feel deeply for you and am so sorry for all you have gone through! We began to change our mindset at year six of our marriage, but only now after three years have things really begun to get better (there are many reasons for that, I think it is different for everyone). As the husband I have seen the power of taking sex off the table for however long it takes and going back to work on building trust and intimacy. I needed to reassure my wife (and her body) that she has total autonomy, and that she won’t do anything she does not truly want to do. My wife has had to work through her own barriers towards sex (shame, feeling dirty, etc) and a big step towards breaking those barriers has been mutuality and my understanding that sex is not simply something physical done to relieve the man, but it must grow out of intimacy. I hope this helps, may God bless you and bring you and your marriage true healing!
@Daniel Andrews, I applaud you! And I have such a prayer that my husband will someday have the same mindset.
Thank you for your words, Andrew! It is very encouraging to hear from a loving husband who understands. My husband is understanding and learning so much more about the effects of this type of trauma along with me and is very patient with me as everything is off the table while my body and soul heals. I just want the trauma out of my body, you know? It’s been a long road. Blessings to you!
I mean Daniel! 😀
I’m so sorry for what you’ve endured. I’m finding a lot of growth and piece from somatics. My body is experiencing calm and peace like I never thought possible, and it’s really helping my mindset too. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Sarah Baldwin’s work, but her stuff is really making a difference for me.
Oh thank you for the recommendation, EOF! I will look into it. Thank you for your compassion. I pray your peace and healing continues as well. We haven’t really been through it, haven’t we?
What is your suggestion for when it is not possible to rebuild a sex life with your husband after what has happened? In my case, 20 years of sexual coercion and duty sex and painful sex and worse (no faking orgasms – he knew I did not enjoy sex). After crossing the point of no return after a very traumatic sexual encounter and stopping all sexual contact, my husband has been in therapy for over a year and has repented. He is better, but there is absolutely no way I will be able to ever feel safe sexually with him again. That part of our marriage is 100% over, and I do not want him sexually at all–and have not wanted him sexually for over a decade. I am finally honoring and listening to my body, which screams to me “NO” at the thought of any sexual intimacy with my husband. I have been in therapy for over a year myself attempting to work on this, but still feel deep resentment and anger over how my husband so callously treated me, and I know in my heart of hearts that I will never, ever want him touching me sexually in any way ever again. I feel this is a normal and natural response to all I have experienced, and am not going to harm myself trying to “push through” these feelings any more.
Is divorce the right path here? As an early 40s woman, it is so embarrassing to have never experienced great, connecting, loving sex. And the thought of rebuilding my life is so daunting.
Oh, Leigh, I wish I could answer that for you. I’m glad you’re seeing a counselor, and they can likely walk through that with you. If you’ve been a victim of essentially marital rape for twenty years, that is abandonment. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be rebuilt.
But I just can’t tell you what you should do now. I can only imagine how hard it is though.
If you can, get a copy of the book Mindsight, by Daniel Seigel. He talks a lot about reintegrating the brain after extended stress and trauma, enabling people to learn to function inside themselves again. It’s really good.
OH my goodness, I just bought this book about a month ago and haven’t gotten to it yet! Thank you for the recommendation. I shall put it into the rotation.
What do you do if husband is the one rarely interested in sex, so you put up with the lackluster version of it because if you told him you weren’t getting an O, he probably would be even LESS interested? I’m already dying at only getting it once a month at most.
I just want to say that it isn’t only church and religious sources that say any of this.
First of all, I have a very caring husband. He puts me first. But libido has been an issue for us because mine is low. There have been times when it was fun. But often a lot of effort.
I take antidepressants which are known to reduce libido. In my early to mid 40s I found it harder and harder to want sex. I thought it was my medication. I was also self conscious because my kids were older and still awake when we went to bed.
I was also experiencing drenching night sweats and only spotting for periods when my periods had always been significant for 7 days. Probably perimenopause.
I didn’t connect the two things until much later. It seems menopause caused my libido to completely tank.
I discontinued my medication for two years. Depression and anxiety became debilitating. And my kids ended up having to help me manage. (Yes, parentification to my great shame) My libido did not return. I eventually resumed medication and life improved immeasurably.
I have asked my doctor and my gynecologist for help. My doctor let me try alternative medications which didn’t help. My gynecologist seemed to suggest “use it or lose it”.
I spent endless time looking online for information. YouTube has endless videos about how awful a sexless marriage is and how women should have sex. There is little advice about how to improve it. And comments on the videos by disappointed men simply claim women are manipulating men by withholding sex. Honestly, this is not just a religious thing.
Our society encourages sex. Our society often sees a sexless marriage as a woman manipulating a man. Film and TV portray sex as easy and amazing. And don’t kid yourself… Cosmo and other magazines used to tell us not to discourage him! This is amplified by church teaching. And we see ads for medication to assist with erectile dysfunction but rarely is there any advice for women. It’s like no one cares.
I appreciate what Sheila does, so much. Her blog is like a unicorn… rare.
Recently, I have tried HRT. I am 57 and have been menopausal for years. Now I have bleeding every day. I have to stop HRT and have a biopsy to make sure nothing is wrong. The likelihood is that HRT caused the endometrium to build up. Probably harmless but must be checked.
I have discussed libido with my pharmacist. She suggested I try viagra. Yup. There are a couple of studies which suggest it can work for women. Increased blood flow may help. I have the prescription now. Let’s see what happens.
So… after 27 years of marriage I’m still trying to get help. Fingers crossed.
My unfairness threshold was way lower than 15 years, but I blame that on the aggressive stage 4 cancer diagnosis. 🙃 I fully believe that the imbalance in my marriage directly contributed to my health declining so rapidly.
I’m so sorry! And, yes, it likely did. There’s a lot of research that many of these diseases are caused by stress.
This post is amazing and it address such a tough though important topic. It’s important to prioritize open communication and honest in any relationship and especially when it concerns sex. The part that thrilled me most Sheila is where you emphasized how important it is to address sexual satisfaction and work towards improving it.
It’s important to know that one can have conversation about your sex life any time and seek solutions, whether it’s through dialogue, resources like the Orgasm Course, simply to give yourself permission to expect more. Every couple deserves a fulfilling and intimate connection.