Get it, girl!
This article was written by Ronnie Koenig and provided by our partners at Prevention.
After three kids, Rebecca's* marriage turned sexless,
and eventually ended in divorce. It was seven years before she had sex
again. Here, she explains what it was like to dive back in.
When I was in college, I was always the first of my friends to try new
things, and that included sex. I was the one who lost her virginity the
earliest, and when friends needed relationship advice they always came
to me. I guess, in a way, I was more curious than a lot of my friends,
and a lot more confident in my looks. Being petite, blonde, and having a
bubbly personality meant I never lacked attention from the opposite sex
(and in a few instances, members of the same sex). (Looking for more ways to live a happy, healthy life? Order Prevention—and get a FREE Yoga DVD when you subscribe today.)
When Jon* and I got married right out of college, we were very sexually
active. We would wake up early and have sex before work, and it wasn't
uncommon for me to surprise him at the office for an afternoon quickie
behind locked doors. After we had our first child, things changed
dramatically. I put on a lot of weight and
lost interest in sex. I was exhausted and blinded by baby love. Being
intimate with Jon was the last thing on my mind. Two more babies and
almost 10 years later, we were a loving family but sex had gone from an exciting activity to something that maybe happened once a month. And, for me at least, it wasn't really all that pleasurable when it did happen.
In fact, for the last few years of my marriage, we stopped having sex altogether.
We were teammates and coparents, and we felt more like friends than
lovers. We shared a bed but it was really just a place to sleep, not a
place to make love.
Our marriage ended without a lot of fighting or fanfare. We were
still friends and still wanted the best for our kids, we just weren't a
couple anymore. At first I was a little sad, thinking that Jon would be
out there dating other women, but a bigger part of me was relieved. The
expectation to have sex was no longer there. I was sleeping better and
felt at peace being by myself for the first time in, well, forever.
Right away my girlfriends encouraged me to try online dating.
I did, but it was a total miss. The guys were nothing like their
profiles, and I just didn't feel like a sexual being. After one
particularly horrible date, I deleted my profiles and
decided just to live my life. I started cooking more, walking more, and
getting more involved in the activities I enjoyed before kids, like
writing. I even enrolled in a creative writing class, something I
thought a lot about over the years but never actually had the courage to
do. On the first day of class, I sat down at a table full of women (the
class was comprised entirely of women) and felt a little disappointed
that there would be no male energy in the room. Then the teacher walked
in. Keith was handsome, rugged, and in his late 20s. But spoke like an
old soul. He talked about the works of Henry Miller and Anais Nin, and I
found myself getting turned on just listening to him speak.
One afternoon over coffee, we were discussing a short story I wrote
when Keith reached across the table, put his hand on the back of my neck
and slowly leaned in and kissed me, right there in the middle of the
coffee shop. It was like volts of electricity being sent through my
body. He whispered to me that we needed to go back to his apartment,
which was conveniently right around the corner. At first I said no, not
because I didn't want to but because I hadn't shaved my legs that
morning. It had been weeks, maybe months since my last pedicure, and my
pubic hair definitely looked like a wild, untamed forest. I didn't know
if he'd be able to find my vagina. I didn't know if I even had one
anymore! (Here are 8 things you should know about dating after divorce.)
When he asked me why, I confessed. "I haven't done this in a long
time," I said. He gave me a look and I realized he was probably thinking
weeks or months. Nope. It had been seven years. It was crazy but true.
The formerly up-for-anything girl hadn't been gettin' any in a long,
long time. Not at all since baby number three was made.
"It's OK," Keith said to me as we walked together. "We can take it slow."
And even though my body was excited, mentally I was freaking out. Was
it like riding a bicycle? Would I remember what to do? Would he even
fit inside me? I thought about my best friend telling me over drinks,
"You gotta use it or lose it, honey." What if I had, in fact, lost "it"?
When we got up to Keith's apartment, I went to the bathroom and did a
little mental prep. Whatever, he's attracted to you! I told myself. And
I was old enough to know that great opportunities, like a hot young
writing professor waiting in the next room to pleasure me in every
imaginable way, don't come around every day.
In retrospect I'm glad that I didn't have a lot of time to prepare for that first-time-in-a-long-time sex.
I would have totally overthought it. But in the moment, I just went
with how I felt. When I opened the door to the bathroom, Keith was
standing there with his shirt off, and I could see the bulge in the
front of his pants that I'd felt under the table in the coffee shop. It
was like I was suddenly transported to my college days, when sex was
exciting and new. And in that moment it was new. We didn't actually take things slow;
all I remember is a frenzy of us getting each other's clothes off, and
Keith bending me over the side of his couch. Toward the end of my
marriage sex was uncomfortable, painful even, but not now. I suddenly
realized that the difference here was that I was extremely turned on.
Although our relationship was only a fling, being with Keith taught
me that I am actually comfortable with who I am and that I'm really good
at sex. I'm not sure why I doubted it for so long. These days I have a
pretty active sex life for a single mom of three. My lube (we like this one)
and my vibrator have become indispensable! What I now know is that the
best thing about a dry spell is that when you finally end it, you get to
remember just how incredible sex can be.
*Name has been changed
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