Dear Sugar,
My brain is unquiet today. I had a sex dream about my wife this morning and woke feeling terrible. I realized that at some point in my life, I became a man who feels terrible fantasizing about his wife. I have never had sex with my wife, almost three years now. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. We tried a few times early on, but it just wasn’t working.
Vaginismus. Look it up. (At least, that’s what I think it is from WebMD and other sources, as she’s not gone to therapy or even an OB/GYN about it.)
There are of course other things we could do, but we don’t. Well, we don’t but maybe once or twice a month, and I emphasize “maybe.” And what we do is of the most basic sexual variety: what the kids would call second base (maybe third if you live in the Bible Belt): heavy petting, hand jobs, dry humping. She’s not interested in anything else.
I want to be fair to my wife: she was a victim of sexual abuse as a child, and now that she’s married and for the first time in her life trying to have a sexual relationship (she grew up in the church and is still a devout Christian), she’s realizing there’s a lot left to unpack there. But she refuses therapy and her closest friends reinforce her attitude toward sex; all but one or two of them regard sex as a chore, a sticky and disgusting thing, a thing unbeautiful.
I try to be patient and caring and understanding. I try not to develop crushes and infatuations with other women. At least so far I’ve kept myself to myself, which is only partially consoling. I take care of myself often times. She doesn’t know. She’d be disgusted if she knew. She told me she masturbated once in her life, and how awful and disgusted she felt after. It makes me feel disgusting. And unimaginably lonely.
I guess I’m writing for some insight, some perspective. I know you’ve had experience dealing with sexual abuse, and I know it’s something that is never completely healed. I often reread your column, “The Baby Bird,” and it helps. It brings back patience and understanding, at least for a time. But, I grow more and more terrified that I’ll never have a healthy sexual relationship with my wife, and unsure whether I can live an entire life with that fear, especially if through the years it become less a fear and more a fact.
Signed,
Celibate
Dear Celibate,
You poor horny sweet pea. You and your wife have a serious problem. That you’re so understanding in the face of it is means there’s hope, but only if your partner is willing to confront her sexual dysfunction. You have diagnosed her with vaginismus via WebMD, but we both know this won’t do. Your wife needs to see a doctor who can assess her condition so she can get appropriate treatment. I strongly encourage you to insist on this. And once you’ve got that on the calendar, I urge you to get your heinies into couples counseling lickety split.
You wrote to me because you know your marriage in its current state is unsustainable. The next step is to share that fact with your wife. She does not have to fuck you if she doesn’t want to fuck you. I want to be clear about that and I encourage you to get clear about it, too. But likewise, you don’t have to be celibate for years on end unless you choose to be. As your committed partner, your wife is obliged to openly address your needs, sexual and otherwise, even if she opts not to meet them. I suggest you communicate this to her with the gravity it warrants. You don’t need to discuss what’s been bothering you; you need to express your bottom line.
Though it’s true that eventually your bottom line might simply be you must have sex with me or our marriage is over, at this juncture I think you should push your wife only to engage. We must together find a way to create a sexual intimacy that’s satisfying to us both or I can’t stay in this relationship, would be a good place to start. Not because you don’t richly deserve a woman to fuck you till you’re silly this very minute, but because your wife needs to do some significant healing and your understanding and patience while she does it will only help the cause.
I’m not a fan of ultimatums, but sometimes we need to give them lest we become shells of the people we know ourselves to be. You’re a sexual being. You want to have sex with your wife. If she’s never going to be sexually intimate with you, you need to know that so you can make healthy decisions for yourself. Because you’ve participated in them so long, your wife’s sexual problems have become your own. A forced three-year dry hump is a desperate state of affairs. If your wife refuses to change, you’re going to have to change yourself—either by accepting her as she is and remaining celibate, renegotiating the terms of your marriage so you can have lovers, or by ending your relationship so you can find one with someone else that’s more fulfilling.
For the sake of this letter and because I’m an optimist, I’m going to assume your wife will be open to confronting her issues with sex once she realizes her marriage is at stake. It’s hard to say exactly what her issues are. As you likely learned in your research, vaginismus is defined as an involuntary spasm of the muscles surrounding the vagina upon penetration, but nowhere in your letter do you suggest it’s a physical condition that’s preventing your partner from (ever! in three years!) having intercourse with you. Instead, you describe a negative attitude toward sex that you conjecture has been caused by psychological damage from past sexual trauma combined with a devout adherence to (presumably) shame-based religious interpretations of sexual desire and behavior. Your wife doesn’t masturbate, she’s disgusted by the idea of you masturbating, she refuses to fuck you (or even, it seems, engage in oral sex), and she participates—occasionally and apparently without relish—in “other things,” which are so elementary that you felt compelled to describe them using ninth grade lingo.
That’s weird. It seems unkind to say, but I mean it in the kindest way. I have hundreds of letters about all sorts of sexual hang-ups and problems and perversions, but your letter is among the weirdest. I tell you that because I hope it will be a consolation to you to know that you’re right to be terrified by the lack of sexual intimacy in your marriage and also to bolster your position should your wife resist your efforts by attempting to convince you that you’re being unreasonable when you tell her you won’t go on like this.
Your statement that your wife is realizing she’s got “a lot left to unpack” is heartening. It indicates that she might be willing to do the work she needs to do in order to not only have healthy sexual relations with you, but also to find a way to be present in her own body, for that is truly what’s at issue here. Your marriage is at stake, but her very well-being is on the line. She can’t feel you because she quite literally can’t feel herself. Perhaps it’s the abuse in her past that brought on this monumental disconnect; perhaps it’s her embrace of a set of cultural and religious beliefs that equate female lust with sin.
Only she can know. It’s her job to unpack the bag. My gut sense is that you’d do well to not to guess what’s inside. Set your limits. State your needs. Respect your boundaries. Then step back. Let your partner define for herself the shape of whatever it is she’s up against. This alone will likely be a powerful and healing experience for her. That no man has ever born witness to her strength might be her wound. I think it was mine. I think it’s the wound of anyone who was ever violated by a father or father figure at a young age and maybe it’s the also the wound of anyone who ever swallowed the lie of female body shame.
Allow your supportive silence to be part of her cure.
Of course you’re right that the sexual abuse your wife experienced as a child may be the reason for her aversion to sex, but it may not be. The good and bad things that happen to our bodies at the hands of others plays out in unpredictable ways over time. It’s folly to draw a straight line between two things when one of those things is sex. Perhaps your wife has made that line so straight and bright that it’s become precisely her problem: she cannot break the thread that runs in her psyche between the abuse and you.
Healing is about breaking threads and making new ones. It’s about redrawing the line between our powerlessness and our power. I don’t agree with you that those who’ve suffered sexual abuse can’t ever heal completely. I think we’re altered by what hurts us, but with love and consciousness, with intention and forgiveness, we’re capable of being whole again. Completely.
I believe myself to be healed. I know a lot of sexual abuse survivors who are. We’re here. We’re waving to you from the other side. We’re taking it all off. We’re getting down and some of us are even getting dirty. We hope your wife will join us.
Yours,
Sugar
46 responses
Yes, Celibate, heed Sugar’s advice here. Really heed it. It seems to me that the wife’s closest friends could also do with a bit of therapy themselves. Wife needs healthier bffs.
Sugar is too sweet to say it like this, so I will…if she doesn’t get treatment, if she doesn’t try, if she doesn’t even want to meet you halfway, if she expects you to just suck it up, don’t live a sexless miserable life. Fucking dump her. Now. Don’t wait til there are kids to complicate things, til it’s been twenty years instead of three, til you have a whole life you need to blow up to be able to escape, because by then you will hate the very sight of her and you will do anything including hurting yourself to get away.
http://www.asexuality.org/home/
I think it’s important to throw this resource out there early, just in case. I’ve no idea if the wife in this situation is an asexual person or someone who can (and certainly should attempt) to try and reclaim her sexuality, but I want to make sure it’s clear that being asexual is a valid identity. That’s not to say a sexual person is obligated to live their life in an unfulfillable way in order to stay married to such a person, but neither should the wife feel that they must absolutely have sex someday or be an unfulfilled, unhappy person.
Love this column and the truth that can be found within, but I believe it’s important that people redefine sexuality so that both choosing to be sexual and choosing to not be sexual are both equally valid and worthwhile choices, assuming they are made consensually.
“I’m not a fan of ultimatums, but sometimes we need to give them lest we become shells of the people we know ourselves to be.”
May 2007 – last time I had sex. Perhaps twice in the 2-3 years before that. The ultimatum came and went some years back when during one big argument I almost walked out. But I didn’t. Now we live our lives in an isolation and quiet desperation that we know is not normal but do not recognize it because life goes on and the abnormal and “weird” becomes the normal and routine. So long as there is no confrontation, life meanders along – perhaps finding some consolation in other things (online pictures and videos, other non-sexual stuff to keep one occupied). In some ways, perhaps we hide from ourselves and our inadequacies by ignoring the obvious problems. Perhaps we are too scared. Perhaps we live only in a world of what-ifs because we are too scared to change from the status-quo because the unknown other side may be even more difficult to deal with.
Married couples should not have to live like we do. But some of us do. I know it is weird. Not just weird but tragic.
I can recommend Dr. David Schnarch and his books: Passionate Marriage, Intimacy and Desire, and Resurrecting Desire. My husband and I just returned from a four-day intensive with him. I believe he has it nailed if you ever want to get nailed.
Oh the damage the Puritans have done to people’s psyches. When I read stuff like this, I just want to weep. It’s not enough that Celibate’s wife had the horrible experience of sexual abuse, she has bought hook line and sinker the Puritan belief that sex is dirty and nasty and has nothing to do with spirituality or God or humanity or relationships or even just alleviating the pain of living for a few minutes. To quote Bertrand Russell, “The Puritan imagines that his moral standard is THE moral standard; he does not realize that other ages and other countries; and even groups in his own country, have moral standards different from his, to which they have as good a right as he has to his.” Celibate’s wife has SO MUCH work to do not only to be free to have sex with the man who loves her, but just to be FREE. I’m pretty certain the Sermon on the Mount did not include Blessed are those who do not fuck. My heart goes out to Celibate and his wife. I wish them both happy… and unfortunately that happy may not be together as husband and wife.
Great response, Sugar.
THANK YOU Sugar, for pointing out that this letter is weird, because I don’t think most people are going to think so. And thank you for acknowledging that it might be a physical problem. No one ever does that with women. I didn’t have sex until I was in my 20s because of a health problem that resulted in no sex drive. When I was a teenager my pediatrician would always ask “Are you attracted to boys or girls?” and I’d think about it and say “Well, neither” and she’d just say “Ok” Later I told her that I wanted to have sex but just couldn’t, she said that was ok too and I just needed to “look really hard” to find my sexuality. If it had been a teenage guy who said that, I’m sure I would have had a thorough physical, had my heart and hormones checked. And it turned out I did have a heart problem, but it wasn’t diagnosed until years later. And that pediatrician was a top adolescent doctor at one of America’s top hospitals.
That first guy I had sex with, I told him all this, and he just never got it. The next day his roommates were calling me the Catholic girl. None of them could seem to comprehend that a girl would choose to wait on sex unless she was crazy religious. Even my closest friends continued to think I had some kind of moral hangup.
I’ve been with my current boyfriend and we’ve never actually had sex, our physical relationship is kind of like Celibate describes. But he would never describe it like that. I do worry that I am unable to give him a fulfilling sex life, but I’m more worried about my own health. And so is he.
I kind of just focused on one aspect of this letter, I know there’s a lot I didn’t address. Just wanted to get that out there.
Sugar, that was a wonderful, thoughtful, and kind response.
I work in the field of sexualized violence support and prevention and I am also just beginning to heal from my own wounds and I would like to recommend the book Healing Sex by Staci Haines. It is an amazing and loving resource for women dealing with childhood sexual trauma and provides hope and a path to healthy, embodied sexuality.
I just want to say that as a devout Christian it says in the bible that sex is NOT just for procreation. See the verse below, I think its far to easy to jump to a conclusion that devout Christians find sex to be appalling and repulsive. I am a devout Christian, married to a beautiful man, living with a ton of sexual scars and enjoying my sex life fully.
“But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.
“Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command.” (1 Corinthians 7:2-6, NIV)
Ray, there CAN’T be kids to complicate things, unless Celibate and his wife have the bones to pony up for in-vitro and a C-section.
I have to wonder if these issues ARE more deep-seated than a mere combination of PTSD from the child abuse and a religious aversion to sexuality. Celibate, you said yourself that your wife hasn’t been to a gynecologist since you’ve been married, which is DANGEROUS for her. These issues may eventually impact her physical health if, say, she develops cervical or uterine cancer and it goes undetected until it’s metastasized and found in her liver. Sugar nailed it when she said there’s a disconnect between your wife and her own body, but this is the type of disconnect that could prove fatal if she’s so afraid of her own vagina that she’s skipping regular lady doctor visits.
It’s clear that your wife, Celibate, is suffering from something beyond what any of us can fathom. Give her the space she needs to start the healing process, but be forceful with how crucial it is for her own health, physical and mental–not just to your dick and your marriage–this work is. And be prepared to turn tail and leave if she refuses. Taking care of herself is something she began to owe you the moment you said your marriage vows, and she’s not living up to her end of the bargain.
I wish for the best results for both of you in this. As a fellow child abuse and rape survivor, I feel for your wife. My mother also survived child abuse and reading your description of your wife’s symptoms reminded me a LOT of my mother’s own shame with sexuality.
I am a little troubled by the assumption in this letter (and in your response, too, Sugar) that this is a simply a problem to be fixed. As if there is something wrong with the wife, and once an ultimatum is given and the problem addressed that’s the end of it. Problem solved!
Sex is a relationship. It’s a discussion. It’s an ever changing and evolving relationship, just like a marriage. It’s not something to be HAD, despite the language we use to describe it. Presumably the letter writer got into a marriage with his wife without discussing sex or it’s role in their relationship. Why? Why didn’t the letter writer think it was relevant to include his own sexual background? As if the only factor that matters is that he is not getting something he desires. He’s diagnosing his wife on the internet and offering it up as an excuse, but how does that make a difference? He’s making excuses and now he should make ultimatums?
She does have a lot to unpack. But I think Celibate does, too.
It’s not necessarily “weird” that his wife doesn’t want to have sex, either. I do think it is “weird” that Celibate feels entitled to something he isn’t willing to discuss with his wife, however.
I do wonder if the letter-writer also has some long-unresolved issues that relate to sex? Even if his wife doesn’t go to couples counseling there might be some stuff for him to explore in individual therapy in terms of why he’s accepted this unusual situation so far.
Also, sometimes people who seem all the world to be asexual in opposite-sex relationships end up being gay. In college a straight male friend of mine pointed this out as I and a string of mutual friends ended up coming out over the course of several years. He noticed that some bi or gay folks had sexually fulfilling opposite-sex relationships. But he also said the ones who seemed asexual or claimed to be asexual all ended up being gay (of the Kinsey 5-6 variety).
That doesn’t mean everyone like that is (small sample size yadda yadda yadda) but I never forgot his observation. And it could fit with the dry-humping-but-no-BJs-or-penetration, extreme dislike of masturbation (hers and his!) and ultra-devout guilt.
@D: It’s not clear from the letter whether sex is impossible or whether they’ve never had intercourse, just that they tried and it just wasn’t working. It’s possible to be in a largely sexless marriage where intercourse is reserved for procreation. That would be my life circa 1996.
@Black Bird: If he’s miserable the way things are, then it’s either a problem to be fixed or a hell he’s supposed to resign himself to for life. I don’t buy that the latter is a reasonable option. And I don’t buy that just because two people ended up married that it is an absolute that they will make each other happy. I hope his wife is able to get help for the issues she wants help with, and I hope that she is able to find a partner with whom she can have a mutually happy and healthy relationship with. But there is no reason to demand that Celibate has to be that person, his own happiness be damned.
You can’t demand that she change, but you also can’t demand that Celibate stay. Neither is a bad person regardless of what they choose.
I find myself wondering how Celibate ended up in this relationship. Did he think that his partner’s issues around sexuality would spontaneously change after they got married? Did he marry her without knowing her at all? I wonder what made this relationship work well enough in the first place for marriage to have been the logical next step. I suppose it’s possible that people are so unrealistic about the long-term psychological and emotional effects of child abuse that they enter into relationships with rose-colored “Oh, it will work out somehow” glasses on.
I am in a similar position to the letter writer, only on the other side of the table, and feel I should speak up.
I also have extremely frustrating issues with penetrative sex. I might have vaginismus. Sex really hurts. Even when I feel “ready,” I mean. It’s usually okay if the entering object is small, but, unfortunately, my boyfriend is not small and I want to have sex so badly but am always afraid it will hurt. When it does hurt going in, it just serves as more negative reinforcement. Then, when he pulls out, I sometimes cry not out of pain, but utter despair and frustration and sadness. I cannot force myself to do something that is literally painful for me to make our sex life “normal”; that will only make it worse. The last thing I want is to further associate sex and my lover with pain; pain is not a kink for me.
We have oral sex and do other things, because I don’t have any moral issues at all with sex, but I don’t really know what to do about my own reluctance to have intercourse. It has been awhile for us, too, though not three years. We will try again soon, I’m sure. I do make sure I am aroused before we do it, though I suppose psychologically I may not be prepared yet. I don’t know. It’s just difficult. I want it to be better, but it feels like there is some physical or mental (or both) block keeping me from happiness. I also find that whenever I masturbate I think about men who have wronged me in some way — who have treated or touched me inappropriately — and this suggests to me that the relationship I have with sex is still somewhat unhealthy or “broken.”
I say this mainly in support for Black Bird’s comment about the importance of having real, honest discussion with your partner. A long discussion from the heart. I cannot tell from this letter if Celibate has really discussed this with his wife or not. It’s also unclear if or why these two got married with so little understanding of each other’s needs and issues. Did Celibate know what he was signing up for? Nothing that happened to this woman has been her fault. It is not her fault that she fears sex, that her history of abuse has affected her relationship with sex, that it hurts. It sounds as if she is deliberately avoiding the issue because she is scared to face it directly. It sounds like she is carrying so much fucking weight, including, possibly, guilt that she cannot satisfy Celibate. The world can make the sexually abused feel like broken, worthless machines. And a lot of shame comes with that feeling, too.
Celibate needs to do what he needs to do to live a happy life eventually, and that might be divorcing his wife. But, at the same time, he chose to marry her not long ago, and to me it feels unfair to abandon her for not feeling ready to face (basically, relive) her trauma in therapy, for having these issues with sex after traumatic sexual experience, for wanting to avoid painful sex. Certainly she cannot have sex if it hurts her. A little empathy will go a long way on both ends. I think she does need an ultimatum (of sorts) to face these fears, to really express just how important it is that she begin her steps forward, but a more careful and gentler one than some here seem to be suggesting. The emphasis should be on her recovery, not sex.
But I do want to thank the letter writer for his letter, for verbalizing the frustrations that he is currently feeling. It has inspired me to try again soon.
“I suppose it’s possible that people are so unrealistic about [pretty much all manner of shit] that they enter into relationships with rose-colored “Oh, it will work out somehow†glasses on.”
Bingo.
Not everybody has all their emotional baggage sorted and managed and indexed and understood and contextualized when they’re at marrying age. If they did, divorce would be obsolete, and Sugar would have very little to write about. I applaud those of you who do, but life for the rest of us is messier. We make mistakes. We think wishfully. We ignore warning signs. We want what we want even when we know it’s bad for us, or unobtainable, or comes with strings attached. And then later, we cope. Sometimes we retreat.
“You’re stupid for marrying her in the first place” is not advice that Celibate can take to the bank, y’know?
Dearest Sugar,
Somehow, anything I might add here in a baker’s dozen minutes, aside from contributing personal experience, can’t begin to measure up to the scores of hours you put into these situations. Your personal reflection, dedicating hours of your time to these issues, steeping the leaves of our problems in your spring waters produces harmonies, wise and clear reflections; directions we can walk to obtain the conversations with our problems. You are Earth Wind and Fire.
You are our (and your) moral and psychological and spiritual Global Positioning Sugar.
Thank you for helping us to locate and extract the venom of our mistakes. Thank you for being the one
to chime in when the hammer strikes us dumb. We prayed once for a clear glass of water, a tall glass, and
girl, did we ever get you. Proof that if all else fails, we can always tap the clouds.
@Ray — Nowhere in my comment did I say that Celibate was stupid for marrying his wife; I said I wondered what had made the relationship work well enough for them to get married. Although even if I had said he was stupid for marrying her, it might actually have been advice he could take to the bank, if it were phrased differently. Ill-considered decisions can be learned from, so that the same pattern isn’t continually repeated. If one of his reasons for marrying was that he thought this situation would somehow change without a great deal of very difficult work, clearly that thought process is not serving him well.
@anotherfrustratedwoman I hope you check back in to read this. Get your booty to a doctor, girl! I used to suffer the kind of pain you describe– for almost 8 years. I tried to grit through it or relax more or use more lube, etc. Then I finally found a doctor who sent me to physical therapy for pelvic floor dysfunction. The physical therapy was hard, but I am telling you, after a few months, I was finally able to intercourse pain free. For the first time in my life! Like a miracle, except you work for it.
Wow. I knew as soon as I started reading this page that this was going to be a difficult one for me to look at.
My story and experiences are not the same as those of Celibate’s wife, but there are similarities (and I’m glad to see other people in the comments expressing other kinds of similarities – things are so much more diverse than the standard doesn’t-feel-like-having-sex narrative might have you believe). From where I’m standing, the best advice Sugar gives here is very simple: “My gut sense is that you’d do well to not to guess what’s inside. […] Let your partner define for herself the shape of whatever it is she’s up against.”
Because several years ago, when I went off sex with my then-partner, what was worse than going off sex was a) feeling the pressure to have it anyway, and b) his constant attempts to theorise what was going on in my own head. I don’t know if I can begin to describe how damaging that was. I didn’t get to define things for myself; if I tried, I wasn’t believed. (I hesitated about linking this up in case it’s too much of a tangent, but there are more details here, in case it is useful to anyone.) So when I hear stories like this, that’s my first fear for the partner in question. Things went so badly with my ex-partner that I came away from that relationship with more issues about sex than I had before we met.
But I think I still get to have a happy ending, because my interest in sex did come back once I felt safe again, together with a clearer sense of my boundaries and of what behaviour is and isn’t acceptable within a relationship. I wish Celibate and his wife luck and healing in whatever form that takes.
A long time ago–more than 20 years ago–when my oldest child was born, the delivery was difficult and my recovery took a long time. I discovered that I had a massive infection when my spouse and I tried to have sex for the first time a month after the baby came. It was excruciatingly painful. We went to the hospital where they had to anesthetize me in order to examine me properly. I had surgery to clear up the infection and I spent five days in hospital on IV antibiotics.
For the next two years, sex was very painful. I had had a very active sex life with other partners before I married, and with my spouse, too. But the memory of the pain and all that went with it was very strong. I had vaginismus, though I didn’t know what that was at the time. I felt broken. I thought that there was something very wrong with me. I thought it had to do with my baby–adjusting to being a mother was more difficult than anyone had ever told me it would be. I felt guilty. I loved my daughter, and I very much wanted to be her mother, but I wondered why I was broken. My spouse couldn’t really understand these things and, to be honest, I’m not sure how well I tried to explain any of them. I blamed myself and felt terrible. When I tried to have sex and it was very painful, I thought that I’d earned that pain, that I deserved it, somehow.
I imagine that Celibate’s wife feels some of these things. I imagine that she feels different things, too. I have no idea what has caused her vaginismus, but I think I can relate to any sense of shame, frustration and failure she may feel.
Two years later, after I’d had my second child and was still having vaginismus, we saw a sex therapist. This was very helpful. I learned to relax my vaginal muscles by slowly dilating my vagina with small, then larger and larger dildos. I recovered feelings of pleasure and began to enjoy sex again. It took a couple of months to work through it, but, as I said, I had plenty of good, positive experiences of sex before vaginismus. I was comfortable with my body and with masturbation. The therapy I needed was to rebuild my confidence and learn to relax. It worked. Sex became, and continues to be, a joyful thing in all the ways that mattered to me, personally, and to me and my spouse, together.
I’m only sharing my experience here in order to say that there are options that really do work. Celibate’s wife may need different things from therapy.
I wish Celibate and his wife all the best in the time to come. Whatever they decide to do, on their own or together, I hope the outcome will be positive and life-enhancing for both of them.
Celibate, I have the same question as Celibate & others: How did you get married without once talking about sex? I am a Catholic, and though we often get distorted public treatment on sex, and maybe a lot of folks just aren’t paying attention to all this, but I’m really proud and grateful for what our Pastor & Church (big C) required for us to be able to get married. We had to go through six months of pre-marital counseling which included a survey involving questions on attitudes of sex. Our Pastor brought up to us the disparities in our answers on sex and wisely asked us to discuss it privately. Many folks adhere to this obligation through a “Pre-Cana” retreat and we chose Engaged Encounter. There is also Marriage Encounter which I would encourage Celibate or anotherfrustratedwoman to check out regardless of their personal religious beliefs or affiliations. The overnight retreat involved a session on sex and afterwards, due to my own trauma, I ended up crying horribly for a long time in a corner of this public retreat center and my husband-to-be just waited and listened. I know coping with my trauma has been embarrassing and exhausting and even vicariously traumatizing for my husband (also, Celibate, please look up “viacrious traumatization” and “self care” regardless of what course this relationship takes). But his greatest gifts were listening when I needed it, and also speaking up when he needed it. The second thing I am grateful to the Catholic Church for is the vow to be “open to children.” Which means sex & also willingness to deal with the possible consequences of sex. Basically, sex is a given and a vow. (And I know this is un-Catholic, but in my marital experience now, First Vows is living together & Final Vows is children) If you don’t want sex, then don’t get married! There are also wonderful monastic options for Christian people to live in community without sex. Many of them are sexual beings as well, but they realize sex is not what they want out of their most fulfilling & intimate relationships AND THAT’S OKAY!! It’s not weird to want intimacy without sex, but I think Sugar is right that it IS weird and unfair and unwise to either spouse to get married and THEN try and deal with issues like sex, money, children, etc.
@Ashley L: Thank you for throwing out the resource on asexuality. That’s a huge factor that I feel was seriously overlooked in this column.
Celibate, please visit vaginismus.com and buy the dilators set for your wife. Lube and dilators — they worked for me (not perfectly, since eliminating pain is not the same as experiencing pleasure), and she must be diligent about using them, but i promise that they do help.
But remember, do not make it about you; you’re not trying to help her recover so that you can have sex with her. you want her to get better so that she can approach sex without so much mental and physical torture.
Celibate, when (hopefully not if) you and your wife seek counseling, I’d suggest looking for a pastoral counselor. Pastoral counselors are trained clinical counselors, who also have strong associations to faith communities and often have theological training. They are trained specifically to be sensitive to issues of faith and can help unpack some of the guilt and shame created by one’s faith community. As a pastoral counselor, I took several courses around spirituality and sexuality and the intrinsic connection between the two. The AAPC website (aapc.org) has a registry of pastoral counselors and I hope you can find one in your area. Finally, like Sugar said, there is hope in your letter, I hope that you can trust that hope. Blessings.
Thanks Della, and also thanks elizabeth for providing a link. I will probably try using those dilators first (really great that you can get them online so easily), and then if that fails move onto the possibility of physical therapy.
@BlackBird and elizabeth … bingo, you nailed it. As have so many others.
@anotherfrustratedwoman … I have had vaganismus all my life (and the dysfunctional sexlife to go with it) but recently found out its relationship to pelvic floor weakness. http://www.montereybayurology.com/urocond/PelvicFloorDysfunction.htm
http://www.beyondbasicsphysicaltherapy.com/pfd.shtml
It’s not just for incontinence.
That 8-week therapy did more for me than any set of dilators, since it tackled an actual source of pain: a weak pelvic floor muscle (probably congenital, although could have been damaged). Not all women with these conditions have been abused or have been taught that sex is bad and dirty. That’s a cliche my 1st sex therapist dove into headlong when I first tried to tackle this problem, and thus got nowhere.
But Elizabeth is so so so right: ” …eliminating pain is not the same as experiencing pleasure …” I don’t know where to turn for this one, except an understanding, kind, generous man, which I am now lucky enough to have found.
My advice to this husband might have added:
Instead of being consumed with your own loss, why don’t you imagine caring about hers, even if she doesn’t seem to care about it herself. She does. She just doesn’t know how to say so.
Her loss: she doesn’t *know* — has never known — sexual desire and satisfaction. For her, it’s media hype, it’s a fairly tale, something “those other†women talk about having, but she never will. She “knows†something is “wrong with her†because she (a) feels no desire, and (b) can’t complete intercourse or does so only with pain. In seeming to be unwilling to try, she has given up her sexual life. That’s her loss, and you’d better believe in some way she grieves for it.
@Ashley L., the moment I finished reading the column, I wondered whether anyone would mention asexuality. Thank you for bringing it up so quickly. I don’t mean to imply that Celibate’s wife is necessarily asexual; but I do take issue with Sugar’s assumption that she must be suffering from sexual dysfunction and is therefore automatically in need of help. There is an enormous difference between sexual dysfunction and lack of sexual attraction.
Sugar’s advice, for the most part, is spot on, regardless of what the underlying issue may be– communication about sexuality is utterly essential in any relationship, and if, at the end of the day, partners have different needs but cannot find ways to meet them together, they may ultimately need to part ways in order to find what’s best for them.
But, Sugar? Really? Implying that this is one of the weirdest letters you’ve received cuts a certain percentage of your readers to the quick. It’s a small enough percentage that you may not really care about offending them. But if you’re the kindhearted and compassionate person you have always seemed to me to be, you might want to revisit the assumption that anyone who does not desire sex is by definition broken and in need of repair. As strange as it may sound, some of us suffer far more through erasure of identity than through lack of sexual intimacy.
@Julian, I understand how Sugar’s saying “weird” might ruffle some asexual feathers, but with the word “weird” she wasn’t trying to criticize anyone’s sexuality, merely to give power and a sense of urgency to Celibate’s needs. And isn’t it even a little weird that a grown married man has begun to view himself as so threatening that he speaks of sex in 8th grade terms?? Celibate hasn’t been able to stand up for himself and his needs, and by telling him that this isn’t what a loving relationship looks like, she is telling him that he is not wrong to want an intimate connection. A sex-less relationship absolutely *could* be what a loving relationship looks like, if he were happy, but he surely isn’t, and this is the real problem.
To Celibate, I would say that it doesn’t matter who is right or wrong, or damaged or ‘healthy”, but whether you can both be truly content in this relationship or not. I think Sugar’s suggestion of joint therapy could reap incredible results. But in the end, if you both have needs and wants that are at complete odds, you will both be happier with other people.
so under “about dear sugar”, there’s now a bio of stephen elliot. has it been confirmed that sugar IS stephen elliot? i am just…not sure how i feel about that. but i will adjust!
Hi Makenna,
That was a tech error. It’s been fixed! While no one knows who Dear Sugar is, we have confirmed that it’s not Stephen.
Happy Guessing!
-Isaac
oh, thank goodness! i was worried for a moment there. thank you Isaac.
Oh! I love Sugar commenters as some of the most loving, insightful writers on the web. I want to add my story here because I’m not hearing it from anyone else, yet, not really.
The gist of it is this: I was terrified of sex and my own body until I took control of both in my early twenties. I grew up religious, and that’s part of it, but not all.
My upbringing, to me, was normal. We went to church on Sundays, a fairly liberal Texan Methodist church. Sexuality wasn’t disparaged; my mother was essentially an atheist hippie who encouraged both myself and my sister to ask questions and answered honestly. I remember discovering from her, as a first grader, the interesting fact that you do not have sex with the same hole as the one you use to pee.
But though there was no overt laying down of the law, no booming voice in the sky proclaiming sexuality to be wrong, there was a pervasive SENSE of its wrongness. I masturbated a lot as a young girl, as many young girls do, and always felt it was something to hide and to be ashamed of.
Part of it, perhaps, was the way adults in my life reacted to sexually explicit images and messages from the media. These we, as children, were heavily protected from, and I learned that I got approval if I thought and spoke of them as “gross.”
Part of it, very likely, was the over-interest parents and other adults in my life took in developing pubescent bodies, which ranged from fairly innocuous comments to flat-out mocking.
It’s so difficult to pinpoint parts of a culture that lead to ingrained beliefs, and I’d be hard-pressed to start now. We’ll skip to my teenage self: an outspoken and sincere proponent of chastity before marriage; a girl who would not admit, even to her closest and sexually active friends, that she did masturbate; someone whose sense of sexuality centered around her socially acceptable – and lauded – breasts, but studiously avoided nether regions of any kind.
To me, sex and genitalia were gross and scary. My poor high school boyfriend asked me to simply LOOK at his penis; I did so, but it terrified me. I couldn’t imagine the logistics of intercourse. It seemed preposterous that something that monstrous could fit inside a cavity into which I had difficulty inserting a tampon.
I think it must be difficult for many people to understand this perception of sexuality and body parts as intimidating, revolting, and above all, to be avoided. And in my culture, it was socially acceptable – applauded! – for a teenage girl to avoid even thinking about such lascivious things.
Here’s the rub: I am NOT asexual and never was. I have always been an intensely sexual person. I managed to channel and divert my sexuality into thoughts and actions that did not challenge my fears or preconceptions. Much like Celibate’s wife, I was a citizen of “second base.”
It took many years, a move to a new city, and a complete change in world view before I was ready to even look at these truths. At twenty three, I was still technically a virgin; I had a boyfriend to whom I gave blow jobs – I had conquered that much of my fear and revulsion – but I could not allow him to reciprocate or even touch my genital area. My own body was the last frontier of terror and shame.
In the end it was not, as many others have shared, a loving experience with a sexual partner that enabled me to claim my own body and sexuality; it was a loving experience with myself, reading a book.
A friend gave me a copy of “The Guide to Getting It On,” which I squirreled away and opened, with trepidation, when I was alone. At first it was too difficult for me to even read this book, all my myself, with absolutely no consequences. I had to take it in small bites. I was overwhelmed with the frankness, the openness, and above all, the theme that everything was acceptable. Bodies were acceptable. What I felt and liked was acceptable. More: these were good things, not things to be ashamed of or hidden.
I’m making myself cry writing this.
I’m sharing this experience because it seems to be unusual in this open, accepting community. Also because I suspect, though it is not commonly discussed for obvious reasons, that it’s not as uncommon as all that, in general.
Overcoming avoidance and fear is all about patience and love.
Thanks to advice-seekers, to Sugar, and to the community here for being a stronghold of those things.
@Ray:
“blah blah blah, It never said that Celibate and his wife never had sex. Blah blah blah”
It didn’t? What’s this then:
“I have never had sex with my wife, almost three years now.”
@Sonya: You’re right, I must have misread that. I thought he meant it had been three years since they last attempted it. (And you might be kind of amazed at what passed for “intercourse” the night my second kid was conceived.)
However, I still stand behind all my blah blah blah.
I feel for Celibate, but I feel even worse for his wife. We can talk all we like about Puritanical positions of sex… but what Sugar touched on here was that many of us survivors have a very, very hard time distinguishing between sex and abuse. Some who even know the difference still cannot bring themselves to participate fully in sex (even with enthusiastic consent) because of blackouts, disassociation, memories, uncontrollable thoughts.
Ultimately, Sugar is right. You can’t remain stagnant like this. The discussion has to take place. She’s your wife: you’ve made a commitment to each other in sickness and in health. This marriage is sick, but more than the lack of sexual intimacy and the abuse, what is really alarming about Celibate’s marital problem is the lack of communication.
Sugar is right about another thing: Celibate’s wife needs to know that she is in a loving, supportive, non-abusive, non-toxic environment. Communication needs to run both ways. That level of abuse involves a lot of unpacking when it comes to trust. When she feels she is able to let those walls come undone, she will do it on her own… but only when she is ready and when she is in an environment she feels safe to do so.
I would encourage the both of them to speak to a religious officiant of some sort, since religion seems to play an important role here. Also, couple’s counseling is very important because it can enable the both of them to build communication tools.
Celibate is guessing what the problem is, but neither of them know. The inability to discuss this as a major issue in their marriage is troubling.
It’s hard to talk of “dealbreakers” and “bottom lines” without using ultimatums. But when you’re in that emotional space of approaching your bottom line, it really is only fair to let the other party know. You can’t control what they’ll choose to do, but you have to give them fair notice.
Sugar, you continue to amaze me. What great and comprehensive advice you give. I would only add that Celibate should remember that his feelings and needs are just as important as his wife’s. I’m not hopeful that this relationship, if you can call it that, will continue. It sounds like Celibate’s and his wife have lots of work to do if they stay together. An old and learned friend of mine informed me that we are on the earth to enjoy our creaturehood. This couple should see a counselor quickly.
I just stumbled on this and maybe I’m too late, but…
Celibate: The thing you’ve never identified in the letter is whether you share your wife’s faith.
If you do: Don’t stop asking questions, searching and pushing for help until you find a Godly couple who can help you. There is much more to this than the physical issues. Don’t take God out of the equation, but make sure you’re addressing it all with love, patience, acceptance, etc. Any counsellor that tells your wife to be shamed is not following God’s heart for passion and enjoyment of sex. Neither is any counsellor that tells you to suck it up. There are Christians out there who can tell it like it is, address this for real, and keep God at the center – who is the only one who can heal miraculously.
If you don’t: When you talk to her about this, please don’t belittle her beliefs. It looks like she has been shamed by people who claim to know God. Don’t equate that with God shaming her. Believe me, there’s a huge difference. Find the help you need and ask her to find the help she needs. If possible, help her seek out the kind of christian assistance described above because if her faith is real, she needs the healing of the body and the soul that will let her be free of this prison of shame and fear. It’s only in addressing both that you’ll get your wife back in a way that will be good for both of you.
And in either case: Tell her you love her over and over and over again. Ultimatums must be used with care. If she doesn’t feel safe now, how will she ever feel safe to explore what must be a terribly painful and frightening issue with someone who’s threatening to leave?
I’ll be praying for you both.
You dont know how lucky you are. I am know of someone on a similar situation except that he has been married for about fifteen years and he has children with this wife. So he is staying with his wife for his children. Since you dont have children you can divorce this woman. Give her an ultimatum, divorce her soon, find a better woman. Count your blessings that you can break things off without harming your children.
I am ALL for what Elizabeth wrote. Get those dialators. I’ll add something nobody else did. And that is a nice cold bottle of French Rose wine to go along with them. It is true that alcohol lowers inhibitions. Don’t get just one bottle, bring home 3 bottles right away so you have them in the house.
Celibate, you have got to tell her you want it. You want to have a normal sex life. Tell her you dream about it sometimes when you sleep. If you don’t tell her, she thinks you are okay with it. They got new lubricants nowadays also, get some of that also. She has got to try. Read those testimonials about the dialators on that website that Elizabeth gave you. The women wanted to get better. They wanted to please their husbands. I always say, “you gotta wanna.” She’s “gotta wanna,” Celibate.
If she is embarrassed about it tell her that she can practice while you take a bath. That way she won’t feel like you are hovering because you are in the bathroom and not “peeping”, but at the same time you will know that she is actually trying, it kind of forces her to try the dialators.
Cheers to Elizabeth you taught me something I never knew about.
For those seeking dilators… this set is much nicer than the vaginismus.com set (silicone rather than plastic). http://ww2.pureromance.com/PUBLICSTORE/product/Vaginal-Dilator-Set,290,147.aspx
I bought this set for my own treatment a few years back and my therapists were really pleased with the quality. There is hope for those willing to seek treatment. If your doctor dismisses your claims of pain, find someone who won’t. I was fortunate that my general practitioner listened to me and provided an appropriate diagnosis. However, I still ended up seeing an OBGYN, sexual health doctor, counselor, and physical therapist as well in my journey to wellness. Vaginismus can be really hard on you, your partner, and your relationship. Start on the road to healing today.
While not a sufferer of any sexual abuse that I recall, I have had trouble with the vaginismus. Be careful, there’s a lot of crap out there that you have to sift through, and crappy doctors, like the one who told me it was totally possible to live in a sexless marriage and be happy. That’s not what we were created for, and that’s not what marriage was meant for. I’ve spent most of my married life angry with my circumstances and just turned off to the idea of sex for physical and emotional reasons. But I finally found a women’s health practitioner who actually kept current on vaginismus treatment and was able to get me headed in the right direction. I also found this lady, ten years later than I would have liked: tolovehonorandvacuum.com. Sheila Wray Gregoire has been able to open up to my mind the essential connection between emotional, physical, and spiritual intimacy. She celebrates the differences between men and women and really emphasizes just how much women are meant to enjoy sex as well as men. She gave words to so many of my dark feelings about doing my “marital duty” and gave good, sound Biblical advice to drastically change and improve my attitude. She writes from a strongly Christian perspective, which is very encouraging to those of us who have been taught wrong attitudes about sex and marriage by that very same institution. She blows all of that crap out of the water and tells it like it should be. And she’s very fair, acknowledging the responsibilities of both genders. I highly recommend her website if it sounds helpful to anyone. I have been amazingly blessed so far, going from once every week-and-a-half to averaging 4-5 times a week, all thanks to a major attitude change. I suppose my husband has been blessed as well.:-) Don’t give up. It’s a lonely hell wanting to please your lover, but not being able to, whatever the reason. Whatever it takes to find the road out is WELL worth the fight.
Ok, I’m simply pissed.
I’m the survivor of massive child abuse trauma. And I am Celibate. I’m also the wife of a sweet man who simply does not want sex. It’s awful. I love him, he’s a good man. But he doesn’t want sex.
1) I’m not the only woman out there like this
2) Not all victims of abuse (I don’t understand the term “survivor”. A crime was committed, and it should have no more stigma than that of a robbery) are cold, frigid, etc. Some of us become hypersexualized. But hey, why worry about that?
3) The Catholic Church is WAY better about marital sex than most Bible belt churches, and I’m not surprised in the slightest about the wife’s friends.
Celibate, I don’t know what to do. He went to therapy. We went to therapy. I gave an ultimatum. We separated (in the same house, no one knew about it). But he’s there for me in so many other ways. I feel absolutely against a wall and as if I’m putting my hands in front of my eyes. I feel like an idiot if I leave him. But I don’t know why he doesn’t want sex. How do you tell friends and family, who ARE going to ask, that it’s because someone you really love and don’t want to hurt more that he just wouldn’t put out?
“Healing is about breaking threads and making new ones.”
Thank you for this. That one beautiful line clarifies so many things that should have been clear to me but never were.
Healing is about breaking threads and making new ones. It’s about redrawing the line between our powerlessness and our power. – Cheryl Strayed
Another incredible quote that I will refer to many times.
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