Will We Ever Have Sex Again

Today, this question occurred to me. Will I ever want to have sex with my husband again? I haven't slept with him since he told me he had started drinking again. That was Sunday, May 18th. Now, it is Thursday May, 22nd. 5 days. Not an epic length of time by most standards, and really not epic in regard to our relationship considering that 3 years ago X (I will from here on out use X to represent my husband's name rather than making up a pseudonym for him, too), so three years ago X suffered a terrible back injury and was briefly paralyzed from the waist down. This lead to no sex for quite a while, as you can imagine (it was everything below the waist). And then again, after the birth of our daughter my bladder spent months bulging into my vagina. Needless to say, this turned us into eunuchs again, for quite sometime, until months after my surgery.

But all of that, all those physical woes where bodily impediments to love making. This is something different. Any mental appetite that I had for sex with my husband is, at this point, completey washed out. As I drove to the local YMCA this evening (exercise is the best therapy, right?) I found myself thinking about how I feel he's broken his wedding vows. Then I realized that I don't think there was anything about complete honesty in his vows, in our vows. This seems a major oversight, not to have included this, but it also seems like a given. Should you really have to say, "I will never lie to you, I will be completely honest with you." NO! This type of companionship, honest, lovingly honest, is what you sign up for when you get married. Or, at least, I think it is what you sign up for. If you wanted to be manipulated, kind of tricked and played with you would just continue dating, right? Then at least you would have the excitement along with all the games. Now, instead I find myself with none of the excitement and also none of the security that I thought I'd traded that excitement in for. Maybe that line confesses my major fault. I should have never traded in in the first place. Then I wouldn't have to be disappointed with the deal, and sexless.

Make it Rain

I'm still waiting for my Al-Anon textbook to arrive in the mail. Unfortunately, I bought it used instead of through Amazon Prime. So, it's taking a while to get here. This might signal I want to work on things, but am not exactly in a rush to. In the meantime, I feel the space between Al-Anon meetings open before me like a waste land. It's a desert of emotions, too many emotions and nothing to do with them. Sadness and anger and doubt and regret for as far as the eye can see. No drought, a constant storm, which is its own type of desert.

But I wanted to write something about how our anniversary ended up. After I made my last post, I took a shower and when I walked into the bedroom afterwards my husband had lit candles and cued a Civil Wars' song. It was "I want you back", a Jackson Five cover. You can press play (below) and then continue reading for a more authentic experience of my anniversary evening.

So, the candles are lit and the music is playing and I am naked because I just got out of the shower. I sit on the end of the bed, next to where my husband is sitting, and say something like, "What's going on?"  - This is the first official acknowledgement of our anniversary - He hugs me and I cry onto his shoulder, with abandon. I am not crying because I am so happy that he's made a romantic gesture and I feel that everything is going to be alright between us. I am crying because the romantic gesture does not work like it does in the movies, or as it might have worked on a younger version of myself. The romantic gesture changes nothing, I am glad he's done it, is doing it, but in my heart I am not convinced of anything, least of all his love for me or mine for him. 

Then he gets naked and I think "Not a chance" and he says, "I don't think anything's going to happen, I just don't want you to be alone" (in my nakedness, because I still haven't dressed since my shower). At least he gets that much, I think. The next song starts and it's "Dance me to End of Love" a Leonard Cohen cover that we danced to as the first song of our wedding reception. I was dressed a lot better that evening - and I was a great deal happier. Though, even that evening, he disappointed me with his drinking. I was pregnant with our daughter, so I didn't drink to celebrate our wedding. I had imagined that he might do the same, in solidarity and support of my state, but instead he got drunk. On our wedding night, I didn't even want to make love to him because of how much he had drank, the smell of his breath, his mannerisms. But tonight he is sober (I think, thought I can't be sure, and I even question the smell of his breath). He asks me to dance and I accept - not because I want to dance with him but because I don't want to say no to dancing with him.  

It was an awkward bedroom duet, to say the least. There was certainly no zest or feeling to my movement, mostly I cried on his shoulder. When we were close, I felt his penis grace the inside of my thighs, like a foreign object - like something someone had set down in the wrong place. He attempted a twirl and I turned in the wrong direction. We have never danced well together. We took a dance class that ended in more arguments than coordinated moves, but his dance was lifeless (at least for me). Later he said he was simply glad that I said yes instead of "Get away from me you jerk!". 

Ironically, this comment made me feel the most of anything that happened that day. It made me think for a moment, maybe he actually does know the damage his lies have caused, maybe he does feel badly enough to finally make changes and be a real partner. Pretty romantic, right? Your spouse calling themselves a jerk as the highlight of your anniversary. Still, this brought us to a better place than I thought we would get to that day. 

Then we watched Star Trek, like you do. 

Most surprisingly, after Star Trek, in bed, with the lights out, he asked if I would give him a hand-job. I resented him asking, a bit, but considering how much unconsummated nakedness had filled the evening I decided to indulge. Once I began touching him, and allowing him to touch me, things escalated and I thought, "I think I might actually sleep with him." And when he asked, "Would you have sex with me? I said yes. It definitely felt more like hormonal sex than love making, but that it even happened at all was pretty surprising. So, I guess I answered by second blog post: Will We Ever Have Sex Again

Last part of our anniversary, the ending, was us both lying in bed awake. Neither of us could fall asleep after making love. I don't know what that means - but there it was - us lying awake, next to each other. The end of what I hope will be the most difficult anniversary of my (our?) life.