Member-only story
The First of many awkward conversations
I had been married for almost 22 years. That summer morning’s conversation was one that I had been putting off for months. For years, I had felt there was something missing in my relationship with my husband. He was an upstanding Mormon man, he did his best to make a living for us-even though it was lame (but he tried), and we had created a family together, living in the country, homeschooling, and so much more. Over time, my realizations as to what kind of relationship we had formed became more and more clear.
There is a lot of backup information to make sense of this, but I’ll have to start here…I hated sex. And I knew there was something really wrong about that. I enjoyed the act, perhaps, but afterward, I found myself in a place of resentment. I hated myself for having sex with him. And I noticed that that resentment came out of my mouth in the form of irritation and frustration with him. And that irritation made me hate myself even more. I was angry that I said yes, once again, and angry that I let it affect me.
This might seem strange to many of you, but he was the only man I had ever been with. I was 19 when I got married and have saved myself (by a very quickly unraveling thread) for him. Our sex life wasn’t great. But I needed it and he wanted it…so it happened. Through four pregnancies and breastfeeding for almost ten years, there were a…
