My Sexual Journey

My Sexual Journey

I was raised in a small, religious town. Everyone I knew was part of the same congregation. My parents raised me to be a good girl, so that was something I strived to be my whole life.  In this small town, I was very sheltered. I’m sure there were things I could have seen, heard, or experienced, but I chose not to be around people who did not believe in the morality that I was raised in, and strongly believed in. I didn’t listen to dirty jokes, or go to R- or X- rated movies, or look at any form of pornographic pictures or stories.

I saved myself for my future husband, whomever that was going to be. I was 23 and had dated plenty of guys, but never let anything happen beyond kissing.

One night we ended up in a hotel room together (for reasons too long to go into here), then in bed together. We had slept in the same bed several times before, but always fully clothed, with my bra on, and with no funny business (except kissing and cuddling). This night, I decided to take off my bra, but still had on a pajama top and bottom. Nicky took that as an invitation to touch my untethered breasts. And touch them, he did.

I loved how his hands felt on them, even through the cloth. No one had ever done this to me before. Soon my top came off. My breasts and nipples loved his hands even more. Nicky took his shirt off, too, and held me close. I had never felt that skin-to-skin contact. I felt guilty for letting him do all this, but it felt wonderful.

After a few minutes he said, “I want you to meet somebody”.

Puzzled, I said, “Who?”

He took my hand and put it on his hard penis, which was still inside his shorts. I had never touched him or anyone else there. I had felt its hardness when he held me or when making-out sometimes, but this time I was feeling it with my fingers.

“He likes fingernails,” he said.

I ran my fingernails over his hard ridge, and he groaned. More guilt. More sirens going off in my head telling me to stop, and STOP NOW!

Then he said, “Do you want to take a shower with me? Do you want to feel me soaping you up, and you doing the same to me?”

I was intrigued and tempted. All the things we had been doing felt so good, but my commitment to wait until I was married finally won out. I told him that I couldn’t. I knew he was disappointed, but he understood. We continued to do what we’d been doing and finally fell asleep in each other’s arms. We never did anything like that again, until after we were married.

I was scared to death on our wedding night. I was so naïve. Having kept myself from all things sexual, I wasn’t sure I even knew what sexual intercourse entailed. I heard that it hurt a lot the first time. I loved Nicky and wanted to be close to him. I trusted him. Our wedding night was wonderful. You can read the whole story by clicking here.

After the wedding and honeymoon, we started our new life together. We were (and still are) best friends, and loved being together. We had so much love for each other. I started learning about sexual intimacy, with my husband. I loved him and enjoyed our time alone together, but two things were always on my mind:

First, I knew that Nicky was more experienced than me. He had had sex before we were married. Because of that, I sometimes felt stupid and inadequate in the sex department. I know it was in my head because he never did anything to make me feel that way.

Second, I knew that he had looked at a lot of pornography before we were married. I suspected, and later found out for sure, that he was still viewing pornography after our marriage.

I had other hang-ups besides those. Being a good girl all my life, seeing sex as a bad thing to be avoided, made it a lot harder for me to look at sex as something that was good and right, even with my husband. Whenever he tried to spice things up in the bedroom by introducing something new, like a new sex position or a dirty word, I had a hard time not looking at those things as wrong.

At those times, I would also think about his previous sexual and pornographic experiences, and feel like maybe he was trying to make me be someone else he’d seen in a magazine or a movie. I felt inadequate, and a little bit used for his sexual pleasure. Again, I’m sure most of this was in my head.

I never felt like I was enough for him, sexually, our entire marriage. He always seemed to want me to do more of (what I thought of as) deviant sexual behavior with him. He never seemed to be satisfied, or grateful for what I had done already, or what we already had together.

As the years wore on, my sexual enjoyment with him steadily declined. Sometimes I even dreaded it. He stopped giving me the foreplay I needed. I felt like I couldn’t please him. Sex felt like a chore. I used excuses to avoid it, and he resented me for that. It hurt him. When he was hurt, his hurt came out as anger, hostility, or the silent treatment. This hurt me. Our relationship deteriorated, and neither one of us treated the other very well. We fought and argued a lot. We couldn’t agree on things like how we wanted to raise our 5 kids.

Somewhere along the way, I decided to try to please him sexually by faking. I felt like I’d never be enough for him anyway, so if I wanted to save our marriage I’d have to pretend to be what he wanted. I’m not talking about faking a few orgasms here and there, which I had done a little of in the past, but a full-blown sexual performance from start to finish, like a prostitute might do to please her John.

So I started being an actress. I became the nasty, dirty, filthy, wife I’d always thought he wanted. I was able to have raunchy sex, moan, writhe, talk dirty, and make him cum with gusto and passion, all the while thinking of my grocery list. I wasn’t feeling a thing myself. I took myself right out of the sexual act in mind and spirit. Only my body was there. I was like a robot.

For the first time in years, Nick seemed happy about our sex life. He was more turned on. He had huge orgasms. He told me how sexy I was, and how much I pleased him. I had done it! I had finally made him happy in the bedroom! I should have been happy, right? But I wasn’t.

I began to feel more and more dead inside. I hated sex even more now. I dreaded it with a passion. I hated the lie it was, but it seemed to be making him happy, and that was my goal: To finally be ENOUGH for him. I figured I would take this secret to my grave and into the eternities. I thought it was the only way to save our marriage, and make the man I loved happy.

Fast-forward a little. After I had been faking for about 10 years, Nick started seeing a counselor for an unrelated health issue. The counselor happened to be a marriage and family therapist, who looked at life from a relationship standpoint. I was surprised when she wanted to bring me into their sessions almost every time.

Soon, the therapy started to turn into marriage counseling. The counseling was just what we needed to heal the hurt between us. Our relationship began to improve, and we both learned so much about ourselves and each other, and how to treat each other. Our love grew stronger and stronger. Walls were broken down, forgiveness and understanding were finally there. It was what we had needed for so long!

After many months of working on our relationship outside the bedroom, and being very successful, the counselor wanted to work on our sexual intimacy. I immediately got scared. I didn’t want my secret to come out. I wasn’t sure how I was going to keep it. I didn’t want to sit there every week and lie even more than I was in our own bedroom.

At the same time, I realized that I didn’t want to lie or fake anymore. I was tired. We were feeling so much closer to each other in so many other ways, I wanted to be real. The only way I knew to do that was to tell him the truth, and that was a terrifying thought. I knew he would be extremely hurt. I knew it would break the trust we had for each other in a big way.

I thought and agonized about it for weeks, and then finally got the courage to tell him. Looking back on the pain he felt, I realize that I should have sought some advice or counsel on what I was about to do. I didn’t think there were any other options other than continuing to fake, or telling him. There might have been. After I had told him, he was angry and hurt, and he told me he wished I would’ve found another way out of my faking that may not have hurt him so much. Nick has given me other possible ways I could have handled it, but I couldn’t go back to fix it.

I would advise anyone in this situation to look at every option possible, before dropping the bomb I dropped on my husband. We were lucky to have a strong enough relationship to make it through, but maybe not every couple could.

When I told him how I’d been faking orgasms and my enjoyment during sex, he initially took it better than I thought. He was almost casual about it. I thought, “Wow, why didn’t I do this sooner?” Obviously, it took a while to sink in for Nick, but when it finally did, all the hurt, pain, and anger I knew this would cause him came out, big time.

It was terrible. It hurt me to see how much I’d hurt him. It was awful to see the trust gone from our most intimate moments. He felt like years of our marriage had been a lie. It had been. He didn’t know how to trust any of my actions or reactions during sex anymore. No matter how many times I assured him that my reactions were real now, he couldn’t trust them, or me. He couldn’t get past all the lies and deceit, even though I had essentially done it for him, and our marriage.

I felt so guilty that I had made that decision to fake it in the first place. The great things we had accomplished in our previous counseling sessions were not helping now, as we tried to overcome this huge obstacle I had created.

A big part of the fall-out for me was that I had faked for so long that now I was completely numb. I could hardly feel his touch. I couldn’t keep my mind on what we were doing when we were having sex. Orgasms were almost impossible. I had felt absolutely nothing for so long, my brain was still in that mode.

Nick felt my hesitation and lack of response. We talked about how I was having a hard time really FEELING. This was just one more thing now. Our lovemaking was not fun for him anymore. Over several months, very, very slowly, things started to get a little better for me, and I started to “feel” a little more. I was finally having a few orgasms, but still not feeling like I wanted to. Nick was still struggling to trust, but improving.

One day, Nicky found marriageheat.com as he was searching for things to improve our sex life. He was immediately interested in it, but very afraid to talk to me about it. I had always avoided anything too sexually explicit, and I was always worrying that he was getting into pornography again.

When he told me about the site, and talked about how it was written by married couples, I was intrigued and told him I’d try it. I’m sure he was shocked that I would agree at all, but I wanted to do whatever I could to help our marriage. I felt better about this site because of the religious aspect of it.

So, we started reading the stories, and writing our own. What a huge change has happened in our sex life, especially for me! My whole life I didn’t understand that sex (even raunchy, dirty sex) was good and wonderful and RIGHT between two people who were married. Reading the stories of other married couples enjoying each other sexually in many different ways, made me FINALLY realize that I could enjoy it, and it’s a gift my Heavenly Father gave to us to share with each other.

It was almost like magic. Suddenly my remaining numbness disappeared. I could feel the heat from his touches again, and I could be multi-orgasmic again for the first time in years!

One night, soon after finding MH, I had 7 mini orgasms in a row in about 5 minutes. Two nights later I had 40 small orgasms in a row. 40! (Yes, we counted). It was unreal.

Never in our 29-year marriage, even in the beginning, have I felt as much sexual desire and pleasure as I have recently. It’s like the floodgates have opened. Nicky and I have never felt closer spiritually, emotionally, or physically as we have lately.

This has been an answer to many, many prayers on my part. I know we were blessed to stumble across this site. God answers prayers in mysterious ways. May He bless all of your marriages, and your love, in and out of the bedroom. I hope others can be helped by this story of my own sexual journey.