Six Things I Wish I'd Known about Sex Six Years ago
Caid and I just had our 6th anniversary. We’ve been having sex for six years, guys! So if you don’t want any reflections on that, please skip this post.
It takes time to flip the switch.
I spent 31 years of my life learning that I was NOT supposed to have sex. That it was something between a man and a woman after they were married. Since I was not married, that was no-no land. I am happy to tell you that my husband and I were virgins when we got married. But then we got married and are supposed to frolic in the land of happy married sex, and my body was just not having it. Conversation between Rachel’s mind and body:
Mind: Yay! We get to have sex!
Body: Are you sure? I thought you said no. Like over and over and over again.
Mind: I know—but now we can—so let’s get moving!
Body: I don’t know about that. I don’t know how to enjoy this without feeling guilty.
Mind: You just do it. Be a big girl and go for it.
Body: But this is all new! How am I supposed to just jump in? It is scary! It is weird! And mostly, I am just not feeling it.
Mind: But you are supposed to love this! You are supposed to enjoy this! You need to do it for yourself, for your husband, and for everyone else who told you this is the best thing ever.
Body: But the pressure! I just can’t handle the pressure. This is outside my comfort zone!
And so on and so forth. It took my body quite a while before it could figure out how to, and that it was okay to orgasm. I am so glad I had a gracious husband who realized this was a journey and not a destination, and was just as happy as I was when things started connecting between my mind and my body. But it wasn’t easy to flip the switch.
Porn is not your normal.
While both my husband and I were virgins, we both had struggles with porn. When you watch porn before ever having sex, it sets the “normal” for you, even if you don’t want it to. Even if you work really hard for it not to. Porn was the sexual script we had read, and we both thought, in unconscious ways, that we had to play out that script that we’d internalized.
The whole time we dated, we had worked to be really transparent and honest about our sexual struggles, and we laid a really good foundation for our marriage of forgiveness and understanding. On our honeymoon there was a lot of tears as we realized that porn expectations had crept into our marriage bed without us knowing it. It was an agonizing process to de-tangle porn sex scripts, cultural pressures, and various expectations from reality, but we did it together, and that was, and is, a beautiful thing.
Sex is a learning process.
Some people are just naturally good at sex. The rest of us have to learn. Like any skill, you have to practice and put time into it. You feel awkward at times. You feel amazing at times. You sometimes just want to go to sleep instead.
Don’t expect that after a really, really long day of everything that goes into making a wedding happen you are going to be ready to jump into bed and have fantastic sex. You’re probably too emotionally spent for all that, and that is okay. I didn’t realize what a beautiful thing it would be to have this whole new area of my life that I got to discover with my husband for the first time—and continue discovering.
Sex is something worth investing in.
Thank goodness it takes at least nine months after the first time you have sex for a baby to join your family! Because we needed that time to be able to focus on figuring out this new thing called sex. Because after kids happen—well, kiss those multi-hour sex sessions goodbye.
I am really thankful to have a husband who kindly spoke my project-driven heart language. After two kids, he said (something like), “Rachel, we haven’t figured out all this sex stuff yet. This is an important part of our life, and is worth putting on your “to do” list. It is worth taking the time to study and invest in, and when we struggle with something, it is worth the effort to work through. Please make sure you prioritize this.”
So if you are struggling with sex stuff, which quite often for us women is attached to medical issues, it is worth it to get help. To invest time and money in it. And mostly, to make sure that we don’t feel like we are alone in our struggles, or that our struggles aren’t valid.
Kick out other people’s expectations/rules.
Hebrews 13:4 “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.” Before I got married, there were many things I heard were right or wrong about sex. Culture told me many things about sex, the church told me many things about sex, my friends told me many things about sex. But once I got married, my husband and I closed the doors and started to build our marriage bed from scratch, just the two of us.
We had to throw out a lot of what we’d been told before. We had to see for ourselves what brought us closer together, and what we felt uncomfortable with. We had to talk it out and realize what we each needed for ourselves, and what the other person needed from us. And the best part? We never pushed each other. If one person wasn’t on board, we didn’t go there. If one person wanted to try something, we tried it and then talked about it.
Titus 1:15 “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.”
We both found so much freedom in realizing we didn’t have to live up to anyone else’s expectations. Especially for me, this freed me up to enjoy sex. if you fail to climax together or orgasm at a certain/every time, those were all outside expectations. All that matters is your love and commitment, and coming together to celebrate that and build more connection.
Purity culture is something that needs to be looked at.
“Purity culture” could be described as the True Love Waits movement, purity ring push that happened in the 90s and 2000s. Lately it has been attacked as degrading to women and destructive to healthy sexuality. Many people say that it came from a place of fear: parents scared their daughters would get knocked up before marriage.
As someone that was “successful” from the purity culture (I made it to my wedding night a virgin), I can see the blessings and the dangers of the purity culture. Yes, I do feel that for many people, it came from a place of fear—and fear does not belong in love. Yes, I do feel that many people used purity culture to put the burden of not having sex on the woman and her modesty instead of men and handling their own lust issues. And yes, I feel like some of the focus was on forcing naivety rather than digging deeper into the true beauty of purity.
But at the same time, many people had love as their motivation, and not fear. Many people were calling out men to be men and face their lust. Many people were sharing the high calling of purity that we all have—our whole lives—might I add, and not just until we get married. It is a very fine line, but one I see clearer now, ten years or more later—like the difference between Joshua Harris (who has now renounced his faith) and Eric and Leslie Ludy (who are still writing books and have a beautiful purity ministry).
Anyways, I do suggest that everyone from my generation take a close look—don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, but do discern what was healthy, and what was unhealthy about how purity culture was presented to you growing up, and how we can do better (hopefully!) for our kids.