I tried to talk about sex stuff yesterday with Noah. These conversations are harder for me than you might assume based on my willingness to write about sex. I talked about how I have a hard time with the fact that my masturbation must be discussed (I have to get permission to orgasm… at all…) but his is off-screen.

It’s not that I want to control his masturbation. It’s that his desire is off screen.

We’ve had this thing for years where he tries to balance my fucked up “won’t say no” crap with… not initiating sex much. It’s a good way for him to ensure he’s not pushing me into something I don’t want. I respect that. It’s a reasonable plan.

Only it means that 100% of the push for sex in our marriage is supposed to come from me. And that’s not as sexy as it sounds. It winds up with me feeling like I’m supposed to turn myself on and be excited about sex and just show up ready. That’s…. not my favorite. It stopped particularly working a long time ago.

So how do we navigate between the landmines of I’d kind of like to feel like my partner actually wants sex with me enough to bring it up and I’m a fucked up person who doesn’t set healthy boundaries in the moment because I have all kinds of messed up stuff around owing Noah and me not in general having a right to say no to sex and….

So I get that this is shitty for him. It’s not fair. It’s complicated. But it’s also not exactly a walk in the park for me. If I’m expected to just show up turned on… yeah that’s not always going to happen. So if the frequency for sex has to come spontaneously from me without outside influence or turn on… then uhm… don’t be upset if it takes me a while between that being true. And he does get upset. Not like mean to me upset, but it feels bad to him.

So he wants me to spontaneously initiate sex all the damn time because I desire him so much.

But then we run into another issue. I’ve had it programmed into me since I was literally a child that I’m kind of a monster if I push for sex.

“I won’t say no” (on Noah’s end) isn’t the same thing as a partner who feels like they are enthusiastically there for the same thing who also initiates and indicates interest and asks for things.

Let’s talk about bdsm stuff. Noah has long said he’d like to practice rope stuff. This only comes up if I mention it. Which means I end up feeling like this is one more thing I’m pushing and I shut down. Which prompts Noah to feel like I don’t want to do bdsm with him.

And round and round we go.

How to get things started is hard.

We both have different “I won’t say no” responses. For him it means that if sex is brought up he will always say yes because he always wants more than he is getting. He always feels like sexual contact is a good thing. For me, sex has been currency as long as I have been alive. So I feel like saying no to it is doing a bad/wrong thing.

Which is complicated. I am hyper aware that Noah is a better husband than I deserve. It wouldn’t have been possible to observe my sessions with the last therapist I fired and not notice that clearly the perception is that Noah is better than I deserve. She spent a lot of time talking about what I owed Noah for being so nice to me.

That’s the thing. If you are nice to me, I owe you for it because there is no chance I just deserve it. Because I’m hard and not really worth it.

And so if I need more from foreplay I should shut up and suck up that need because I am really not worth more effort than I get. Which makes saying “slow down” or “not yet” almost impossible because I know that doing so is inappropriate because I already ask for too much in a global sense.

So during this pregnancy when Noah has invited me to hang out with him while he was masturbating… that’s probably been some of the most creative sex of our marriage. It doesn’t always result in PiV but occasionally it does. It’s more about being around each other. If I need to just lay there and watch it’s ok. Because he didn’t ask me for sex. I didn’t agree to sex. So I don’t have to feel like I must follow through no matter how I feel. It’s been really nice for me. It’s been a window into his sexuality without me being on the hook for following through on an activity that might literally hurt me.

I’m really sorry that my vagina is broken.

This stuff is really hard to talk about. I feel so much shame for being so broken. It isn’t my fault. I can’t do anything about it. But I inflict it on other people by existing.

So yeah. It’s hard to talk about sex and ask for anything.