When my husband and I first started dating we were having sex all the time. But maybe everyone is when they are first dating; that’s why they call it the honeymoon stage, right? My girlfriends and I would talk about our partners and the new things we tried or were curious to try. But now, I’m married and we don’t talk about sex, why is that?
After having my son I wasn’t feeling sexy or confident. I was feeling touched-out and burnt out from being home with the kids. I didn’t feel like myself. My husband would try to initiate something, but I always shut him down and he was ok with it, always being supportive and trying his best not to pressure me but to really tell me how beautiful I was. It didn’t matter because I didn’t see it. I didn’t feel it.
I didn’t know who to turn to. I didn’t want to talk to my friends who didn’t have kids because they didn’t understand what my body had gone through and I hid my weight well so they thought I looked the same. You see all these magazines with “weight loss” miracles, but no matter how well I ate, it didn’t feel like I was getting rid of the weight. I was frustrated and felt isolated. Since none of my other friends had talked about this I thought I was the only one experiencing it, and I didn’t want to be the weirdo and bring it up. Was I afraid to tell other friends because I didn’t want them to visualize me? Visualize my husband? It was a weird period in my life.
I wasn’t interested in talking with moms on the Facebook groups I was part of because they weren’t real-life friends. I didn’t know if the post would come off as weird, or worse if I would look like some kind of creep. It’s funny, after having kids there are things we don’t talk about as much as we used and there are things we are way more comfortable talking about. Parents are more comfortable talking about projectile vomit or poopy diapers than anything to do with themselves or self-care. (And let’s be honest sex is self-care). It’s natural and fun, yet no one ever talks about it. Why the stigma around sex? I wish there had been another mom I felt I could talk to without feeling self-conscious.
Once I finally got over my own issues it was like riding a bike. We made room for it in our schedules and started to feel more connected to each other again. Sex was always something we both not only loved but craved. Not only because it helped us feel more connected, but also because it reminded us of our careless days when we were first together. This was our time, where we knew we could just focus on each other,- not work, not the kids, but us as a couple,- something we had been missing for a long time.
