We sat on his sofa, music playing softly in the background. I had so many butterflies in my stomach but also a terrible big lump of fear. Of guilt. My hands were damp with sweat and my throat was dry. I knew I had to tell him. And this could lead to a polite but stark end to aspiring romance and perhaps something even larger, before it has even started.
I cleared my throat. “I have to tell you something. I will do it when this song has ended.” (And I wanted to throw up…)
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There is a lot of pressure on females in the society. I can only talk about it from my perspective, as a white woman living in a Western country. Growing up in an ‘upper’ but middleclass suburban area just outside a fairly large city.
With academic, Christian parents, a Christian and rather strict upbringing, the pressure was on. Right from the beginning. To be a good girl. To achieve great grades in school and have a career. To have a nice well-arranged family of your own when the time was right. To always be polite and say yes with a smile on your face and look proper and as pretty as possible in every way or situation. Always on your best behaviour. You shouldn’t have frizzy hair and you should always be slim!
A silent threat followed me around during my whole childhood up into adulthood. (Mostly from my mother who thought fear by silent treatment was a nice way to go. There were never any raised voices in our household. That was not needed.) If you don’t do perfect, you will end up as garbage collector, drug addict or be like your looser cousins in the country. (No offence intended. - Now I know that in many ways they probably had a better life than I had. Not the drug-addicted of them of course.)
I was perfect at all of the above-mentioned requirements. That I started taking stomach ulcer medicine in 9th grade was just a little side effect…
I met my first boyfriend. And we wanted to have sex. And now my big failure as a woman hit me in the face. It crushed me on many levels during many years. I wasn’t a real woman. I couldn’t perform penetrating sex. Back then it was such a “new” phenomenon so I think it took a while before “it” got a name. VESTIBULITIS. For better or worse I had a driven female gynecologist specialised in gynecological diseases. I became a guineapig. Specially mixed ointments at the pharmacist. Laser treatment in the most sensitive area of my body. OUCH! Exercise “rods” in different sizes. I kept my “stuff” in a shoebox under my side of the bed. One time my boyfriend happened to walk in on me when I was putting on the salve and he looked shocked and almost disgusted. I ended our relationship not long after that. I couldn’t take the pressure anymore.
When the woman has a physical (or a psychological problem) regarding sex, it seems like it’s almost always only the woman’s problem and therefore hers to fix. Not a joint problem that it takes two to solve. There are so many layers in this area, and so many feelings and presumptions/conceptions to consider. It’s not easy. Back then I definitely thought that this was just my problem.
Some years later I met my first husband to be. We could perform sexual intercourse with help from an anesthetic ointment but it was still very painful. I’m really good at handling pain without showing it. How helpful do you think this superpower is?
We got married and started trying to get pregnant. At this time I couldn’t force myself to have intercourse as much as needed and I also suffer from endometriosis and this really didn’t help the situation. Pain is just the forename… During this time, we both worked at our careers but he was a bit more dedicated (addicted) to his, so most of the times I went alone to the IVF clinic. Sometimes with his sperm in my armpit. Keeping the dark secret from the doctors deep inside me, that I wasn’t a real woman that could have intercourse/sex as normal people so therefore I was here, paying for IVF, alone, ashamed. Like before, the problem was of course only mine. That he had intimacy problems and didn’t like to be close or cuddle or to make me feel good about myself was of course not a part of the problem. It was mine to sort out with the doctors.
I started to see a therapist. I didn’t want to feel like this anymore. It was a long and hard process. But I grew. I slowly started to find myself. The “new” real me. Peeling away all the layers of self alteration/adaption, people pleasing, perfectionism and much more.
One night I found myself in the bathroom just as I had so many times before. My place to go to, to cry, to feel, to scream… This night I felt unusual calm. I just looked at my reflection in the mirror and said out loud to myself: “Maria, you can’t live like this any longer.”
I filed for divorce. In that instant I gave up my dreams of becoming a mother. I had suffered from miscarriage and I had gone through the whole adoption process and been accepted to get the chance to adopt. But no, not like this. It didn’t make sense any longer.
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The song ended. I took a deep breath and said: “I have this problem. I can’t have sex. It hurts when I try to have intercourse.” I fell silent. He looked at me and said: “Was that all?”
With just these three words he dismissed my whole life trauma, without knowing. It came spontaneously right from his heart. He thought it was something worse. “But do you enjoy having sex?” He asked me carefully. I heard myself answering with a shaky voice: “Yes…” Because deep inside me I knew that I had a deep longing for someone to hold me, to touch me, to want me…
He took my hand and gently stroked my palm with his fingertips. “Then there is no problem, because this is sex…” And then he ran his hand over my shoulders and said: “And this is sex…”
Something happened within me in that instant. It was like my whole body relaxed in a way it never had done before. Not in my entire life. And it turned out that I could have intercourse. It took some practise and I will always have some little sensitive spot due to the laser treatment that I never should have done in the first place.
Today he is my husband. Sadly, we didn’t meet until I turned 40. And he has children and didn’t want more. But that’s a story for another day.
I hope my story can help anyone with similar problems. This isn’t a fairy tale. This is exactly what happened and because it was so monumental for me, it etched itself in me.
Now I have decided to be brave:
My name is Maria Berntsson. And #IAmME#
PS. Thank you Jody Day for Gateway Women and thank you Karin Enfield, my beloved Online Bee leader. Thank you, Stephanie Joy Philips, founder of World Childless Week and all other incredible women and men out there. DS.