The night I met my husband, we slunk into a faux denim sleeper sofa, a hand-me-down that resided in my parents’ basement for years, after too many PBRs and tequila shots. I insisted he watch several episodes of Scrubs, clumsily bringing my body closer to his on the squishy cushions, my limbs made limp by alcohol.
Only a few months later, after one half-hearted attempt of moving that metal more-machine-than-couch, we gave up and I accepted the loss of my deposit as I moved out of my favourite urban apartment with antique chevron pine floors and into his tiny suburban house with a red door, three minutes from my childhood home, shrinking back into a town I’d longed to grow out of.
In that house, a large overstuffed sofa covered in a nubby hunter green and white wide stripe greeted you just beyond the front door. It is where I sat, stoic, unable to look at the small white stick resting on the side of the bathroom sink, a blue plus sign quickly emerging — only four months after we met.
With the impending pregnancy, we had a garage sale and bought a house three streets north of where my parents live and where I had grown up. We sold that sofa for $40 and bought another for $1,000. It was an overstuffed five-seater covered in a large golden-tan weave, perfect for hosting all-night nursing sessions, I anticipated.
Fast forward and we sat there, on that sofa, now 10 years old, the frame broken from nightly 3-year-old twin acrobatics. There were four kids now, and that night, we’d had plans for a date night, so my mum had taken them for a sleepover. We had mutually decided to abandon our plans in favour of staying home and enjoying the quiet house. He guzzled Budweiser, and I sipped some shitty red wine out of a stemless Ikea glass.
Our marriage, at that point, had moments of promise but consisted mostly of obligation, errands, chores and Lego battles. Our passion plagued by duty, our chemistry consumed by functionality.
For months after he left our family home, I’d reread our texts from the previous year.
“When will you be home?”
“You’re picking up the big kids, right?”
“Beckett’s basketball practice is cancelled.”
“Are there bagels here?”
“Will you get bagels before you come home?”
“I need cumin. Can you stop?”
“Did you pay the phone bill?”
“Don’t eat the little bagels. They’re for lunches.”
Looking back, it’s impossible to unsee the unraveling. Little pieces of our former union crumbling, the mortar drying out with age and duty, inching toward a slow and dusty collapse.
Feeling the cabernet warmth in my cheeks, I set my glass on the antique NCR crate-turned-side-table as I tried to steady my inhales. I felt a truth brewing in my chest, one I’d wanted to tell him for eight years. I don’t know why I felt like I could say it right then; most likely it was just my low-level kids-free buzz.
We’d been having one of maybe three honest conversations we’d had in our entire relationship, the ones that were always induced by alcohol. I’d rehearsed this conversation in my mind countless times but, like letting someone say your name wrong for years because it felt like it was too late to correct them, I could never bring myself to mention it. If there was an opportunity, it was in the first few months we were dating. But not well into our 10th year of marriage.
“So, I have something to tell you. It’s kind of funny, actually,” I started, in an attempt to keep it light.
“Oh, uh, OK, um, it’s really weird. And don’t feel bad because I know it’s not your fault. It’s definitely my fault. Not your fault. I’m definitely the weird one, something is wrong with me. So, don’t feel bad. But, um, I’ve never orgasmed. With you. Or, maybe with anyone.”
I’d said it. And the relief was instant. Like releasing the need to perform to conceal the truth, night after night. And year after year.
His eyes widened at first and then he smirked a bit.
“What? Of course you have. I’ve seen it happen. That’s sort of ridiculous,” he said. He looked hurt, and I knew he’d already become defensive. Hardening the spots that were temporarily soft.
“No, well, I’m not saying I’m bored or I don’t like what you do.” I was and I didn’t. “I just don’t actually orgasm.” There, I’d said it again. No take-backs.
“That’s funny. Like, you always end up liking it. Even if you’re not in the mood at first. I’ve heard you, of course you do. Like, every time. Every single time. What are you even talking about?” He was scrambling. His pride had taken a hit.
I didn’t think I’d have to convince him of something I knew. At this point, I was merely looking for acknowledgement and maybe a vague plan of how to move forward. I had already concluded that maybe I was the faulty one. I wasn’t asking for a different performance or willing him to try harder. Honestly, “Oh, that sucks” would have felt pretty good.
I lost my virginity when I was a sophomore in high school to an impossibly kind redhead who liked me much more than I liked him. After months of having the kind of mediocre sex where pleasure wasn’t really involved, especially for the female, I had asked him an embarrassing question.
“What’s an orgasm for a girl? I mean, I know what it is for a guy because you can see it. It’s obvious. But, how do I know if I’m having an orgasm?” I asked as I played with the button of my lilac sweater set.
He pulled me on top of him into the safest embrace and gave me the most damaging explanation of an orgasm a girl has ever heard.
“You know when it feels good?” he said. I nodded. “It’s just when it feels the best of when it’s feeling good. You get it?”
OK, I thought in my 16-year-old brain, which would become my 25-, 35- and now 38-year-old brain. Then only after we’d completed an act of intimacy, I thought, could I locate where my orgasm had happened. Because that’s the thing about “bests” ― you don’t know the best is happening until it’s over. You don’t know you’re on the highest part of the roller coaster until you start coming down. But, what if you never get to the top? Then, you’re left thinking this anticlimactic mid-part of the incline must have been the best. I guess that was my orgasm, I’d think, as I tiptoed to the bathroom for a post-sex pee.
I had used this logic for most of my adult life, even while every sexual partner had bored me. I’d spent over two decades letting my moans grow to screams, seizing my stomach muscles, biting my lip and yelling “Oh my god” anyway. My partner didn’t deserve a subpar experience due to a broken partner. I was not theirs to fix. This Midwestern, people-pleasing girl would give an unforgettable performance while slowly growing ever more resentful of the entire act.
I pictured my Mum announcing “I would never let this go to waste” as she choked down last night’s leftover, soggy salad, a slurry of dressing and condensation pooling in the bottom of the Tupperware container, sacrificing her own pleasure for the good of the team. It was, after all, our way to prioritise everyone else’s experience long before we considered our own.
I looked at my husband. Discomfort and sadness had left his face and all that was left was a slightly slurred condescending arrogance.
“I knew this would be a tough conversation. I’m sorry. I think it’s me,” I said again.
“I mean, a hilarious conversation. Remember when you put scratches on my back? Or when you do that thing like you can’t handle any more contact and your body shivers?” he asked.
I didn’t know if I was supposed to answer. It seemed deeply hurtful to explain that that was all part of a performance that I’d been rehearsing for decades. My gravely growls and arched back all part of the show and he, my unknowing co-star, running lines nightly. I was embarrassed to answer, for him and for me. So, I didn’t.
And maybe I should have. Maybe I should have repeated that I didn’t know if I was capable of orgasming. That it hadn’t happened with anyone, not even myself before I got discouraged and stopped trying. That I sometimes worried that there was something medically wrong with me. That I was too ashamed to talk about it, even with my very closest friends. That I’d secretly googled “How To Orgasm,” wanting to find a numbered guide with a no-fail guarantee. That I craved intimacy. But real intimacy required honesty, a complete opening of which neither one of us were capable. I probably should have asked, “Will you help me?”
But I didn’t. I decided instead to break off another small piece of me and let it get lost in the overstuffed cushions of our broken sofa. What’s one more? I let go of his calloused fingers, pushed myself off the fractured couch, took my glass and gently set it in the sink and walked up the stairs to bed.
“Good night,” I said as I passed the living room. “I love you.”
And we never talked about it again.
Two years, one inevitable divorce, and a handful of fruitless partners later, I experienced my first orgasm. I was 40 years old. It came at the hands (or um, battery) of a small pink vibrator called the Pebble that, as promised, delivered clit-sucking technology and required not a single shred of showmanship.
I was born nimble, bending to accommodate others’ comfort. If we bend beyond the point of reasonable compromise, over time we unknowingly create an alternative reality. One based predominantly on the comfort and desires of another. One that is no longer our own. By nature, living someone else’s truth is living your own lie. And lies create distrust and distance within a relationship, even within the one we have with ourselves.
The couch in my living room is still broken, the frame held up by an old 2×4, but I am fixing myself; resisting the urge to bend beyond breakage. I hope to tell you that I find an orgasm in the future, one from a real live human. But, at the very least, I promise that I will move through life in a more honest way, cultivating a truth that is genuinely mine — even if it is 20 years too late.
The author is writing under a pseudonym.
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