8.
“It wasn’t JUST the bedroom, of course. It’s never that simple. I took a vow that we would be married forever, and I took that very seriously, but the lack of intimacy was devastating. We were together for 14 years. The warning signs were so obvious now that I looked back at it but wasn’t paying attention. I met him when I was 18. I’d never slept with anyone before. I had a boyfriend in high school that I fooled around with all the time previously, but we never had sex. My ex was fun and adventurous, but he was my age, so when this sexual experience was more reserved — I chalked it up to being more mature/less childish.”
“After we had been sleeping together for about two weeks, my older, more mature boyfriend told me we needed to talk and sat me down to explain that he thought we were having too much sex and that I was getting ‘loose.’ I was humiliated and completely devastated. We began only having sex when he wanted so that wouldn’t happen. Fast forward 14 years, we were averaging sex twice a year, maybe less. He wouldn’t sit next to me anymore. The last straw was when the same ex from all those years ago contacted me again. I told my then-husband about it as a lark.
That night, feeling confident from the ego boost of my ex calling, I walked into our bathroom, got completely naked, did my hair and makeup, walked out to where he was sitting, crawled into his lap, and coyly said: ‘Do you like my makeup?’ in an obvious attempt to seduce him. He looked at me and said: ‘Yeah, but what are you going to do about your hair?’ And gently moved me off his lap. Six months later, we divorced, and a few years later, I married that same ex from high school. The sex is still incredible, but more importantly, the connection is too.”
—Alabama, 38