Yep. I’m gonna talk about it: sex. I know we’re not supposed to. I know that we are all supposed to assume we are having the same amount of healthy sex and not ask other people about it. If you’ve got young kids, it’s assumed you probably aren’t having any. Married more than 10 years? You’ve definitely decreased to holidays and birthdays. Unless it’s at brunch with the ladies, we just lie and say everything is normal right? Right? Too bad. We’re gonna talk about because I don’t think it gets talked about enough. I made sure to discuss this post with my hubby before sharing any of this so he would feel respected. FYI.
When I was morbidly obese, Dan and I did the deed our usual 1-2 times a week. I always thought that was pretty healthy and took pride in that. We’ve ebbed and flowed throughout time, but I never thought we were having much trouble in this department. This works out to about…..over 13 years of marriage……..carry the 1……probably a thousand times or more. I’ve always thought that when it comes down to it: sex is the real litmus for the quality of your relationship. I’m obviously talking to the long term relationship and married people in the house. The 3 plus years folks. I thought I had sex figured out in my 20s. I thought I had it figured out when we were 10 years in. I assumed we had nearly peaked now in our mid 30s. But can I just tell you: all of my Top 5 Performances have been rewritten in the last month, all in my old body.
Rewind. When Dan and I were first dating (circa 2004 when everyone rocked a yellow Livestrong silicone arm band, Green Day hit #1 with American Idiot, and Facebook had just begun just to give you some reference) we didn’t have a ton of experience and figured it out like everyone else at that age. I already had some body issues even then. Dan has always been shy and we kind of stumbled through the whole thing together. Nobody teaches you how to treat each other, talk to each other, make each other feel loved and wanted. You’re just supposed to figure it out. But what if you don’t get it right? A lot of people don’t. This is the time in life when a lot 20 somethings learn to replace sex with attention and love because we don’t actually know what love is or should feel like. Now, I’ve been partnered with Dan since 2004. I knew then that he was my mate. But when did we learn to love each other properly? Much much much later. In some ways we are still learning.
We got married in 2006 still in that weird space of being in love but not really knowing what it meant. When we got married we thought we knew what love was. Now when I look back, I laugh. We didn’t have a freaking clue. We had sex because you’re supposed to although neither of us felt very loved or wanted or really enjoyed it all that much. It was ok. I was so uncomfortable with my body by this time that I didn’t really matter what Dan said. My inner voices were louder. When you’re not attractive to yourself, who could be attracted to you? Who could love you when you can’t love yourself?
I know! I’ve read that quote a bajillion times! “You can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself first.” I thought I loved myself. I have always liked my personality. I have one of those smiles that makes you want to talk to me. I’m smart and sassy and fiery. I don’t have a problem speaking my mind. I can command a room of adults or five year olds and get them to do what I want them to do. These were all things I loved about myself. But I didn’t love my body. I didn’t love the way I looked. Downward spiral………..then instead of fixing my body to help fix my marriage and sex life, I just got worse.
I have always found love to be conditional. There are people in your life that are supposed to love you no matter what. Through my childhood and up to college I had love ‘run out’ with family and best friends. People would just decide they didn’t like something about me and walk away. Slowly I didn’t make as many friends, learned to keep people at a distance and I had trouble accepting love from anyone. I didn’t understand unconditional love until I had it with Dan. Dan said he loved me 2 weeks after we went on our first date. I truly believed him for the first time last month. It wasn’t that he didn’t mean it. It wasn’t that he didn’t say it. It wasn’t that he didn’t DO IT. It was that I couldn’t accept it.
Our marriage was on a repeat loop from 2006 – 2012. Some mediocre sex, some fighting, lots of eating, boring weekends, dreams of better things but never changing. I still remember a knock down drag out fight we had where we were arguing that neither of us actually felt loved by the other person. It broke my heart. It breaks my heart to think about now. That’s when I made my ultimatum that would change both our whole lives and eventually our sex life.
We moved to Denver in 2012 and there was an immediate change in our marriage. We were both much happier and able to connect with each other more in and outside the bedroom. As we grew in confidence individually, our walls started to come down. I started changing a lot. Over 5 years, I lost 160 pounds, changed my beliefs, changed my career, my personality blossomed even more. The more my confidence grew, the more sex we had. The more I wanted to share myself with him and connect with him. And let me just say, when you’re morbidly obese, sex isn’t great. Things don’t fit how they are supposed to fit. You’re not as close (literally!) because there’s several layers of fat between you. While our sex was loving and exciting, it wasn’t movie sex. If any morbidly obese person could feel the difference in what sex can be like when you’re fit and thin, EVERYONE would do it now. Today. If you’re still searching for a real reason to lose weight, improving your sex life is a great reason.
Soon after hitting my goal weight and the compliments and excitement taper off, so did our new exciting sex. We eventually settled back where we are comfortable. 1-2 times a week. Oh crap did we miss last weekend? Better put it on the to do list……. (pun intended) I slowly became more uncomfortable with my thin body. Even though I’d lost the weight, I still hadn’t solved all my body issues. We had another LOUD fight where both of us admitted we didn’t feel loved, wanted or desired even though we were having sex.
And then I set the due date of my surgery.
Setting the date of my surgery gave me a hard line. Either I’m gonna learn to love myself and figure this out for good, or I don’t deserve the surgery. I’ve always had a secret from Dan (of which I will not share here) that I thought would make me unlovable. I thought I’d keep the secret for when I wanted his love to end. I thought maybe keeping my secret was the ace in my pocket. If he ever decided to leave, which he would, he’d have a reason why. I could decide when he’d walk away.
My friend Gary has a way to ask you just the right question to turn your world upside down. We were having one of our crying sessions (one or both of us always cries I swear) and we were talking about my inability to accept love and feel loved. He asked me “Why are you so afraid Dan’s love will run out?” That’s when I knew. I was worried if Dan really knew everything, he’d walk away. This kept a barrier between us and also kept me from loving myself. Two weeks before the surgery we had an event that exposed my secret. I didn’t mean to tell him but I knew it was my chance. I had to know if I was still lovable, no secrets. Would his love actually be unconditional?
Having Dan know everything about me, even my most secret of secrets was hard. I felt vulnerable and scared but I also never expected to feel so weightless. Dan accepted my secret without conditions. Exposing myself to him so completely and have him love me in return was one of the best moments of my life. Turns out Dan has some secrets too. I thought we loved each other when we said “I do” but didn’t even know how yet. I thought we loved each other when we celebrated 10 years. But honestly, I think we only just figured it out. We’ve only now been completely ourselves. Unless you can love and expose every part of yourself to your partner, you’re not really loving them or yourself.
I have had the best sex of my life in the last month. I’m talking about movie, lasts for hours, is that the sun coming up? sex and enjoyed every second. Dan and I have been together over 1000 times and in some ways it feels brand new. We can’t get enough of each other and it’s like we’re making up for all the lost time. Every few years I think I’m having the best sex of my life, and then we get just get better at our marriage and the whole cycle starts again. I’m not sure it gets better than this but I hope to write you a new post in a few years about how wrong I was now. And by the way, this all happened in my old saggy skin body that I thought I’d never love. Turns out, that was all on the inside and the outside didn’t matter so much.
November 18, 2019
Now I feel loved and wanted by Dan all the time. (Ok, 98% of the time) Since Dan’s love language is Words of Affirmation, it’s so easy for me to love him in return now. I can’t wait to tell him how much I love and want him. Now I’m on 6 weeks rest. (2 down 4 to go…..) and not having sex has been in the top three things that are hard. I have joked with a lot of women about how hard it is to not have sex. Most don’t understand it. I’ve heard “A six week break would be my dream” and “What a blessing” and “You’re so lucky.” It makes me sad. I know where they are. They feel unloved and unwanted. They don’t really love themselves and have confidence issues. They can’t be fully exposed. But I gotta tell you, it’s the best I’ve ever felt. It’s the most loved I ever felt. This right now, is the best life I’ve ever lived.