Thanks for posting, wounded healer. I remember some of your threads and posts distinctly, and you come to mind sometimes and I wonder how you’re doing.
Our stories are different in many ways, but I think we come out of the same or similar culture around sex. I was raised in a conservative religious environment where sex was presented as sacred and where saving yourself and preserving your virginity for your spouse was presented as a very high and important goal. I think there was some good in all of it, because it acknowledges the beauty and importance of sex as an intimate, bonding force between human beings who deeply love and are committed to one another. However, I think the messages I got were entwined with a lot of misogyny, and that no important distinctions were made between a committed, healthy exclusivity and jealous control/ownership over a partner’s sexuality. I also think that over-sacralizing sex can keep people from having the more experimental, playful, casual (but still responsible) approach toward sex that allows an individual to figure out and be comfortable with their own sexuality. This may not be relevant to you at all, but I feel like it’s worth saying, at least, because I think we’re coming from similar backgrounds.
I don’t have the same virginity problem you describe, but I do think you’re onto something in terms of how infidelity impacts people whose sexuality has been exclusively or almost exclusively formed and shaped by a long term relationship that you enter into as a teenager/very young adult. My husband and I were 18/19 when we met. My sexual experience prior to him was 1) long term CS abuse and assault, and 2) non-intercourse sexual activity in two short early college relationships. (As an aside, one of those guys was gay; but we weren’t in a setting where he could admit that even to himself, so our relationship was a desperate attempt on his part to make himself straight. It’s actually heartbreaking to look back on that, and it’s another problem with the view of sexuality I was raised with).
My husband’s sexual experience was limited as well; he had sex with one high school girlfriend. In our super conservative Christian college setting that was something he was encouraged to apologize to me for by our pastor in mandatory premarital counseling sessions. Even then I thought that was silly, because I didn’t see myself as the owner of his sexual past, or he of mine. (CSA will give you a pretty jaded view of people waxing eloquent on the sacredness of sex).
Anyway, any healthy development of my own sexuality has been completely in the context of my 27-year relationship with my husband. It was rough starting out because I had so much baggage from the CSA, but we are (or were? Still figuring it out) deeply compatible in many ways in this area. We had normal ups and downs due to life circumstances, and his desire has always been on the higher side than mine, but our norm was reasonably frequent, good to mind blowing sex.
His infidelity wrecked me in this area, though. We had a long period of intense hysterical bonding after DDay, but once that was over I realized I had lost the sense of safety that had allowed me to be experimental and fun and playful and edgy in our sexual relationship. We have sex regularly, and it ranges from ok to good, but the free/playful/mindblowing stuff hasn’t come back for me, much to his dismay. I don’t really share your need for extreme detail about his sexual encounters with his affair partner. I wanted a lot of detail about the affair in general—I badly needed to get as many of the puzzle pieces together as possible—but five years out, I feel almost indifferent to the sexual details. I believe him when he says the sex wasn’t as good as what we had. But it doesn’t really matter, because the real issue is me and where I’m at in terms of my own sexuality and in our sexual relationship. As I struggle with that, I’m trying to feel the feelings and heal and move forward. I don’t know what the outcome will be. Sometimes I feel ok, and other times it feels depressing, though it helps that overall we have a really great, supportive, satisfying, enjoyable relationship.
This is insanely long. I’m sorry. The TLDR of it is 1) be careful of the line between a healthy, honest, exclusive relationship and owning/controlling another person’s sexuality, 2) focusing on your own healing and sexual relationship feels a lot healthier than dwelling on grand ideas of sexuality or hyper focusing on the details of her affair sex, and 3) there are some strong commonalities in the disorientation, long-term pain, and protracted healing processes among people who have experienced betrayal in a good, long term relationship that began early and has spanned all of their adult life. Also 4) I feel you and am so sorry for your pain.
