Pleasure causes pain when sex is taboo
We think we know what is going on in our friends’ and family’s lives but no one really has a clue what goes on behind closed doors. Especially bedroom doors.
And it is easy to worry you’re not having enough sex or wild enough sex – you’re not keeping up with the Joneses, swinging off the chandeliers or handcuffed to the bedposts.
But, incredibly, there are still some bedrooms in Britain where sex is a dirty word altogether.
This week I heard from a young friend in her 20s who I have known for most of her life.
She’s a beautiful person – smart, intelligent, ambitious.
I will call my friend Tina. It’s not her real name, she does not want to be identified, but she did want me to share her heartbreaking story so she could help others.
I went to Tina’s wedding a few years ago and she married a lovely, handsome young bloke.
They are the “perfect”couple. Everything in their life seems to be going well – they’re working hard to save up for a deposit to buy their first home together.
They remind me of Steve and I when we first got married – annoyingly young and annoyingly in love.
And as you do with a couple who have been married for a few years, I asked her that predictable question. “Are you going to start a family?” Her reaction stunned me. Because my young friend had never had sex with her husband. Ever. Not
once. She was embarrassed about it. Mortified and ashamed, in fact. She’d never spoken about it to anyone else before.
Tina has a condition called vaginismus. I had never heard of it but it affects one in 500 women. Your body tightens up and it is a no-go area. You can develop it even if you’ve enjoyed sex in the past.
She loves her husband and wants to be intimate with him. But she simply can’t relax to make it happen.
Experts say it is often down to an underlying psychological problem.
And with Tina’s childhood, it is little wonder she has issues.
She was brought up in a strict religious household, where sex was never talked about ut in a positive way. Her parents saw aw it as a sinful act – if women had ad it outside of marriage they were re prostitutes. If you dared to enjoy njoy it, you were cheap and d uneducated.
Sex was something hing a husband did to his swife. wife. He had urges – she e had a duty. She had no o say.
Tina has finally nally found the courage ge to talk about it.
She is having therapy herapy and her husband is very supportive and understanding.
In that respect, t, she’s lucky. Many more ore are suffering in silence ence – putting on a front ront in public.
I know from growing owing up in the Asian community, mmunity, there were many y times I saw people showing wing a very different family image mage when they were out and about compared to their r private one.
But these kind of problems are happening everywhere. erywhere.
Sex is a very important mportant part of a healthy, loving g relationship, not something we e should ever be ashamed of. And we should have the courage e to speak out if things are not working rking too.
Because sex x should be something that is meant to be enjoyed – not endured. ndured.