My Sexual Reawakening at 56: Part 1
Warning: This article contains themes of sexual assault and domestic abuse.
As a child I experienced emotional abuse and neglect from a mentally unstable mother. She taught me that there was something wrong with my appearance. She did not teach me anything emotionally intelligent about relationships, or how to be a woman, and absolutely nothing about sex.
It wasn’t all bad though. I experienced a very loving and careful introduction to sex with my first boyfriend and I feel fortunate about that. I learnt a lot from him, but our emotional relationship was laden with drama.
Difficult relationships
Years of chaos and short-lived flings then followed. While sometimes physically gratifying, or sexually thrilling, all were emotionally dysfunctional and/or toxic in some form. Knowing what I know now about consent, I recognise that I was raped on numerous occasions. At the time, I just thought this was normal.
Our sex-life, which had been quite good, ground to an abrupt halt; our travesty of a marriage ended 3 years later.
And still, it wasn’t all bad. Eventually I met a very funny, gentle man, who became my first ex-husband. It was very mutually loving to start with, but then I discovered his secret (nothing you’d guess). A betrayal of trust beyond all my powers of comprehension, emotional processing and coping resources. It changed everything in an instant. Our sex-life, which had been quite good, ground to an abrupt halt; our travesty of a marriage ended 3 years later.
I lurched from that misery and deep trauma straight into a relationship with a married man. It was the best sex I’d ever had. Sexually, I was the leader and brimming with power and confidence. We communicated well, trusted each other, and experimented with uninhibited abandon… until his wife found out.
My second husband
From there I moved seamlessly onto the man who became my second ex-husband. I realised only in hindsight - once the dust had settled after several years and much therapy - that he believed himself to be a knight on a white horse whose role was to rescue damsels in distress… in return for which he expected to be worshipped. I was very much a damsel in distress after the catalogue of trauma through to my mid-30’s. I also had complex PTSD.
I was vulnerable and he groomed; I trusted and he controlled; and, dear reader, I married him!
I was vulnerable and he groomed; I trusted and he controlled; and, dear reader, I married him!
But soon I realised my mistake. My PTSD was triggered and I shut down emotionally and physically. The very opposite of ‘worship’. So he turned nasty and became (even more) emotionally abusive and physically abusive, too. I was sexually assaulted many mornings before I was fully awake, and then he played the victim if I turned my face away, said no, or pushed him off me. He accused me of rejecting him. We never talked about it, of course.
This played out for months on end. One time he forced me to have sex with him as I lay frozen with shock and paralysed with disgust beneath him. Even after that, when recalling the incident in the long list of reasons he invented to divorce me for ‘unreasonable behaviour’ as a ‘bad wife’, he played the victim. “It was obvious you didn’t want to!”, he whined, even managing to shed tears to confirm his hard-done-by status, completely missing the point. That didn’t make me a ‘bad wife’, it made him a rapist. But I didn’t recognise it at the time.
After that little lot, I experienced another rape. I won’t even bother to describe the circumstances, but suffice to say it was just more trauma, and the injury I sustained during it still affects me today.
And then nothing for 11 years. I shut down sexually and emotionally. I lived my celibate, single, otherwise apparently normal and successful life behind a PTSD ‘forcefield’ to protect myself.
Is there any wonder?
A sudden reawakening
And then, out of the blue, I experienced an unexpected, miraculous, reawakening of my sexuality.
I kept myself safe from harm, pain, abuse and betrayal, and also finally got some space to heal. I learnt many useful and healing things via good therapy journeys and new friendships. But throughout those 11 years, I basically felt sexually dead. I resigned myself to never having sex again, but at the same time I suffered chronic loneliness and a longing for intimacy, but I was too scared and too overwhelmed to do anything about it. I also had very toxic beliefs about my body and that nobody would ever want me. My body image and physical self-loathing overruled absolutely everything. I was totally stuck.
And then something shifted as I retired age 55. I suddenly had time and headspace to better notice and respond to my emotions, thoughts and messages from my body. I had more therapy and for once I wasn’t in a crisis; it was an opportunity to really learn and grow.
And then, out of the blue, I experienced an unexpected, miraculous, reawakening of my sexuality. To say I experienced the sudden onset of clamouring physical needs would be the understatement of the decade: I was almost climbing the walls in a combination of high arousal and abject frustration! I think I masturbated more in the space of 2-3 months than I had done in the previous nearly 20 years put together!
I knew I had to do something.
Thanks to years of therapy, I now had good levels of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, and a solid bedrock of emotional resilience. I was in the best physical, mental and emotional health of my life! Even high anxiety, low confidence and a toxic body image could not hold me back!
I was ready… and determined to get myself laid.
But in that quest, I had no idea what I’d get myself into, nor what transformation would unfold.