Joy

I have a child now.
My husband is my lover.
Fully my lover. To the point that I think about him when I read romance novels and I get to the sex scenes and I smile. These were the scenes that used to make me cringe, make me feel like I was not a sexual being, like I lacked all femininity and sexuality. These were the scenes that used to make me angry at the world and at God for robbing me of pleasure. These were the scenes that made me walk around with a weight on my chest, feeling like it was me against the world.
And now these scenes excite me. They make me happy and glad and I can't wait till I can go enact them.
As for my child...my child has changed my life in every single way. I cannot possibly describe the depth of love I feel for this child. Everything about the child has brightened my life. I cannot remember the last time I was so joyful.
I was made for this. I was made to be a lover, a mother, and my life would have been so much poorer if I had given up earlier in the journey, certain that I could not ever enjoy sex or love. And yet, that is exactly what I was tempted to do. I look at my life now and I think about how I could never have envisioned this...never have imagined myself as the sexual person I am now and certainly not as ever being capable of achieving the goal of creating and birthing a child.
I am so grateful to God. I overflow with gratitude. Joy is my constant companion. I just want everyone else to be as suffused in it as I feel myself to be.
Don't get me wrong. Of course, I still have bad days, down days, days where there are small annoyances or major concerns. But these are nothing in comparison to the soul-wrenching, ship-rocking turmoil that attacked my marriage at the beginning of its inception. I would have drowned but I didn't...because he is amazing.
My husband. My lover. The most wonderful man on earth...for me.
Can't imagine my life without him.
We've come so far. Every so often it's nice to look back, take stock and feel grateful.
I just hope I can pass on the blessings. I hope other people struggling with sexual pain find the right doctors and the right treatment and find themselves in a happier place, physically and mentally, as well.
My husband is exactly the right mix of practical, playful, loving and deeply kind that I need. I know it takes a special spouse to support you through this difficult journey and I'm just so happy that I had one. And that now I have one who takes such obvious pleasure in raising our little one.
My husband makes me feel beautiful and desired. He also supported me through the worst time of my life and he continues to support me now as we work on raising our child. He is just...my favorite person.
I know it might be frustrating to read this post if you're still caught in the throes of your journey or if your significant other isn't necessarily being the most helpful to you right now. But it can get better. I am proof of that. And I really hope it does get better for you.

Inside

Sometimes, usually deep in the night, when my feelings flow more freely, I find myself overwhelmed by my feelings for my husband.

I love my husband. Love him. He has rescued me, stood by me, been there for me, helped me through thick and thin. He is so patient and kind and his every wish is for my happiness. I feel so humbled by him and so loved. I don't feel worthy of him. He cares so much about me and I worry that I'll never be able to equal that for him. He is an honorable and respectable man and I admire him and I love him.

But when the day comes, these feelings get hidden- or evaporate- or it's like I block them off from myself. In the daytime, I can get irritated with him or act short with him or be not as kind as I want to him. But at night, that's when I feel close to him- usually while he's sleeping and I'm sitting here typing in the living room.

I want to capture these feelings and have them all the time, not just some of the time.

Astronaut

Everyone wants a husband who loves them to the moon and back.
I'm lucky enough to actually have one.

So when I sit here thinking and considering, I want to thank God for my blessings as well.

This painful sex thing may suck and it may be a royal drag, but the godly person that my husband is comes shining through because of it. How many other men would curl around their non-functional spouses and whisper sweet nothings in their ears and mean them, too? How many other men would stick around for this soap opera? How many other men would agree to do whatever it takes, whether it means visiting doctors or therapists or reading sex books or whatnot in order to help me out?

How many other men would deal with being really aroused and having their wife turn them away? And do it with good grace and without turning it into a blamefest?

My man has such a deep, pure, loving heart and for some reason it's easier for me to trust it, to see it and to feel it when I'm alone at home just thinking quietly. It's so much harder to do when I'm actually with him. But that will come with time.

It might also have to do with having an audience for my embarrassment. It's hard to be totally out there sexually or otherwise when the one you're with knows of this deeply personal and embarrassing failure on your part to have a normal sex life. And also knows the problem isn't with him but rather, with you. If I were a man, I'd be feeling emasculated. Since I'm a woman, guess I'm just feeling de-sexified.

How can I think of myself as the free spirit that I was- trusting, open, laughing, free and sexually adventurous (within the bounds of Judaism, obviously)- when the person my body is making me be is so much more withdrawn, shy, upset and worried that I'll just never be able to make this whole sex thing work and be pleasurable? It's a conundrum I don't have the answer to. There's the confident me and then the totally undone-hanging-off-the-hinges version.

My husband claims that he still sees me as a sex goddess, which might be him just trying to make me feel better but also might be the truth because it seems like no matter what I do I am still cherished in his eyes.

It strikes me that we are living a very private and very twisted version of a love story, where the enemy isn't Romeo or the Capulets but my own body. And when we win we'll have triumphed over it. Weird.