Sometime in my early thirties, sex stopped working for me altogether. I was
a mother by then. A single mother. My son was five and my daughter was three
by the time I hit 3O, but I’d left their father before my daughter’s second birthday,
driven apart by his addictions. After my divorce, I kept my boyfriends entirely
separate from family life; I only saw other men when I was alone, when the children
were with their grandparents for a weekend. I felt completely uncommitted.
I’d had my children; I didn’t need sex to procreate. It was pure recreation and,
for a while, that was a really delightful game at which I was always the winner.
I didn’t need a man, but sometimes, walking home at dawn after leaving a stranger’s bed, I wondered
if this was what it felt like to be a man, a player with no real need for intimacy, but someone with
a fierce hunger I could always feed, at will, knowing I’d be satisfied. I felt powerful and emancipated
until, suddenly, I stopped having orgasms. It was a shock, and confusing too, because I could make
myself come easily but never when I was having sex. I had a boyfriend at the time but felt a certain
pressure to be the always-up-for-it fun girl he’d met two months before. I didn’t I feel close enough to
him to embark on anxious conversations about what had broken in bed, so I started faking orgasms.
Sometimes, I’d roll over after sex, having put on a convincing performance, then cry silently into my
pillow as he stood under the shower, congratulating himself. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
I’d been seeing a hypnotherapist to stop smoking, and then to help manage periods of anxiety,
so the question of intimacy and how I coped with it came up in our session. She started working with
me, underlining the power of the
mind to make changes in my life. In
short, she hypnotised me to come
again. ‘Did she touch you during
sessions?!’ my horrified friends
asked me. Of course she didn’t.
Instead, she gave me a safe place
to explore how much the release
of sex – good sex – depended,
for me, on being in a place of
emotional security with someone
to whom I had a deep connection.Sex... AND DIVORCE
” I ’D H A D MY
CHILDREN; I DIDN’T
need sex
TO P R O C RE AT E.
I T WA S P U R E
recreation,
A DELIGHTFUL
GA ME ”Before school, after school, evenings and all through
the weekend, my children expand to fill every moment
of time we have spare. Such is motherhood. When my
husband has been away – yet again, Monday to Friday
for work – watching some mid-afternoon porn is the
only treat I will get all week. Are you shocked? Mothers
aren’t supposed to be into that kind of thing, after all.
Or sex in general. Mothers exist to facilitate the needs
of others, rather than focusing on our own desires. But,
contrary to popular opinion, a mother’s sex drive doesn’t
just disappear into thin air as soon as she has a family,
reluctantly rebooted on the odd birthday or anniversary.
Sometimes, when I’m working in the kitchen before going to pick the
kids up from school, I go upstairs to my room, flip open my laptop and quickly
surf to the porn channel I’m familiar with. If I can make myself come fast
enough, I might be able to finish my work before I have to be at the school
gates. Me-time, we are often told, can be bought in a spa day or via expensive
scented candles. But no one mentions that you can get it for free, as often
as you want, by wanking. It’s so obvious: isn’t a quick self-fulfilled orgasm,
mid-afternoon, the ultimate expression of self care?Sex...
AND MOTHERHOOD
86 ELLE.COM/UK^ May 2020