Introduction
In 2014, I started a blog called Sex After Marriage. I was going through the transformation one does after coming out of an 18-year marriage with a man that I met at 17 years old. I was finding out who I was. I started this blog to chronicle my journey. I figured that if I was inspiring myself, I would surely inspire others.
In 2024, it’s now been 10 years. I thought it might be time to republish the blog with my “10-Year Take”. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s changed and what has stayed the same. This is a gift to myself as I come into my 50th year on this planet, the same age my mom lost her 2-year battle with Inflammatory Breast Cancer. In some ways, it feels like I’m on borrowed time. In other ways, I feel like I’m completing her incomplete journey. Mom, you are missed and I’m not sure I would have gotten here if I hadn’t had to feel the loss of you. Thank you for reading.
Dated September 16, 2014
How does one start over? I imagine no one does it the same. I am sure no one has done it the way I am. This is my story. I hope you can find some inspiration in it. The quickie lesson: let go and move on.
My divorce is final. 18 years behind me. I almost don’t remember it. Almost. It is like a dream. Life has changed in just about every way possible in the last 6 months. I know I am not the same woman I was even a month ago. So you can imagine how many times I have changed in the last 6 months, let alone 18 years. I say 18 years because that is how long I was married. But it was really 22 years ago that I met my prior husband. I was 17. Obviously, I grew and changed a lot over those years. But the best, most exciting changes have happened in the last 6 months. What could have been a disaster that left me hardened and jaded, my divorce set me free. I was forced to acknowledge my dreams, or find some, and take control of my life.
I firmly believe and have witnessed over and over, that the universe sends people into your life at just the right time. My primary guardian angel has to be Betty Dodson. Betty Dodson is the “mother of masturbation” and founder of the pro-sex feminist movement. I cry when I write this because the timing of finding her work couldn’t have been better placed. She changed my life before I even got to meet her. While I could and will write many posts about what I have learned from her, I will just say in summary that she taught me to love myself. She changed the way I saw my body. With that one superpower, I was able to take control of my sexuality. (Ok, now this is turning into an ugly cry. I haven’t even cracked my bottle of wine yet!) Taking control of my sexuality was the start of finding my passion in life to be a sex educator, wanting to help others take control of their sexuality. It also allowed me to explore sex from a place I had never thought I was capable of.
This blog is my story of my changes, my sexuality, and how you can claim yours. This is a blog about letting go and moving on. This is a story about happiness, about loving yourself. I’m glad you found me, and I can’t wait to share.
10-Year Take:
It’s true, this story is about happiness, about loving myself. Looking back at the last 10 years, I can honestly say that while I certainly had gained so much self-love in those first 6 months, I had so much more to go! I still do, and I’ve come a very long way in loving myself.
Another truth is that Betty Dodson really was perfectly placed in my path. I was thinking back the other day about my pin-point origin point of change in my life. Funny story, I nailed it down to wanting to orgasm easier because I was witnessing a female lover who I swore could cum as easily as the wind blew. I wanted that too! Hence, when Betty showed up on my radar, I recognized that she could help me get to that goal. What I didn’t realize at the time was that due to the unhealthy dynamic, especially around sex, in my first marriage (teaser), my sex was pretty broken. Knowing what I know now about sexual coercion, it made total sense that orgasms weren’t easy. So was it that I was no longer in an unhealthy sexual relationship that I reclaimed my orgasm or was it Betty? I’m going to say it was a lot of both. Betty kickstarted me and helped me heal a lot of hangups around my body, especially my vulva. But getting to have bodily autonomy for the first time in my adult life was definitely a very huge key.
Know that all of this would reveal itself over the next MANY years. It’s still revealing itself, and I’m an incredibly fast processor. For you at home, it may take much longer. Or it may not. But it’s a journey that can’t be rushed or bypassed. As a later therapist would point out to me, the work that I’ve been doing with clients has given me regular opportunities to practice better self-care, and I’m not talking about days at the spa. I’m talking about taking care of my soul. I’m talking about finding my boundaries and defending them to my core. This is a journey of building self-compassion and self-protection, the two qualities my inner child has always longed for. I didn’t get them from my parents. I built those skills for myself.
