Rejection

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 February 21, 2015

About a month ago, I met a handsome young man for a drink on a Wednesday afternoon. I don’t date 20-somethings, but I made an exception for this gentleman. He was military and had a lot of life experience I couldn’t compete with. He was sexually open, and our text made it clear he would be a lot of fun. Age being a factor, we had already agreed this wouldn’t be a serious relationship but someone fun to sexually experiment with. We sat for an hour or so, and I felt like it wasn’t right. He didn’t make eye contact with me when he spoke. He always looked beyond me. I am used to men making such great eye contact that I get uncomfortable. When we parted ways, I got a one-arm-half-hug. Yep, it was a no-go. I’ve been the rejector many times. This was my first rejection. I shot him a text telling him I could tell he wasn’t into me and that it was ok. I offered that if he were interested in meeting others in the kink community, I would happily introduce him. I wish others would let me off the hook so gracefully. (If I don’t return your text more than once, stop texting me.)

But that rejection dug a little at me. I began to question why I was rejected. Old insecurities crept in.

Was it something I said? I didn’t think I got too into what I am sure were opposing politics.

Was it my body? I had sent him a link to my blog. I have never hidden my body type. Even on my dating profile, I try to make it clear that I’m a curvy woman.

I had a friend suggest I ask him. Nope. I don’t need to know, as I wouldn’t change anything based on his answer. I needed to use this as an opportunity to feel rejection and move past the self-doubt that wanted to creep into my thoughts.

It would be a few weeks before I met my next date. How would this event affect me? 

10-Year Take:

While I didn’t usually date 20-somethings at that time, I would eventually. I ended up marrying one of them. LOL

Something that stands out to me now… the comment about texting and he sounded fun. My mind assumes that we shared some sexting. Nowadays, I’m a big nope to sexting. It’s so not my thing. In fact, I get pretty upset when I’m only appreciated for the possibility of sex. Starting to identify as asexual has really changed how people approach me for connection. It feels as if they dip out when they notice my asexual identity on my profile, like on Fetlife. If they want to hang with me, knowing I’m asexual, feels so good.

I’ve been working through what feels like a perpetual feeling of “one day, I’ll learn of my sexual abuse.” Is it true that I was sexually abused? Not that I have proof of it, but I feel a “knowing” of sorts. In fact, this might be why I feel called to work with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Since my young adult years, I’ve held my breath, waiting to learn of my history.

In the last couple of years, I’ve settled with the idea that maybe I wasn’t touched, but I was sexualized by many men in my life growing up. While sitting in a “Healing Sexual Trauma” session at Psychnetworker just the other day, Frank Anderson talked about a similar feeling. While I haven’t read his book To Be Loved, I assume it’s also in the book that he decided that it might be that he heard his parents having sex when he was a child. It hit me: I have too! I’ve told the story many times, quite carelessly, that at about 8 years old I woke up to the sound of my parents having sex downstairs. I joke that I woke up my sisters so they had to hear it too.

Sitting in that ballroom, listening to Frank (who presented with Tammy Nelson) share that story, it was like a puzzle piece snapped into place. If I were to tell the story today, it would go like this: I woke to hear my father grunting while having sex with/at my mother. I didn’t want to be alone in it, so I woke up my younger sisters. We knew in our home that our mom didn’t want sex with him and tried to avoid it. In all likelihood, she didn’t want it then either, which is why I don’t remember hearing her; I only remember him. It paints a familiar story for me as a person who had a lot of obligation to sex in my first marriage. I’d lay there and take it, hoping it would end sooner than later.

Sex was around us growing up, but it wasn’t in a healthy way. It was an avoidant mom. It was finding porn magazines under their bed. It was mom catching a porn tape in the VHS before we found it. It was a cheating dad. It was older men treating me as if I was older too. I am fortunate that nothing violent or nonconsensual happened, as far as touch goes, but mentally… it had an effect on me and I’m confident it was a common experience for my peers too.

In the late fall of 2023, I had a moment where I said out loud to a coach, “I am valuable beyond my sex.” It was at that point I knew I had to take sex out of my work if I was going to meet myself with trust and care. I took 2024 to experiment with working only in the platonic. I feel so much more myself and I’m also way more asexual than I’ve ever been. Is it a phase? Maybe? I don’t care. I’m loving this phase of my life. For too long, I saw sex as my value. I was valued for my sex. Today, I’ve valued for so much more, and I value myself enough not to need to prove my value.

How did I go from rejection to abuse? Oh, right! You won’t find me sexting these days!