13 October 2015

Savage Love Letter

To: mail@savagelove.net

Subject: Periodic Sex Negativity and Ethics, or Why Am I Not a Total Slut?

Hey Dan,

Thanks for all you do. I hope you can offer some insight on my situation. Sorry it’s a novel.

I’m 33, female, bi, married, monogamous (until we find the right unicorn), and a mom.

My husband and I have been together 8 years, I love and respect him very much, and we have a largely satisfying sex life, with a typical good week featuring 2-3 fucks or more. It’s the bad weeks that are problematic.

The week before my period starts I get weepy, crabby, and very anti-sex PMS. When my sweetie watches me get undressed or tries to initiate sex, I feel panicky, pressured, disgusted, angry. A whole marching band of bad feels. If I can keep my wits about me, maybe I can politely decline or offer a raincheck.

If I don’t keep my head and stay calm, I freak out, and it’s a fight, with crying and feelings of rejection for him, lots of guilt and self recrimination for me, and likely insomnia, which doesn’t leave me in good mental shape for when it next comes up.

I’ve also tried just biting the bullet and having sex when I don’t want to. The upside on that being that hubs is happy (if he doesn’t catch on to me being a sad eyed sex robot, but sometimes even then, sigh), but I feel cold and sick when I do this, and it seems ethically wrong: deceptive and inauthentic.

The more I do this, the more distressing it becomes, but I talk myself into it because reasons: maybe if I prime the pump I’ll be more gung-ho tomorrow, semen has antidepressant effects, I hate fighting about sex. Mostly that last one.

I’m fed up with myself, my feelings, and my hormonal cycle. Skipping sex for two weeks (heavy flow is truly disgusting and not sexy for me, either, even in the shower) every month doesn’t seem reasonable for my dude, and it sure doesn’t make me feel like the sex positive vagina loving GGG feminist slut any loyal Savage Love gal should be.

And yes, I do have the triple curse of conservative religious anti-sex upbringing, a history of depression and anxiety, and rampant intellectual overanalyzing. It is a wonder that I have even gotten this far, seeing as how I have been repulsed by, afraid of, and coerced into sex since I was kid.

When I’m at home, I smoke weed every day before bed. It keeps the emotions at bay during the PMS week, enough that I can focus on how important physical bonding is and how happy and relaxed it makes my man. Not exactly smooth sailing, but head above water, at least. Weed helps. Taking my evening primrose oil and Vitamin D3 supplements seem to help, when I remember to take them. Even when all of my self-medicating stars align, PMS week still leaves me unlikely to have an orgasm and vaguely resentful of my husband. But I can usually just move on.

Of course, now we’re on a steamy tropical vacation, to celebrate our first five years of marriage, and there’s no ganja to be had here. It’s PMS week (alas, I did not have control over the timing of the vacation). I’ve already had sex three times that I really didn’t want to have, plus one bout of weeping explanations/semi-fight. This is supposed to be a celebration of our union, and I’m wearing my Happy Person mask and hoping I fall off a cliff.

And even with all of my personal details aside, I think there’s an ethical question here: in the concept of “maintenance sex,” how often should a partner have sex when they really aren’t into it? Should people really have sex when they feel strongly against it? What’s going to happen to me as I get older and my sex hormones become weaker and then obsolete?

Practically, is there any way I can manipulate myself more effectively through chemical or behavioral means? I have a non-hormonal IUD, and I know that when I was on BCPs, one kind, Alesse, was much better about not killing my sex drive than the other 4-5 brands I tried, some of which left me anti-sex for all but maybe one day out of the month (may have also been due to horrible previous relationships and unattractive previous partners). I was horny as fuck during my second trimester of pregnancy, too, but I was also very unattractive so it was mostly masturbation for me. My husband does not like to masturbate when he has a partner.

Porn is kinda gross, but if you tell me to take two pornos and call you in the morning, I’ll try. Any more substantial advice would be very welcome. I’ll try to stay away from the cliffs.

Love,
Another Special Snowflake

—

“I mistyped: He does not cry when we fight about sex. I cry. He just gets frustrated and angry, because it’s the same stuff that we’ve talked to death a million times before.

Additionally: I’m not an initiator of sex, and do not feel comfortable being sexually aggressive at any time of the month. I’m just more or less receptive and relaxed. I worry that my problem stems from my generally passive and giving personality, which may be either innate or a result of early models and childhood conditioning. I’m very afraid of being a demanding asshole so I pay no attention to what I want. Maybe I don’t want anything.”

—

Nota Bene From the Corrections Department: Astute readers will catch that I misremembered where I was in my menstrual cycle while previously writing about this trip. I was happy to see the true details written in this letter, which I also shared with my best friend at the time. She told me that I was doing violence against myself by having sex I didn’t want to have, and I knew she was right, and I kept doing it.

I could not imagine an alternative.