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the white bread trap: how sexual repression led to spiritual slumber


When I was married I lost my sense of lust.

I met my (ex) husband online, in a chat room, when AOL was big – back in ’98. We soon began speaking on the phone, writing letters and sending pics; we couldn’t upload them in those days. He wasn’t a musician, or an artist, like me. I’d always had a sense that he was on a cusp, that I could help him reopen his creative side he’d so passionately talked about.

I was afraid of love from an early age. I didn’t love my father and I didn’t idolize my mother, because I felt shame about their behavior at times, and didn’t understand how they couldn’t see what I did. I thought love drove people to madness and that when someone loved you too much, they became violent. So, I observed boys from a far and chose very safe boys to practice being around. Boys that I knew I could control, I suppose, or not risk losing my control to. And, my family wanted me with a vanilla, white-collar, business type. Someone they could understand and pawn me off on; someone, who, I guess, might be a bridge to making me make sense to them.

I didn’t sleep with my husband very often. Something inside me went stale and dense. He wasn’t the type of guy I would have dated and we drifted apart for awhile. Before we actually connected, before we met and married, my heart was silently crushed and broken by someone else who was very special and with that happening I looked up my husband after coming across his old letters during a recent move. Turns out he’d saved mine too and hoped to meet again.

We wrote letters back and for the first 3 months before speaking on the phone. The letters were sparked by an idea of his – that we answer a question and ask one at the end of our notes, back and forth every other day. I learned a lot about myself at this time and when I finally met him on the 5th month, it was an outlet to express the love I had to repress for the guy who just broke my heart. But, things became very fun, spontaneous and romantic with this vanilla, white collared boy. A month later I moved across the country to live with him. We decided if we didn’t try it we’d live with what-if’s. I’d held him as an ideal in the back of my mind until this point and I knew that the illusion would be shattered, but it had to be tested.

And I had nothing better to do.

I was spoiled, though I never asked to be, during our 3 year marriage. At times, I felt more discomfort and frustration over him trying to impress me with standards rather than showing me thoughtfulness and support in other ways – like undivided attention and actual interest in our marriage. In the first year, we had to set up a “Wednesday night” (hump day lol) rule just to keep us practicing intimacy. My husband had an issue with sex. I remember our first night together and thinking “well, It can only get better and I’m the perfect girl to help him.” But he was too uptight and insecure to even talk about sex. There wasn’t an obvious reason why this should be, I chalked it up to his upbringing (I had to battle my own to break out of repression and tainted ideas). We weren’t an overly affectionate couple – I’m very cuddly but we only shared closed mouth smooches, even during sex, even on our wedding day (which did not include sexual activity).I thought after time he would become more comfortable and open up to me but throughout the years it was hard to get him to talk about sex, it was just too uncomfortable for him.

In the second year of our marriage, his father decided to divulge that he was in love with me and would call me at 3am from his weekly trips to Cleveland. I’d make my husband answer the phone and his father would just hang up and say (the next day that) he didn’t have the call in his phone log or that he must have pocket dialed.

My husband had a slight case of narcolepsy and would fall asleep in stressful situations and was having extreme panic attacks leading up to him finally telling me he wanted a divorce. He’s never been able to say the words, “I cheated on you”. That was year 3.

Our marriage wasn’t hostile or abusive in the standard sense. It was the lies; when you live with liars the world becomes unmanageable. I was constantly told I was the crazy one because of the secrets he and his family needed to hide. I had moments of finding myself in the white breaded trap and began to hate myself for it only because I didn’t know how to get out. I knew how great I’d felt about myself prior to all of this, but I’d gotten lost and my surroundings had been warped. It felt as if my entire being had given up, at times I was sort of suicidal but felt too responsible to others. I began to drink nightly and became afraid of a lot of things. It even got to the point of considering children just so I had a reason to care and that someone would get a benefit from the comfortable lifestyle I was given but had no use for in my situation. I would just be there to enhance their lives, mine was shot anyway.

It was as if something deep down within me said “no” to this idea. I had times where my body would stop menstruating. I once thought I might be pregnant, just once, that’s how infrequently we had sex during out 3 year marriage. I’d tried many times throughout the years to tell him that I didn’t want to be married any longer, he would say it’s just a phase and when he goes through it i’ll be there to keep us together. When I told my mother she said it was something all marriages go through and I had to stick it out. I knew if I left my husband on my own accord my family wouldn’t support my decision, it would just push me further into the outcast section. I was so lost at the time, I couldn’t imagine losing this delusional connection to the life I’d lept from.

Near the end, I was suspecting (and hoping) that he was cheating on me. I wouldn’t really blame him, if I could have lived with myself by cheating i’d probably already have done it. We’d long since given up on our wednesday night rule and hardly touched except for goodbye hugs and pecks which were just comforting rituals not an expression of a shared passion. I asked him in the last few months before things came out of the bag “Since we don’t have sex how do you deal with it? Do you just masturbate in the shower? I have to masturbate like 3 times a day.” He stops and turns with a deer in the headlight look and replies “I don’t masturbate.”

I was amazed at just how deep his shame was to not be able to admit this to his wife of 3 years. I knew then that it was way beyond my help and I needed to start dealing with reality, even if no one else was going to join me – the lies were sending me into a warped world. And in that world, I was dying. When we lose our connection to the sensations deep within us, blocking them off so we can scoot around the pains we bury, we lose touch with truth and being truth/love/light we are denying ourselves. When we deny ourselves we are beginning a slow suicide, a toxic gas leak that penetrates and accumulates within every fiber with a voice that says “I don’t want to be you. You don’t appreciate what I truly am. I will kill you off instead” And it begins with your spirit, how far will you go to fight for it? Avoidance can cause a numbness to form in order to keep our inner earthquakes at bay. But not forever. The amount of energy you put into shoving it down will only give propulsion to it’s resurfacing.

Once my husband began suffering from panic attacks I knew we were coming to a head in getting the truth out. It was so hard for him to face cheating on me. I only wished he could see from my side that I’d already forgiven that and felt my share of the responsibility of him having to play the “bad guy”, it was the falters it was the long running lies and trying to make me feel like I was crazy. He told me at the end “I was hoping to make you so miserable that you’d just leave on your own.” What a coward. And it’s not like I was jealous of the girl, she was doing me a huge favor and I knew her own lessons were in store with their relationship. She often turned to me when they would fight and hate me again once they were back on the yo-yo. One night, on his birthday, he staged a big scene and was finally caught. The next day he finally told me he wanted a divorce. I’d never felt more free – I felt like i’d been given another chance at life and I didn’t have to submit to the life I’d come to assume was the big joke that our ancestors wouldn’t cop to.

This began my dedication to living a life of following my gut, no matter how strange it may seem. For me, the “norm” that i’d been given to follow proved to be the most fucked up scenario and biggest coverup I’d ever discovered – this lesson was a huge catalyst for the motivation of my work today. Not just because of my marriage but because my marriage was the story of most marriages I’ve ever known. Now the ‘man-made world’ and it’s ways (and suffering) made a lot more sense. Without authenticity we all lose.


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