Nora: Discovering How Much Better Sex Can Be
For our interview, Nora invites me into her home where she lives alone. Her fancy road bike leans against the wall in the entryway and helps to explain her athletic physique. At 60 years old, she seems both nervous and eager to tell her story. Talking about her sex life completes one more step in her transformative journey.
Nora had sex for the first time with her high school boyfriend on the floor of his father’s office. “It was uncomfortable and painful.” They married when she was 20 years old. “The only education I had had was my mother telling me not to get pregnant. That and my father’s dirty magazines.”
“Until recently, I had had sex with only one man in my life. We were married for thirty years. I grew up with the general thinking that you need to please your husband. So, that’s what I did. Sex was often very uncomfortable physically. And let me tell you, there were times when I felt forced into having sex. I was never taught that it was okay to say no.”
Although today, many young women receive more empowering messages of sex, in my years of working with teenagers, I heard many express sentiments similar to those of Nora. Far too many youths still endure uncomfortable sex to pleasure their partners.
Nora continues, “Sometimes, he would do what he could to give me an orgasm and on occasion it worked. I had discovered orgasm on my own when I was in college. But usually, I just knew that he would have his pleasure, and I probably would not have mine. Until after my divorce, I didn’t know that sex could be any different, that it could last more than three or four minutes, that it wasn’t just until he came and then it was over.”
In their forties, their marriage was struggling. Her husband had developed erectile dysfunction and wanted to watch porn every time they had sex. “It was so degrading because I thought, ‘What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my body?’” She tried to do what she could to spice up their sex life. “I bought a butt plug and some other things for a weekend away, but it didn’t help. It was humiliating, and I felt so stupid. I was trying so hard to make him happy, to do anything I could to save the marriage. I thought it must be me.”
As it turned out, her husband had been having an affair and soon ended the marriage. “When I got divorced, I was very bitter, very hurt and very angry. I seriously considered suicide.” Eventually, Nora read self-help books, found a therapist and completed her undergraduate degree. In time, she learned to forgive and to heal.
Then, she started dating. And she discovered that sex could be different.
“I remember reading articles in magazines that said, ‘Tell them what you want.’ It was scary but I thought, ‘What do I have to lose? I can let him try to figure it out or I can tell him what I want.’ Afterwards, one guy said, ‘That was the biggest turn on for me ever!’ And I thought, ‘Well, it was pretty good for me, too!’ He was successful, and I was successful. I was like, ‘Wow. WOW! This is fun. This is great. What have I been missing all these years?!’”
Through self-exploration, Nora had learned what worked sexually in her body. She combined that knowledge with two other key components for good sex – communication and a sense that she deserved good sex.
Her last two partners both asked her to masturbate in front of them. “It was a huge turn on for them. Huge. I was like, ‘Woah, let me finish here. Then you can have your fun.’”
“When I grew up, sex was a taboo, dirty thing. It would not have been okay to tell people that you like sex.”
We still have a long way to go to improve the sexual education of our youth. When our youth hear that anyone can like and enjoy sex, then individuals will be less likely to engage in sex just to please a partner. And, girls who are taught that sex should be comfortable and pleasurable are less likely to endure painful, unpleasant sexual experiences. Educating about sexual pleasure is a harm reduction intervention.