Girl on the Net

Today’s guest blog is an incredible one to start the New Year with, because it combines all my favourite things: overcoming adversity, smashing preconceived ideas about sex, and enjoying some extremely hot fucks. I’ll keep my intro short and sweet, and let the couple who wrote this post introduce it instead: “To a lot of people, sex – real, adjective-free “sex” – at least for a straight, cis couple still ultimately means a penis going into a vagina. And if that’s how you define sex, then we did not have sex for over 10 years.”

First times: when penetrative sex is painful

Her: I don’t know if “your first time will be painful” is something people (or girls) still grow up accepting as inescapable fact, but I certainly did, so when my boyfriend at the time and I planned out our first time, I was expecting it. I admit, I was also expecting it to stop hurting at some point, and the transcendental feelings to kick in, but all that happened was I cried at the end and told him it was OK, I didn’t regret it, I wasn’t sad. I used to cry after sex for the first few years, and honestly I kind of liked that weird cascade of feeling, alchemised in the black box of my body and emerging as an emotion so distilled I could barely tell what it was anymore.

I never talked to a doctor about how painful sex was for me. It never occurred to me as a serious problem. I just tried not to do it so often, and luckily, there were plenty of things that would please my boyfriends that didn’t involve my vagina. I got really good at handjobs, blowjobs, titjobs. And I enjoyed being good at them. I assumed I had a low sex drive, and there was an element of trying to keep my partners off my back, but I don’t blame them at all. We were all young and not so experienced, and I never asked for much back. I didn’t know there was anything I might want.

I discovered masturbation at university, and that was where it all changed for me. I’d heard of it, of course, and knew other people liked it. I just never thought of it as something that would do it for me. I didn’t know how to masturbate in a way that I liked until I was hundreds of miles from home after an awful breakup. Suddenly I knew what to ask for.

And then I met my husband, and when I learned he was a virgin, I realised that if we stayed together as I wanted to, I was about to rob him of having any sexual experience ever in his life.

Him: She’d warned me beforehand that sex with her previous boyfriends had been painful and she’d struggled to eke pleasure out of it. The worry loomed over me as she led me upstairs to her bedroom for the first time. Perhaps it would be different for me, I told myself. Perhaps I’d magically have a technique that would solve her problems. Perhaps I could even hope my cock was smaller than theirs.

I’d bought a new box of condoms for the occasion, which turned out to be a waste of a tenner. I lined myself between her legs, she bit her lip, readied her body and grabbed her sheets tight. I tried to thrust, and she squealed and whispered “ouch”. Was I off target? I tried again, and she failed to hold back a cry of pain. I made a couple more tragic-looking attempts, but it was no good. I couldn’t bear the idea of hurting her for something she wouldn’t even enjoy, and the anxiety made me go soft.

She got off in the end, guiding my hand on her clit to show me just how she liked it, but I fell asleep beside her filled with the worry that this was it – our sex life was dead before it had even begun.

Finding our own kind of sex

Her: It was hard to internalise the idea that he was actually satisfied with our sex life, which I was wary of calling “our sex life” for a long time. It’s not something I obsessed over, but more than once I worried that he was only being kind and self-sacrificing, putting his true desires to one side for my sake. I wondered that he could enjoy getting me off so much. I felt guilty sometimes that I needed – or just wanted – the vibrator, and it was the best way to get me to come.

To complicate matters, my sex drive was affected by my IUD (needed for hormone reasons, its contraceptive function useless to me), something I only realised when I had it out to get it replaced, and for that IUD-less month I was incredibly horny in beautiful, inconvenient waves. I didn’t know how to ask him to get me off. I had no practice, because all my sexual experiences in my early relationships were so reactive. I’d find myself burning for it and praying he’d approach me. Sometimes he did. Most of the time, it turns out you need to communicate this stuff.

IUD-complications notwithstanding, sex slowly became something that was worth giving my time to. There was no keeping track of who owed who how many orgasms. There was no-strings pleasure, a space where I could just lie back and enjoy myself. And I still got to bask in my pride in my own skills. It felt like a sex life. I don’t remember when the caveats and qualifications fell away, but one day they were just gone. I think he might have been the first to refer to it as sex, and it felt right.

Him: A year on, we were still together. Together we enjoyed phenomenal handjobs and mindblowing oral. We could grind together, or she could indulge me with a titwank. We bought a small powerful handheld vibrator, and for a couple of weeks I wondered if it was tragic that I was replacing myself with a machine. Then suddenly I realised it wasn’t a substitute, but an extension of me, a tool that I could learn to use in new, teasing ways. Not only were the orgasms incredible, but it was just fun – like a game we were playing together.

But for whatever reason, for a long time we never called it sex. I never whispered “Let’s fuck” in her ear, and I always felt a hesitation about ticking the “Are you sexually active?” box at the doctor’s. It felt like no matter how incredible it was, it didn’t deserve to be called sex unless actual penetration was involved.

Then the fantasies in my mind started to change. When I wanked, it was to visions of fingers and mouths and the warm humid heat of burying your face between someone’s thighs. But it was never to coming inside. My subconscious knew that this was sex long before we could put it into words. That’s when I knew that whatever other people might call it, what we were doing was unquestionably fucking.

Relearning penetration

Her: For a lot of my life I didn’t want kids, or was ambivalent to the idea, but sometimes that feeling hits you like a true destructive primal urge, and the more I realised that I did want kids, the more I realised we would have to get over that first hurdle of getting his dick inside me far enough to give fate a chance.

I knew he hated the idea of hurting me. I was ready to brave it, but of course it’s easy to decide to endure pain for yourself, and harder to watch someone you love do the same. We agreed to try the old turkey baster trick if it turned out to be utterly impossible, but we would give it a go. I wanted to try. Partly out of curiosity – would it hurt so much still? Was there a chance I’d “grown out of it”? Maybe partly out of a misplaced desire to prove myself, or not to let him down.

Having my IUD out again and for the last time unleashed my sex drive in just the way I’d been anticipating. For what it’s worth, all the horniness in the world didn’t solve my pain problem. But his creative way with foreplay and duringplay gave me orgasms that I never would have associated with penetrative sex. It very quickly stopped being a duty to endure and became something I looked forward to.

I haven’t felt that build-up of inchoate emotion or cried after sex once since we’ve started doing it this way, but I prefer the orgasms.

Him: Our wedding night ended with her bound spreadeagled (the bridal suite had a four-poster bed which we certainly weren’t going to waste) and a wand thrumming between her legs. An amazing way to consummate our marriage. But then we began talking about starting our own family, and that meant somehow my sperm had to meet her egg.

There were some little physical tricks that helped. Lots of lubricant, for one thing (did you know that stores and pharmacies charge 2 or 3 times as much for sperm-safe lubricants as the usual brands? Anything related to babymaking turns out to be a ridiculous rip-off). Pillows under her arse to prop her up so I could enter at a more comfortable angle. A pair of powerful nipple clamp vibrators and the trusty handheld vibrator to distract her.

Other tricks were mental. Overcoming the psychological block that meant I’d lose my erection with the worry of hurting her was a challenge, and there was no easy solution except to talk about it openly with her. I would edge myself before sliding in, and primed myself to come to a countdown ticking down with each thrust. I’d take advantage of the buzz of her own vibrator, a wonderful dull tingle from the walls of her cunt tight around me bringing me over the edge. My gameplan was to be as fast and urgent, to minimise the time I’d need to be inside her but ensuring I’d still come hard at the end.

And when we found that groove at last it became… fun. It was a game again, with the new objective of filling her up to the brim with semen quickly, and then admiring the drops of it slowly trickling out onto the pillow as I rewarded her with the vibrator.

My fantasies transformed themselves again, and now I sometimes find myself dreaming about being inside her. Perhaps they’ll pass. Perhaps I’ll need to invest in a Fleshlight. But still, as much as I’ve enjoyed our foray into penis-in-vagina intercourse, I can’t wait to get back to the proper fucking.