These are not the Droids you're looking for...

There are times when I struggle with what's fair game on this site. I created this space to be the place I could write things down if I felt like it - mostly crafty things - but it turns out I've been inspired to write about a few more things than just crafts.

I read a lot of blogs about all kinds of stuff. One of the main points of discussion is what is appropriate for blog recollection?: kid's antics? tantrums? health? family? friends? money?

There's something I want to talk about that I've been embarrassed to talk about with anyone for a long time. My bad. It's not something that's my fault and I've been feeling like it is. Now that I've figured it out, I'd like to share my experience. If you want a more intimate portrait of me, keep reading. If you'd like to keep things light, I understand. Check out this onesy, and then move on to your next blog.




My husband and I haven't been having regular sex for almost a full year.

It's hard to tell, in popular culture, where the line is between the Jokes about the decline in a Married Person's sex life ("Getting married for the sex is like buying a Jumbo Jet for the peanuts") and Reality. We had a healthy, fulfilling sex life for the better part of two years after getting married. Of course I had thoughts of "Is this just the 'honeymoon period'?" in my head, and our more unusual for-the-novelty-of-it lunchtime or early-morning sex declined in frequency, but not enough that there was a noticeable drop off. We learned about each other, We (mainly I) griped about variety and spontaneity. We were mostly happy - and in a day and age of Endless discussions about what "happy" is, how to achieve it, why it is fleeting, and so on and so forth - that's saying something.

In the beginning, I was on the pill. I started on the pill a few months before the wedding so that we could enjoy un-condomed sex at least during the honeymoon. I'd taken the pill before, and anytime I take one, I get a headache. I think it's Pavlovian. It happened a couple of a times, and now, whenever I take a birth control pill, I immediately get a headache - even upon just holding it in my hand with a glass of water in the other. Regardless, I thought it was worth it. And for a while, it was.

And then the reality of being on a tight budget sank in. We knew we didn't want to have kids right away, and my inability to take the pill everyday at the exact same second as the previous day paired with my personal brand of paranoia meant we were using condoms AND the pill at the same time. Since were weren't enjoying the un-condom sex anyway, I decided to go off the pill. Greg supported me. And then, in the next few months, I remembered why I enjoyed the pill: Less Acne, Shorter Period, and next to NO cramps.

Unhampered by the pill, my back cramps like to see how long they can keep me on the couch each month. I have a feeling they record the pitch of my whining, and how high I turn up the heating pad to tally up the scores of which month's monster cramps win the trophy.

But, whatever, it's natural. And It could be worse.

Plus, we have always talked about being "Young Parents". His parents were 20 when they had their first son, his brother was not much older than that when he became a father. In an abstract, subconscious sort of way, I felt like I should be ready. And one of the things you need to do to be ready, is to be ovulating, right? So I'd keep the hormones out of my system and I'd be ready in 6 months, or a year, or two years when we decided to get going. Condoms don't bother me, so this wasn't an issue.

The thing is, we weren't ready in 6 months. Or a year. Or two years. When we actually talked in depth about it, we realized we really wouldn't be ready to even start trying till at least three years into our marriage. So in December of 2008, I swallowed my procrastinating and made a gynecological appointment to make sure everything was still where it was supposed to be, and to go back on that headache-inducing pill.... which is why when my doctor brought up the Nuvaring, I was skeptical, but interested.

A few months before that, I had one of those "girl-talk" moments with 4 other young wives my age who were ALL on the Nuvaring, Loved it, Loved the spontaneity of it, and all despised condoms to the point of looking down their noses at me, raising their eyebrows and saying "you only use condoms???". It was a weird flashback to a warped kind of play ground where my doll was the off-brand and every body else had the cool-kind.

I expressed my skepticism about keeping a plastic ring in my body for 3 weeks every month, and my doctor assured me that it was safe and even MORE effective than the pill because you CAN'T FUCK IT UP! You put it in... You leave it in! You take it out, and you put another one in a week later!

I wouldn't get headaches from a daily pill. I wouldn't have to stress out about when I took it, or if I was really safe from all of Greg's little Michael Phelps's.

She was offering me two free month's worth, and then said that she was aware of a deal through my insurance that would give me ANOTHER free month. And if I didn't like it, she'd be happy to write me that prescription for the pill.

The money savings broke through all the doubt, and I took her up on the offer.

We rejoiced! Unprotected, completely safe sex! And FREE for three months! Woo!

She told us that we should really wait until the second month to consider it completely safe, just in case, so it felt like a month of finger tapping and waiting. There was some discomfort. There was some weirdness. When the nuvaring slips out a little, it can be very uncomfortably weird - there's nothing like excusing yourself from a meeting to stop a little plastic ring from peeping out to check whether it's day or night.

We had sex a few times the second month because... Well, I was on the nuvaring. This is what we did this for. So we could have sex more often, with more spontaneity, and less - Hang on honey, I'll be right back. It was slightly uncomfortable. I stressed a little about whether it stayed in place or was shoved back up into my naval. And it was slightly uncomfortable during actual sex. My doctor said we could remove it prior to intercourse and then replace it afterwards, but seriously - to me - there's nothing less sexy than saying "Hang on honey, let me just yoink this plug out of me and find an acceptable place to put it during coitus... on the tissue box? no... the night stand? no.... in a new Zip lock bag? Sure... let me just nip down to the kitchen..."

And then it stopped. We stopped having sex.

It's taken me a LONG time to admit this, but it was me. I'm manipulative enough to have convinced Greg it was him for a while, but that's wrong. I'd say: no, some other time, I'm tired, really- right now? we're in the middle of _____, I'm just so comfortable, please hold me, don't you just want to cuddle, not right now, check tomorrow night, check tomorrow morning, I'm not in the mood now - why don't you ever touch me at ____ o'clock? and ON AND ON AND ON AND ON.

I did such a good job of convincing Greg it was his fault, I convinced myself too. And it's not that stuff was so very wrong - I still wanted to spend time with him. I still wanted to talk to him. I still wanted to cuddle on the couch and I still did my best to make him laugh. But we never had sex.

Or rather, we did maybe once a month. And those times were probably the worst sex we've had.

Intellectually and Emotionally I knew we were missing something huge. I knew something was wrong and I'd talk about it all the time. I'd bring it up gently, angrily, meanly... I'd say all the things I could think of to beat it to death till maybe something would happen and things would go back to normal.

TO make a long story (and about 10 months of our lives) short, it didn't change and we both were just miserable when we thought about that part of our lives. Greg coped by not thinking about it. I coped by obsessing about it and taking it out on him.

10 months later, the nuva ring had become slightly annoying to me. It does feel weird, I hated having to remember to pick up the prescription. I hated taking it out, I never remembered to put the new one in on the EXACT date I was supposed to...

And then a few weeks ago, I realized that the amorphous "WE NEVER HAVE SEX" started "forever" ago... If forever was "approximately 10 months"... right about when I started with the nuvaring.

I feel like an idiot. For goodness sakes, You'd think I'd put two and two together, especially when there's so little going on down there.... You'd think I'd figure out that the only thing I was doing to affect that world was really really AFFECTING THAT WORLD.

And so I shared my enormous epiphany with Greg. And through the haze of my not-wanting-sex-AT-ALL it was surprisingly difficult for me to decide to forgo the next ring in exchange for a shot at a libido. I wrestled with it, and I consulted with one friend, and she wisely pointed out that our upcoming trip to California might be more fun if I wasn't such an Ice Queen...

So I gave it up.

It's been 2 weeks, and I have a libido. The process is slow, It's been a long time and there has been so much rejection between us that we need to relearn how to be intimate - but there's blue sky peeking out from behind those clouds.

The point of sharing this is not to steer you away from ever trying the Nuvaring - it's my understanding that for some women, it works incredibly well without side effects or with the added benefit of extra libido. The point here is to say that my life had what seemed like an insurmountable problem. There were tears and fights and turmoil. I felt lonely and wrong for a very long time. There was definitely some depression. This haze has definitely been affecting my writing here on this blog and my panic at Greg leaving to work on site five hours away from me. I didn't have the thought to examine all the possible causes. I suffered and Greg suffered for a long time, and it beat us both to a pulp.

But we climbed that mountain and now we're coming down the other side. Sex is such taboo topic. It is so rarely discussed seriously even while it's considered such a big part of marriage. The question shouldn't always be Do you still have sex after being married for a long time, because what is a long time? Three years of marriage feels like a long time to me. I'm proud of it. It's an accomplishment. When I tried to find someone who talked about something like this online, the most popular search result featured a discussion of "You've only been married a few years and you're not having sex? Something is horribly wrong with you. You should go to a therapist. You should consider divorce. The spark should not be out so fast."

It was terrifying to read that. It was terrifying to think something was so wrong that no one even wrote about their personal experience and all other responses pointed towards "This is not going to last". Other responses were too flippant: It's just a dry spell! You'll get over it!

Yes, you have little control over a lot of events in life, but in my marriage there was no weather report. There were no rainy seasons to look forward to. A dry spell will not go away when you hit April showers!

It took a long time for me to figure out what was going on. We went through a lot of turmoil.

We're not through it yet, but we're on our way and things are getting better. The dry spell didn't just disappear, it took work. And that's okay.