In Memory of Desire

I used to feel sexy all the time, like I could be desirable and that someone else would love to touch and have me.

I used to feel confident and powerful, naked or dressed up. I knew I was hot, and I knew whoever I was with knew it too.

I don’t feel like that anymore. When I look in the mirror, I’m not happy with what I see. It’s not that different to what I used to see; it’s a good enough body. It can even do more than it used to be able to. Exercise has seen to that. I can lift far more than I ever have, but it’s still not good enough.

I fell out of love with my face. It’s not the attractive face I used to see. It’s just marshmallowy. At a stretch, it’s cute, and cute is not sexy. Not desirable.

I used to want to kiss and fuck all the time, think about it several times a day. Now if I want release, I just do it as quick as I can, by myself. I don’t feel sexy anymore; I just feel tension that needs to go away.

I didn’t think my desire or my opinion of myself would hinge so much on what someone else thinks of me.

After three years of trying to make you desire me, I’ve lost the desire myself.

After so long being disappointed that you delay your bedtime long past mine and remove the chance of sex, now I find myself disappointed on the rare occasion that we go to bed together. Whether we fuck or not.

Because if we don’t, I’ve lost that opportunity to rub one out by myself. And if we do, it’s always in the back of my mind that it’s only happening because it’s been so many days, so many weeks since last time. It feels perfunctory, like you’re only allowing it to delay yet another “talk.”

I hate that I’ve lost interest in sex, I hate that I’m starting to resent all the cutesy cuddles and pecks that you still shower on me every day. I don’t want to kiss a roommate. I don’t want to be friends who cuddle. I don’t want to be cute. I want to be desirable.

I wish you could barely keep your hands off me every day, but you can barely bring yourself to kiss me on the lips.

I can’t believe I feel weird and awkward and anxious about sex with a man I’ve shared my life with for years.

I can’t believe I’m starting to feel pangs of panic in my stomach when you remind me that “you’re stuck with me.”

I can’t believe I let myself try so hard and get in so deep with a man who so clearly doesn’t even fancy me.

Friends? Roommates? Family? Any one of these seems a better label than lovers.

I read questions by sex therapists the other day, and my answers saddened me.

“Do you fantasize about each other?”

I know you don’t. And I realised I can’t anymore. I just upset myself. I know you’ll never want me the way I want to be wanted.

I’m scared that any change now will be too little, too late. I’ve lost my appetite and trained myself not to think that way about you. How can I flip that switch back on for one hour knowing that I’ve tried so hard to keep it off for so long at a time, and that it could be weeks afterwards until I’ll be allowed to turn it back on again?

I feel like I’m being pulled in two directions. I want a life with you, but I don’t want to bury that sexual part of me, and it feels like that part of me already has one foot in the grave.

How can I plan forever with you knowing that two weeks will turn into a month, into months, into years, into never?

I’m sorry, I can’t keep fighting this alone.

Thank you to u/cakealter for her post.

I don’t know if I can elaborate on this. I can’t write any better than her.

She expressed her pain so eloquently. I think I’ve written tens of thousands of words on my dead bedroom, but none of them came close to hers.

• Subscribe to The Scarlett Letter — it’s much more fun with the sinners. Billy Joel was right. Only the good die young.
• And to [email protected] because it’s free and I’m so bad, I’m good.
• Plus help a lady adulteress out: Ko-fi/monalisasmiled or [email protected]