Tag: personal

Header image for a post on how to get over a broken heart

7 Things That Helped Me to Get Over a Broken Heart

Published on by Amy

Heads up: this is not a generic “how to get over a broken heart” listicle. This is tremendously personal and I hope I can trust my readers to be kind.

Yup. It’s been an entire year, and we’re finally talking about this! I have tried to write something cohesive about this experience so many times over the last year, but it didn’t feel like the right time until now. I had to wait until I was sure I was really okay, really truly over it and out the other side, before I could write about it with the benefit of knowing for sure that the pain really does end.

One year ago today, I experienced the most brutal, absolute, and devastating betrayal of my life from someone I thought I would be with forever.

“Blindsided” is not even the word.

It physically hurt. I felt like I was dying.

I still don’t think I have the words to explain the depths of the grief I sunk into. The anger and the confusion, that time I screamed in my car down a deserted road just to let out some of the pressure that felt like it was crushing me from the inside. The nights I spent alternately crying until I felt numb and drinking myself into oblivion just so that, for a few blissful minutes, I wouldn’t have to feel anything.

But this post isn’t actually about that pain, or about the person who broke my heart. It’s about how I got through it. Because that’s the reality of even the worst heartbreak of your life: you do get through it.

One day, you wake up and find you don’t actively want to fucking die. One day, you wake up and you’re not crying before you’re even fully awake, they’re not the first thing on your mind, you don’t see their eyes every time you close yours. Eventually, you smile again. Laugh again. Dance in your kitchen while you make dinner again. Have sex again. Eventually, you even love again.

So this post is for everyone whose heart has ever been broken. It’s for everyone who’s going through it right now, who needs a reminder that there is joy out there and that this too shall pass. But most of all it’s for the Amy of a year ago who felt like she had lost a piece of her soul and thought she might never be happy again. Hold on, sweetheart. Joy is coming back. More joy than you can imagine right now.

This is just my little love letter to seven of the things that pulled me through.

Mr C&K: a masterclass in how to support your partner through a broken heart

I have to start with this one because fucking hell, this man showed up for me when I needed him. Supporting your partner through a breakup with someone else is a uniquely polyamorous experience, and my nesting partner could teach the masterclass. He picked me up off the floor (literally, once or twice.) He fed me and took care of the house and the cat and our life in the immediate aftermath, when I could barely get off the sofa. When I woke up in the early hours of the morning already crying, he pulled me close and reminded me I was still worthy of love.

Pretty words and promises are nice, but they mean nothing if they’re not backed up with actions. Real love? Sometimes it looks like someone who’s been by your side for a decade sitting with you while you cry and rage and work through the confusion, and then filling the fridge with all your favourite foods in the hope that you’ll eat something even though your body is so full with the sheer weight and volume of your grief that you can’t imagine having room for anything as trivial as food.

Sapphic music

A couple of months after my breakup, I started making a giant playlist of all the sapphic, lesbian and queer girl music I could find.

It was partly an attempt to reconnect with my own queerness. To remind myself that no longer having a girlfriend didn’t invalidate my identity. I found the angsty breakup songs cathartic. The love songs gave me hope that I might find something like that again someday.

Most of all, it was a feeling of being held by these women. Women I’ll never meet but with whom I feel a kinship because of our shared experience as sapphics in a world that simultaneously invisibilises and hyper-sexualises us.

Fletcher, MUNA, Hayley Kiyoko, Girli, Chappell Roan, Xana, Girl in Red, Renee Rapp and more wrapped their words around my heart and, on the nights I felt most profoundly alone, their songs reached out a hand and said “we got you.”

Crafting

You know the cool thing about having yarn, fabric, a set of knitting needles or a crochet hook in your hands? You can’t text the person who broke your heart (or pound that ill-advised fourth shot of gin of the night) while you’re doing it.

Sometimes, making things—counting stitches and rows, figuring out pattern instructions, occasionally ripping it all out and starting again—was the only thing that could stop me from thinking about her, calm my racing mind from ruminating on how stupidly happy I had been and how it had all gone to hell so quickly.

I crafted so much in the few months following my breakup that I ended up taking a stall of my yarn-based creations to sell at a Pride event. Every time I saw someone smile and pick out a piece I’d made in their pride flag’s colours, a little bit of my heart healed. I’d turned my pain into beautiful things, and those things brought other people joy.

Slow, careful and mindful attempts at dating

I got back on the dating apps around August. If I’m entirely honest it was probably a little too soon but I decided, fuck it, it’s been six months, maybe I’m allowed to have a little fun now? (Or maybe I just needed the emotional masochism of confirming, once again, my utter certainty that I would never meet anyone who was right for me ever again.)

Only… I did.

I had a nice date with a woman. Things didn’t go anywhere, but going on a date—laughing and eating sushi and getting to know someone new—felt like gently flexing a muscle I hadn’t used in far too long, like taking the cast off a broken bone. Then I dated someone lovely for about three months. We had fun. Then we realised we weren’t romantically compatible and parted on good terms as friends.

And then…

Well. The next bit of the story comes later in this post.

Queer community: a beautiful antidote to a broken queer heart

There’s an invisibility that often comes with sapphic love. This is doubled (tripled, really) if you’re polyamorous and your relationship isn’t a socially-sanctioned, legally-sanctioned, highly visible, hetero-read one.

So many people in my life didn’t understand that the relationship might have ultimately been short-lived and non-escalator, but that didn’t make it any less real. It fucking mattered. My love mattered. My heart mattered.

It was my queer community, particularly my queer polyamorous community, that understood. Those people witnessed and held the reality of just how much this fucking sucked. They allowed me to be sad then angry then hopeful then hopeless and then sad all over again. They let me go from laughter to sobbing and back to laughter, sometimes in the space of minutes.

And they never told me it didn’t matter because it didn’t last. That I should have known better, or that polyamory is always a recipe for disaster. They didn’t say at least you still have a partner as if that makes a broken heart hurt any less, or any of the other shit that clueless straight people hit me with.

Friends who understand

Sometime around May, three months after my breakup, I went for coffee with a well-meaning friend. When I got home, I said to Mr C&K, “I feel like an alien in my own life.” I felt completely detatched and cut off from just about everyone else on the planet.

There were a very small number of people who made me feel understood and seen. One of them was someone I didn’t even know all that well at the time, who had gone through a breakup around the same time. Over the course of a few months, our two person #BrokenHeartClub (or #BoozyBrokenHeartClub on the more difficult days) evolved into a friendship I’m profoundly grateful for.

My best friend and his boyfriend let me crash with them for a few days in the immediate aftermath while I got my head back on straight. My bestie alternately took me out and got me drunk in healing queer spaces (Eastenders-themed drag? Surprisingly good medicine for a broken heart!) and let me rage-sob on his sofa.

Finding love again: the hardest and most crucial step in getting over a broken heart

I had to save this one for last. It’s ultimately one of the most significant pieces of this story and the most difficult to find adequate words for.

There’s something a little paradoxical here. After a breakup, we’re not supposed to start looking for a new relationship until we’re fully healed. We’re supposed to get over a broken heart before we try to find love again. Yet, at a certain point, there is a form of healing that happens within a new relationship. If you want to learn to trust again, at some point you need to practice trusting someone. If you want to fall in love again, at some point you need to let yourself fall.

I met my now-girlfriend Em on a dating app in late October. Our connection was fast. We both read the other’s profile and had a moment of “were you made for me!?”. But it was also slow, in that it was over two months before we could spend time together in person. In those two months, we clocked up over 40 hours of phone and video calls.

On January 7th at 8pm, she walked into the bar and she smiled at me and I knew. On January 7th at 10pm, she asked me to be her girlfriend. Then, on January 26th, I told her I love her. Was I terrified to try again? Of course. But at some point, you have to feel the fear and try again anyway.

She was the final and most crucial piece. She profoundly sees me, understands me, holds me in the messiness and vulnerability of all that I am and have been and all that I might be in the future. With her, I felt able to take that risk. To trust someone. To stare down the fear of opening myself up to that kind of pain again and decide she was worth the risk.

She was—is—everything I needed in a new love. And she found me at the perfect moment.

If you’re trying to get over a broken heart, I hope this gave you a little comfort. I know you’ll get through it. Listen I love you joy is coming.

Woman clutching the sheets as though cumming. Header image for a post on faking orgasms.

On Faking Orgasms: Why I’ll Never Fake an Orgasm Again

Published on by Amy

Sometimes it’s hard for me to orgasm. Other times I can get there, but it takes a long time. On those occasions when my orgasms feel a long way away, faking it still sometimes feels incredibly tempting.

According to the International Society for Sexual Medicine, one study showed that the average person with a vulva (they said “woman” but let’s use inclusive language here) takes around 14 minutes to climax during partnered sex. It is a little unclear whether the researchers were using “partnered sex” synonymously with “intercourse”. However, I’m assuming they are referring to any kind of partnered sexual activity since anything from 50% to 80% (depending on which study you believe) of people with vulvas don’t orgasm solely from penetration at all.

Why Fake An Orgasm?

I’ve definitely pretended to orgasm in the past, at various times and for a few different reasons. At the absolute worst, when I was in an abusive relationship, faking orgasms was sometimes the best way to get things I didn’t like to end. In those relationships, even if the sex itself was consensual, it wasn’t necessarily safe to ask for what actually felt good and would help me to get off. Abusive men don’t take well to any threat to their egos, and turns out “I didn’t come” is a pretty big ego threat.

On a less sinister note, I’ve had a lot of consensual-but-bad sex in my life. Whether it was partners who couldn’t be bothered to learn how to please me, or just my own insecurities and unwillingness to speak up for my pleasure, lots of factors played into this. Half way through sex I might realise that I wasn’t going to get there no matter how hard we tried. At those times, faking orgasms sometimes felt easier than saying “can we stop?”

I’ve also done the fake orgasm thing in group sex situations before. Those spaces are typically less about the actual orgasm for me. I often won’t come in a group situation, though there are of course exceptions to this. They’re more about the overall sensuality, shared sexual energy, and just the feeling of being in that erotic space with other sexy people. Even so, it can feel like the goal in those situations is “everyone has an orgasm” and like I’m letting the group down if I don’t. In those circumstances, it has sometimes felt easier to fake an orgasm than to draw attention to it.

Why I Decided to Stop Faking It

Quite a few years ago now, I swore off faking orgasms. So what changed? A few things.

First, I realised that I deserve pleasure as much as my partners. I was primarily sleeping with men and masc-of-centre people at the time, and the orgasm gap is a real phenomenon to which I have no desire to contribute with my sex life.

Ironically, discovering that I have an orgasm denial/orgasm control kink helped, too. This means that if I’m having fun but not getting off, I can eroticise the build-up and the unreleased sexual tension in and of itself. Enjoying the process freed me up to enjoy sex more fully without needing to chase a destination that can be highly variable in its reachability. (And yes, I also appreciate the irony that someone growling “don’t you dare fucking come” in my ear will often get me close faster than almost anything else.)

I also realised that faking it just begets more frustration and unsatisfying sex. If a partner believes that what they’re doing is getting me off, they will (reasonably) continue doing those things when we have sex again in the future. By faking orgasms, I was literally teaching partners to continue touching me in ways that didn’t work for me. What’s the point of that?

I recently saw this article about why faking orgasms “may not be as bad for your relationship as we thought,” and… it made me kinda ragey. This part, in particular:

If your partner feels insecure about their sexual ability and you don’t have an orgasm during sex, sometimes telling them you did is an easy out from having to console them. As much as you love your partner, having to reassure them their sex skills are top-notch can be taxing. That’s why, in these situations, it’s fine to spare their feelings to avoid having to comfort them for hours on end.

– Amanda Chatel

What? WHAT!? No! I’m sorry but if someone’s ego is so fragile that they’re going to make my body’s quirks about them, or that they’d rather I lie to them rather than learn about what actually gets me off (and accept that sometimes it might not happen through no fault of theirs or mine), we shouldn’t be having sex.

Another change was discovering the wonderful world of sex toys. Over a decade ago, I went through a period where I was unable to orgasm due to starting new antidepressants. It was a mains-powered “back massager” vibrator that helped me eventually power through that block. I didn’t really start exploring the full joys of the sex toy world, though, until I launched this blog.

Discovering toys gave me new options and avenues for pleasure and orgasm. New ways to experience intense sensations when my body needs more powerful stimulation to break through an orgasm block. And sometimes new ways to just have fun without the destination needing to be the focus.

The absolute number one change, though? The single biggest thing that turned all of this around? Safe relationships.

When You’re With Safe Partners, Faking Orgasms Becomes Unnecessary

With both Mr C&K and my girlfriend, I feel able to say either “please could we do this different thing that might help me get there?” or “I don’t think it’s going to happen tonight but I’m still having tonnes of fun” and I know that that will be heard and accepted with love. Feeling safe and loved totally removes the need or desire to fake anything with them, including my orgasms.

So sometimes I still struggle to get there. That might always be true. And sometimes I might worry that I’m taking too long. That my partner(s) will feel bad if I don’t get off. That they’ll get bored with the process. In those situations, faking orgasms does still occasionally seem like a tempting solution. But I promised myself and my partners that I’ll never do that again, and I intend to stick to it.

I deserve more than fake pleasure and so do my partners. Because if we can’t be authentic with each other, what’s the point?

Content like this is made possible thanks to my relationships with my affiliates. You can find their logos and links in the right hand sidebar, or below if you’re reading on mobile! Shopping with them helps to keep the blog going at no extra cost to you.

Naming My Sexuality: What is Sapphic?

Published on by Amy

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the words I use to describe my sexuality. I started identifying as bisexual when I was 17, having always experienced attraction to folks of different genders. But in recent years, this term has felt less and less adequate to describe an expansive and often confusing identity. As I’ve tried on different terms for my sexuality, the one that feels increasingly right is “sapphic.” Let’s talk about the definition of this lesser-known LGBTQ+ term and what it means to be sapphic.

Am I Still Bisexual? Yes… and No

I’ve always liked the term “bisexual” and proudly claimed it for a number of reasons:

  1. It feels extremely important to claim a label that people often dismiss as “not really queer” or “queer lite”, despite being literally the third letter in LGBTQIA+.
  2. It’s an easy shorthand that most people outside of the LGBTQIA+ community have at least some understanding of.
  3. Claiming an expansive definition of bisexuality (“attraction to two or more genders”) is important in pushing back against the false narrative that bisexuals only fancy cis people or that bisexuality is a trans-exclusionary sexuality. (They don’t and it’s not.)

So now I’ve started defining my sexuality as sapphic, am I also still bisexual? Yes and no. I’d say that I still identify as under the bi+ umbrella, given that I’m neither a 0 nor a 6 on the Kinsey Scale (“exclusively heterosexual” or “exclusively homosexual”, respectively.) Taken on its own, though, I haven’t been finding the label “bisexual” entirely accurate or sufficient to describe my reality.

Sapphic Sexuality Definition: An Expensive LGBTQ+ Identity?

So what is sapphic?

The official definition of sapphic is an LGBTQ+ term “relating to sexual attraction or activity between women” (Oxford Languages.) As a sexual orientation or identity, the LGBTQIA+ Wiki defines sapphic sexuality as referring “to a woman or woman-aligned person of any sexual orientation who is attracted to other women and/or women-aligned individuals.”

Fun fact: the term “sapphic” derives from the name of Sappho, an Archaic Greek poet who lived circa 630-570 BCE and whose work described erotic desire and romantic love between women. The word “lesbian” comes from Lesbos, the island where Sappho lived.

Why Identify My Sexuality as Sapphic?

As I said, I’ve played around with a lot of sexuality labels over the years and particularly over the last few months. Though I’m definitely somewhere on the bi+ spectrum, I’m also definitely not a Kinsey 3 (i.e. bang in the middle of the spectrum between exclusively gay and exclusively straight.)

I’m probably somewhere between a Kinsey 5 and a 5.5. That is, much more frequently attracted to people with similar gender identities and presentations to mine (i.e. women, femmes, and women-aligned folks) than to those with very different identities and presentations (i.e. men, male-aligned, and masc-of-centre folks.)

In truth, if I could name 100 people I found attractive right now, at least 95 of them would be women, femmes, or women-aligned. The men in my romantic life are wonderful (and it’s really “man”, singular, these days). But they’re also increasingly rare exceptions.

Sapphic as a Reclamation of Queer Visibility

Sapphic is an umbrella term for many different ways of being within queer sexuality. It can encompass people who identify as lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, queer, and in various other ways. What I love the most about this particular label is that it doesn’t necessarily mean exclusive attraction to women (in the way that the term “lesbian” is often assumed to, though even this is complicated. Bisexual lesbians exist!) It does, however, centre that attraction.

As a woman and as a femme, most of the world would conceive my sexuality primarily in relation to men. Specifically, the assumption is that I will be exclusively or primarily attracted to them and that, even when I am not, my interest in other women will be performed in a way that centres men. In fact, one of the most common biphobic and lesbophobic tropes is that queer women’s sexuality primarily exists for the titillation and enjoyment of men. (See “can I watch?” and “that’s hot” and “so if you’re bi, can we have a threesome?”)

People often assume that I’m “straight really”. They accuse me of just dabbling in queerness for funsies because my nesting partner happens to be male. I recently told a man who was trying to pick me up that I was “wayyyyyy towards the gay end of bisexual”. Somehow, all he gleaned from that revelation was “so I still have a chance?” (Reader, he did not.) Even—perhaps especially—when you’re loudly and proudly queer, heteronormativity can seem very very pervasive sometimes.

So yes. I think “sapphic” is the most succinct and accurate way to sum up my sexuality right now.

Choosing a term to describe my sexuality that specifically places my love for and attraction to women at its heart feels like a small act of reclamation and celebration for my queerness. Every time I think about referring to myself in this way it makes me smile. I think that means I am on the right lines.

Header for a post about wand vibrators and anorgasmia from antidepressants

How Wand Vibrators Helped Me Find My Sexual Desire Again When Antidepressants Killed It

Published on by Amy

I’ve been on antidepressants for the majority of my adult life, trying three different medications before I found the one that works for me. I’ve had some shame about this over the years, but these days I am very pro-medication for those who need it. I’m not exaggerating when I say that my mental health meds saved my life on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, antidepressants are known to decrease sexual desire for many people, and my first two antidepressants also killed my libido.

Wand vibrators - Honey Wand from Honey Play Box
Honey Wand by Honey Play Box

Like any medications, antidepressants often have side effects. These can range in severity from mildly annoying to seriously debilitating. Sexual side effects are common and can include erectile dysfunction, loss of desire, anorgasmia, and more.

How Antidepressants Killed My Libido and Ability to Orgasm

My first antidepressant was Fluoxetine (Prozac), which killed my libido for the entire nine months I was taking it. Anything that had been pleasurable before just felt like… nothing. This wasn’t limited to sex, either. I also lost my appetite and all ability to derive pleasure from food.

On Citalopram, I lost my ability to orgasm while my body adjusted to the meds. Needless to say, this was incredibly upsetting and frustrating. Feeling like I had no control over my body and like I’d lost one of my greatest sources of pleasure was so damaging that I seriously considered coming off the meds that were otherwise helping with my depression.

The first time antidepressants killed my libido, was so thoroughly miserable (both from the depression and from the side effects of the meds) that I wasn’t even interested in reclaiming it. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have sex or masturbate for about nine months at one stage. In hindsight, this probably made things even worse, because my sexuality has always been one of the key ways that I access pleasure and joy. At that time, I didn’t own any sex toys, and any touch from either myself or my partner left me cold.

The second time antidepressants didn’t kill my libido entirely, but they did decrease it. They took the edge off the worst of the sadness and hopelessness, and I found myself wanting sex occasionally. But I couldn’t orgasm, either with my partner or by myself. Though orgasm is not necessarily the goal of sex, this quickly became frustrating and then maddening. I felt like my body was betraying me. Like I had to choose between having a properly functioning brain and a satisfying sex life.

Overcoming Anorgasmia with Sex Toys and Advocating For My Pleasure

The turning point in reclaiming by libido and orgasms came when my then-partner suggested trying a wand vibrator. It finally broke through the orgasm block and, once that dam broke, it became easier and easier to get there again. I invested in a wand for myself pretty quickly after that, and it became my go-to toy.

My third and current antidepressant, Sertraline, mercifully hasn’t decreased my libido or decreased my ability to orgasm. When I decided to go back on medication, I made it very clear to my doctor that losing my desire for sex (or my ability to orgasm) again wasn’t an option.

Wand Vibrators As a Tool Against Depression

Despite having finally found an antidepressant that doesn’t kill my libido, my mental health still has an impact on my sexuality. Contrary to popular belief, it’s still possible to feel horny at the same time as being depressed. Sad people need pleasure and orgasms, too! There have also been many times in my life when I haven’t felt horny, but I knew intellectually that an orgasm would make me feel better.

Sometimes, when I’m very very depressed, I feel as though there’s a kind of fog around me. The fog keeps me at least partly disconnected from everything and everyone around me. At its worst, it creates a sense of being somewhat outside and detached from my own body.

In this state, many types of touch that would normally be pleasurable struggle to penetrate the fog. When that happens, I need intense stimulation and lots of it. It’s times like this that I might crave certain BDSM activities even more than usual. It’s also times like this when knock-your-socks-off powerful wand vibes are a godsend. It might be possible to power through to orgasm with a lacklustre, buzzy vibrator but… why bother?

Whether my libido is being killed my antidepressants or decreased by depression itself, a good wand vibrator can wrench an orgasm from my body with very little active input from me. With a powerful enough wand, I basically just put it in the right spot and wait for the orgasm to happen. In this way, I can access pleasure and the positive physical and mental health benefits of orgasm even when I feel so low I don’t want to leave my bed.

What I Learned When Antidepressants Killed My Libido: Sexual Pleasure Matters

When someone is dealing with severe health issues, either physical or mental, it’s often tempting to see sexual pleasure as trivial. Certainly when I spoke to my doctor about antidepressants killing my libido and decreasing my ability to orgasm, they dismissed my concerns. Did I want sex or did I want to not be sad? Because I couldn’t have both.

Except I actually could. I needed and deserved to have both.

If you’re struggling with pleasure or orgasm due to health issues and medication, I want you to hear this: sexual pleasure matters. It’s not trivial and it’s not unimportant. If it’s important to you, then it matters. And you deserve to have what you need to feel sexually satisfied, whether that’s a change of medication, a super powerful vibrator, or just to change up what you’re doing.

Thanks to Honey Play Box for sponsoring this post. All views and experiences are my own!

Header image for a post on reclaiming pleasure after sexual assault and other sexual traumas

Five Lessons I’ve Learned About Reclaiming Pleasure After Sexual Assault

Published on by Amy

Pleasure can be far from simple for all kinds of reasons, and after sexual assault or other kinds of sexual trauma, finding joy in intimacy and in your sexuality again can feel like an insurmountable task.

Disclaimer: I’m a survivor and a trauma-informed sexuality writer and educator. I am not a psychotherapist, psychologist, or any form of medical or mental health professional. Nothing here can or should replace competent, professional advice and support.

The first and most important thing I want you to take away from this post is this: your journey is your own and wherever you are now is okay. There is no correct way to recover from sexual trauma and there is no set path. Everyone’s experience is different and numerous factors impact healing.

This is not a how-to guide. It’s just a set of lessons I’ve learned that have helped me in my ongoing journey towards healing. Maybe they’ll help you too. Or maybe you’ll find something completely different that works for you! Either way is wonderful.

Pleasure and Intimacy After Sexual Trauma is Not a Linear Journey

Recovery is not a straight line. You won’t just get better and better each day until suddenly you wake up and find that you’re fully healed. At least, I don’t know any survivors whose experience has been this way.

You’ll have good days and bad days. Sometimes you might feel like you take two steps forward and one back. All of this is normal. Intimacy after sexual trauma is complicated, multi-faceted, and messy. You don’t need to berate yourself if it’s harder today than it was yesterday.

Be where you are today. Wherever that is, it’s okay.

A Healthy Sexual Relationship With Yourself Can Be Immensely Healing

Sex doesn’t have to involve another person unless you want it to. In fact, masturbation and other forms of self-touch, both sexual and non-sexual, can be a valuable part of healing from sexual violence and reclaiming pleasure as a radical act of self-love after trauma. Reclaiming intimacy after trauma includes intimacy with yourself.

Masturbation and solo sex is something you do entirely for yourself. You don’t have to perform or worry about pleasing someone else. You don’t even need to involve your genitals at all, if you don’t want to. The only agenda is to touch yourself in the ways that feel good, and stop when you want to stop.

Self-touch is a wonderful way to get to know ourselves, to be kind and loving and gentle with ourselves. Pay attention to your body and what feels good. Do you just want to run your hands over your skin for now? Perfect, do that. Does using a wand vibrator through your clothes help you access pleasure in a way that feels safe? Amazing.

Healing From Trauma is For You and You Don’t Owe Your Sexuality to Anyone

Many survivors feel anxious to recover from or “get over” their trauma because they want to be able to give their partner sex (or certain kind of sex.) Sometimes this pressure comes from the partner. Other times, the partner is completely supportive and this pressure is internal.

Either way: your healing is for you. Your trauma is yours and your sexuality is yours. You don’t owe it to anyone.

Yes, it’s wonderful to be able to share awesome sex with your partner(s) if you want to. But reclaiming intimacy after trauma has to be for yourself first. No-one has the right to access to your body. Not even if you’ve been married for fifty years.

You can heal with other people. In fact, love and support are essential for recovering from trauma. But you can’t heal for somebody else, and you don’t owe your partner(s) a certain kind of recovery.

There is No “Correct” Version of Healthy Sexuality After Trauma

Pleasure is personal and it can look countless different ways. A healthy relationship with your sexuality means something different to everyone.

Sadly, a lot of people still believe that the only correct sex is penetrative, heterosexual, monogamous, vanilla, and within the context of a serious relationship. Survivors of trauma who identify as queer, non-monogamous, kinky, asexual, demisexual, or highly sexual may find themselves pathologised, with professionals and loved ones alike attributing their identities and experiences to their trauma. This is tremendously damaging to survivors and is another form of taking away our agency.

Reclaiming pleasure after trauma means that you get to decide how your sexuality looks. If it’s happy, risk-aware, and consensual, you’re doing it right.

The Hardest Lesson About Intimacy and Pleasure After Sexual Trauma: Some Things Might Never Go Back to the Way They Were

I still grieve for the Amy who never met her abuser. I still grieve for the version of me who didn’t get pressured into sex in her teens, who didn’t lose half her twenties to psychological abuse, who didn’t get raped at a party in her thirties. Honestly? I will probably always carry that grief.

When it comes to reclaiming pleasure and intimacy after trauma, the hardest thing for me to learn was that some things will never be the way they might have been in that alternate timeline.

Because abuse, assault, violence? It changes us. It has a deep, profound, and lasting impact. I know that the things I’ve experienced will, in some ways, be with me forever. I’ll never go back to the way I was before.

But I am starting, in some small ways, to be okay with that. Nothing stays the same forever, and every experience we have shapes and molds us. So no, I’ll never be the person I might have been without those experiences. But I can grow into someone else. She might even be someone great.

If you need crisis support after sexual violence, please contact RAINN in the USA and Rape Crisis in the UK.

Several kinds of birth control. For an essay on how I don't want children and being childfree by choice

I Don’t Want Children (and That Doesn’t Mean There’s Anything Wrong with Me)

Published on by Amy3 Comments

I don’t want to have children.

Ever.

I think I was seventeen the first time I uttered that sentence out loud. My then-boyfriend and I had discussed how many children we’d have someday, and what their names would be. Because that’s what you did when you were in a loving relationship, wasn’t it? Get married, buy a house, get a dog, then have children. Even though I have long had complicated feelings about marriage, I’m more of a cat person, and… I don’t want children.

I’d not yet heard the phrase “childfree by choice” when I realised that parenthood didn’t fit with the vision I had for my future. I wanted to write, I wanted to travel, I wanted to adopt animals and make a home with my partner. But could I see myself as a mother? Every time I thought about it, it just didn’t fit.

Why Are People More Concerned About Hypothetical Children Than About My Happiness?

I’ve been polyamorous my entire adult life. Whenever I come out to someone, one of the first questions I get asked is how this will impact my children someday.

Firstly, there is no compelling evidence to suggest polyamorous families are inherently worse for children than monogamous ones (and plenty of evidence to suggest that kids raised in poly households can thrive!) Second, and more important in my case: I don’t want children. I’m never having any, and I don’t date people who have them, so the impact of my polyamory on them is a completely moot hypothetical argument.

I think this speaks to the broader habit of calling childfree by choice women “selfish.”

Since I was a teenager, I’ve been told I’d change my mind and that I was too young to make this choice. (Ironically, I think I will be “too young to make this choice” until the day I become “too old to have kids” in the eyes of society.) The implication is that these hypothetical, unborn, unconceived, never-going-to-exist children matter more than the happiness of an actual living, breathing, already-existing human.

How Being Childfree By Choice Has Impacted My Dating Life

Honestly, it really hasn’t.

I’ve always been very upfront about the fact that I don’t want children at the start of any new relationship, casual or otherwise. This allows prospective partners to self-select out if this doesn’t work for them. I have a strong preference to date other people who are committed to the childfree by choice life, and I won’t have anything but a very casual relationship with anyone who has children or wants them in the future. There is no point wasting each other’s time if our big picture life goals don’t match.

I use two methods of birth control at all time, and I’ve always been very clear with anyone I have potentially pregnancy-causing sex with that an accidental pregnancy will result in a hasty abortion and that this is not up for debate.

How Do I Know I Won’t Regret It?

I know because every time I allow myself to imagine being a parent, I am filled with an immediate and visceral sense of “absolutely the fuck not.”

Can I 1000% guarantee I won’t wish I’d had kids when I’m 70? Of course not. But I think it’s tremendously unlikely, given how much I love my life as it is. I have loving partners, friends, and chosen family. I’m not going to end up alone. And really, is a vague fear of being alone at some unspecified point in the future a good reason to bring a new life into this world? I don’t think it is.

If I pushed myself to become a parent out of some misguided sense of duty or pressure, I think I’d regret that.

Late last year, my nesting partner Mr C&K had a vasectomy. My risk of unintended pregnancy was low already (thanks, Mirena!) but that decision removed any remaining possibility. When it was done, all we vboth felt was an overwhelming, searing relief. No lingering “what if?” No sadness for what might have been. Just, thank God, that’s one less thing to worry about.

I Don’t Want Children, But That Doesn’t Make Me Heartless

“There’s something deeply wrong with women who don’t want children.” I still remember overhearing someone say this, and the countless times I’ve heard similar sentiments. It’s not usually quite as overt as this, but the implicit question underlying all the bullshit that’s thrown at childfree women is “what’s wrong with you?”

Nothing is wrong with me.

I’m not broken. This decision isn’t the result of some unresolved trauma. I’m not missing a piece of my heart. I’m not selfish. I don’t hate children. I’m perfectly capable of love. I literally just don’t want to be a mother. I’m comfortable with that. I wish the rest of the world was.