I can tell he’s not sure how to talk to me about this, though for me it’s a non-issue. With so many other things to manage — finances, medical appointments, family issues, work… and everything cycles back again to finances — my sexual discomfort is not a high priority, nor is it front-of-mind. The unaccustomed uncomfortableness is more a back-burner late-night almost-forgot-to-remember bit of ‘meh’.
“Are you still dry?” he asks, the unsurety of his voice ringing clearly through the typed text.
I have to pause for a moment; it’s not that I don’t have the answer, but rather that the question itself seems somehow off to me. Innacurately correct. It makes sense but it doesn’t. Because dryness has not really ever been a factor in my relationship with my own arousal. And it is – but it isn’t – now.
I tell him I need more lube.
His surprise at this requirement shows in his expression; raised brows accompany his spoken “You’re wet, hon,” followed immediately by a furrow of concern and a reach across my body with his un-busy hand for the bottle of Sliquid.
He withdraws his fingers to the middle knuckle on a tilt, squeezing the lubrication over his forefingers then gently massaging his way back inside the snug embrace of my vaginal muscles.
What I want to feel is pressure.
Sliding, frictive fullness and scissoring push-stretch of gliding digits against satin squeeze.
Instead – despite the wetness obviously flowing from inside of me and onto him – all I feel is the snagging un-smooth of barely damp, the skin folds along the ridges of his knuckles imprinting my sensitive flesh like a bootprint in sawdust.
The incongruity of feeling is foreign, frustrating.
I stay his left hand with a STOP motion from my right. He stills a moment and our eyes meet in the space above my navel.
I shake my head. A barely-there, single movement.
He drops a kiss on my dragon’s tail and rests his head between my legs.
We let it be.
“What,” he asks, “would you most like to do — if you could do anything… What would you most like to do, sexually?”
A year ago, I was of a mind to pursue a threesome.
Six months ago, I wanted nothing more than to connect with him – sexually, emotionally – and revel in the familiarity of Us.
Six years ago it was exploring the voyeuristic exhibitionism of same-room sex; a year and a half ago it was indulging in the could-be-caught sunlit sensuality of outdoor sexual gratification; 18 months ago it was exploring the introductory delights of pegging with someone for whom it was new; but now…
Now, sexy things are, if not an anathema, at the very least inapposite to me. My imagination is actively foraging for fuel, but my body is dormant. I should be starving. Famished. But my appetite has gone to sleep.
I try to explain this to him in a way he will understand. This hibernation of a once-grizzly desire, this odd sensation of feeling a like a foreigner lost in the wilderness of the once-familiar terrain of my own flesh.
I know the language but cannot make myself understood.
I have no answer for his question.
Nothing.
“I’m not so much dry,” I’d tried to explain to my concerned paramour in answer to his concern, “as just… Not wet.”
The conversation replays in my memory as steam evaporates off my pinked skin, the heat of the bath water soothing the now-perpetual freeze of tense muscles, the warmth seeping through to my now-always-cold bones.
These days, I think to myself, This…
soaking in the bath,
feeling the fizz-slide of summer-lavender bubbles kiss my December skin,
reveling in the unusual requiescence of the moment
…is about as wet as I get.
There’s “I need a towel to sit on all day, every day” wet and then there’s “No matter what I do, I can’t get wet enough” wet and I’d hazard the guess that this situation is like men having ED: The mind is still willing but the flesh, eh, let me get back to you on that, okay?
Just like I’m sure that if mentioned to an OB/GYN, obtaining the slickest lube made is really the only viable answer except being made super-slick isn’t the same as being wet. “Replacing” the missing or deficient hormones is still a dangerous proposition for women and you’d think that for as long as medical science has been aware of this problem for women, someone would have come up with a solution for it that won’t invoke heart attacks or strokes.
My wife talks to me about it at times and it’s not as if I don’t know what she’s talking about because I do – and it’s frustrating as hell to know she’s going through this and all the lube in the world isn’t going to deal with the issue of not being WET – like where’s the shutoff valve for this thing wet – and just it’s kinda damp in there wet.
Nothing makes a man feel more helpless and powerless than seeing his woman going through something that he can’t help her with…
KDaddy23 recently posted…Today’s Bisexual Thoughts: More About Choices
Thanks, kdaddy.
HRT is a nasty business; the side effects are horrible, and the unnatural introduction of hormonal chemistry to the body is much like the “just use more lube” fix when it comes to the (lack-of-) wetness factor. I endured several protracted rounds of medroxyprogesterone to treat my PCOS and it’s not something I’m willing to repeat.
As for the feeling of helplessness… Yeah, I get that. Fortunately (not the best word to use, but I can’t think of one that fits), my husband has gone through age-related libido changes himself (andropause is a real thing), and he’s much more patient than I am, so he’s very good about just accepting what’s happening without assigning any kind of blame or weighting it with a value judgment.
It’s a little more disconcerting for my ancillary partner, but he’s not physically present to have to deal with it. (Because, LDR.) But it is what it is.
Mr edge went through an early – very early – menopause, and she spent a lot of years “not wet”. We found that whatever she had needed to be supplemented with a lot of lube (we tried several, and like you, have settled on Sliquid), And as KD says, few things make us feel powerless as not being able to help our partners.
At least, that’s how I’m reading this post. If you’re not wet because you’ve got too many other things on your mind, well, that’s a different bunch of opinions.
Tom Allen recently posted…Summer Penis Has Come and Gone. Gird Your Loins for Winter Penis
No: The “other things on my mind” bit is more a distraction from the problem than a cause thereof.
And, YES: Sliquid! 🙂
I get this. It’s not that I have the same problem, but I have noticed that I am less wet than I could get before, and that sometimes things that should have been nice, are not as nice anymore. I feel more… friction. It takes longer to reach an orgasm. I have put all of this down to the fact that we are not having as much sex as we did before, but maybe it’s something else. I will have to explore this more.
Rebel xox
Frequency has an impact, I think. I’m sort of a “the more sex I’m having, the more sex I WANT to have” kind of person. So lower frequency and lower libido are/can-be correlative. (Correlation is not necessarily indicative of causation; it is worth looking at more closely though.)
I read this with interest, but also lots of trepidation. I think this is on the horizon for The Good Ship Posy soon! I’m perimenopausal at present and whilst I still get wet, it is not quite as slippery in its make up as it was. I don’t know if I shall need or want HRT, but becoming a sex blogger has given my sex life and self pleasure such a boost over the last 2 years, I’m not ready to wave that goodbye yet, but thank you for sharing, pooling our knowledge and experience could well help some of us.
Part of having a healthy sex life is – for me – largely about having a healthy relationship with my own body. Which means being honest, with myself and my partners, about where I’m at in terms of my own sexual health. Recognition of physical changes is part of that.
Thanks for your honest and vulnerability. I think this is something we should probably talk about more.
La-
I agree.
I think the popular narrative for women is, “A healthy sex life means having LOTS of sex and being easily aroused / constantly wet” but that’s not the reality, especially as we age. But to change the narrative, we have to tell our truths.
Yes- quite a difficult problem and damned frustrating ! 🙁
Keep your head up, Feve !
Oddly, I’m not all that frustrated. I’ve learned to be very accepting of physical limitations in other ways and with other people, so I think to myself, “Why not give your self a little grace as well?”
Thank you for writing so openly and sharing this. I think that our expectations of our bodies (and sometimes other’s expactations of them) are unrealistic and based on what are dictated as social norms which can be really cruel when they don’t fit. This particular issue is not one I have experience with yet although at my age I know that these changes will not be far away. Hopefully people like you being prepared to challenge perception with reality and their own truth will mean that things start to change and we can all be more forgiving of our bodies and more understanding and less frustrated of and with them.
I think we receive a million messages about our bodies throughout our lifetimes, and we believe them if they’re repeated often enough; unfortunately many of those messages we start to believe don’t match reality.
I am moving into this “not dry, but not wet” situation too. It is probably my age, and I won’t be taking synthetic hormones – you said you did for your PCOS – would be very interested in reading about it if you have already a post on your site – So it is probably my age but two other things seem to have a bearing for me. First I agree the more sex I have the more I want and vice versa – so being dryer can make me want less, yet having more can sometimes make me wetter, if that makes sencse. The other thing is I do get effected by SAD, so I find at this time of year I am dryer too. Bodies are amazing yet strange and frustrating.
I haven’t written about my hormone therapy here, though perhaps I will at a later date.
I think it would be a valuable post – lots of interest
This is simply amazing! Not only is it just beautiful writing, it is so vulnerable and true to what many of us women feel. You have explained it so well. That slope between “wet” and “dry” is slippery, and as a new territory it can be crushing for all parties involved. Love, love, love this post.
Thank you.
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