Can this marriage survive?
My husband and I have had an open marriage for the last two years. Up until five months ago, it was working beautifully. At that point, however, I was sexually assaulted by a former partner. Since that incident, I cannot stand sex with my husband. I completely flip out when he tries to initiate sexual contact. My skin crawls. I become panicked and feel repulsed. I just cannot handle it. Those times when I go along with it anyway leave me feeling enraged and disgusted.
I don't think this is completely unheard of for someone who was relatively recently assaulted, and I am considering therapy to help me work through it. The immediate "problem" is that I have no difficulty having sex with my boyfriend. In fact, the sex with him is amazing and leaves me feeling loved and whole and wonderful.
This is breaking my husband's heart. He has become incredibly jealous of my relationship with my boyfriend. He's depressed. He's angry. He accuses me of no longer loving him, and he wants me to stop sleeping with my boyfriend until our marriage is back to normal. I feel like a horrible person, but I just can't do that. I need that outlet. I need that support. And I admit I have a hard time believing that my husband and I will ever be able to go back to the way things were before.
I feel like I've already lost my former partner (fucked-up though that may seem) and my husband. It kills me to think about cutting out the one positive relationship remaining. On the other hand, I do love my husband — very much — and watching him suffer like this is unbearable.
—Potentially Traumatized Sexual Deviant
I'm sorry that you were sexually assaulted — that's awful, PTSD, and I hope you went to the police and I hope you're pressing charges. But I also hope you know that being the victim of sexual assault is not a Get Out of Being a Human Being Free card.
Just because you've been victimized doesn't mean you operate in an alternate moral universe where you're not obligated to take other people's feelings into consideration — particularly the feelings of people you profess to love and happen to be married to. Your first priority in the wake of your assault had to be your own physical and emotional safety, of course, but your behavior toward your husband is both cruel and selfish.
If you truly loved your husband and valued your marriage, PTSD, you would've put the boyfriend on hold and gotten your ass into therapy without having to be told. So from where I sit — on the Bloomington Shuttle, headed to the Indianapolis airport — it looks to me like you want out of this marriage. But instead of taking responsibility for wanting out — not in love with the husband anymore — you're playing the victim card while slamming both hands down on your marriage's self-destruct button.
To sum up, PTSD: You're being a total shit. Do you love your husband? Is your marriage a priority? Then start acting like it: Cut the boyfriend off — for the indefinite future — and get your ass onto a counselor's couch. If you're not willing to do those things, PTSD, then stop emotionally assaulting your husband and put both your marriage and him out of their misery.
I have two clits. How common is this? I have never been able to ride a bike because I have an earthshaking orgasm as soon as I get on the seat. I come on the bus — the soft vibrations are too much! Walking anywhere in tight pants gets me moaning. Is there anything I can do, or rub on myself, to avoid having multiple orgasms in public?
—Two Much Fun
I've never heard of someone with two clits — but I haven't searched the medical literature or sought the opinion of an expert. And I'm not inclined to search or seek when a letter is so transparently fake. People whose genitals are different or ambiguous or terrifying — maybe that's not an extra clit but the tip of your parasitic twin's nose — frequently have questions and concerns, TMF, but multiple earthshaking orgasms aren't high on the list.
You don't have a single clit, TMF, much less two. You're a horny boy with a dick, an e-mail account, and an obsession with/terror of a woman's potential capacity for unlimited sexual pleasure. And I'm hoping that seeing your letter in print isn't your peak sexual experience. But odds are …
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2010.