I promise I will never write about my sex life. I believe sex is a perfectly normal act. I also want what I write to be accessible to my family and my husband's family and the people we go to church with and the exes I'm friends with. Therefore, you will never read about my sex life. However, I will write about sex. I will write about sex because oftentimes when I am in a group of women who are married to veterans, someone sheepishly brings it up.
"Is he on Gabapentin?" another wife will ask.
"Is that what it is?" the sheepish wife asks.
"It's probably the narcotics, yeah." Everyone around the table nods.
Gone are the days of her airman laughingly bragging about his weekend conquests with his friends. He is 28 and his sex life has evaporated, replaced with narcotics for his leg pain, which causes him to limp self-consciously. Another wife says her husband just doesn't feel sexy anymore. It isn't surprising. He went into the service a young, fit, virile man, but he was medically discharged overweight and aching.
It is hard enough to convince these young men who feel old that they are useful and valuable assets when they can no longer serve or even work. It is nearly impossible to convince them that they are still desirable when they are covered in burn marks or filled with shrapnel. Not only are they embarrassed by their limps, their scars, their bodies and minds failing them, but they have to contend with their masculinity fading. How can a man who used to be so confident admit he just doesn't feel sexy? What if he feels sexy and his body just won't cooperate because of his daily cocktail of pain relief meds? What if he feels sexy, his body is working, but there is too much pain to find a way to comfortably have sex? Who is he supposed to talk to about this?
No one. So his wife comes to a support meeting and sheepishly brings it up. She wants to know how to get their connection back. She wants to know if it is her fault. She wants to know how to show him she wants him, how to combat the morphine, what position will cause the least strain on his tender body. So we talk. We talk about positions and pain. We talk about medication cocktails and side effects. We talk about calling him hot or smacking his butt playfully. Everyone at the table laughs too. We laugh in recognition and, maybe, sometimes, embarrassment. We laugh because we are in a safe space where we can joke about our virile men, aged before their time. One woman I know even demonstrated a particular position on a chair once. Then we really laughed. I don't know if the other women tell their husband about our mirth or our suggestions. Sometimes our suggestions work and sometimes they don't.
Sometimes I feel a bit sad for the men who were told how manly they looked in a uniform, only to come home and take it off, revealing their vulnerability.
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