'Am I going to live my life without knowing what an orgasm feels like?'

Have you ever thought about what an aloo goes through inside the small, tightly closed space of a pressure cooker? As the water hurtles to its boiling point, the built-up steam browbeats the aloo to mush. Eventually, the seeti goes off, letting out some of that steam to regulate the temperature inside the cooker. Neha’s* life ran roughly along these same lines, except she didn’t have a seeti to let off any steam. Although she had only been married for two years — to the same man she’d dated for three years prior — the days felt longer than a millennium because he refused to touch her. The ever-growing desire for intimacy in her sexless marriage made her feel like a human pressure cooker threatening to explode.

The conversations around sex have always focused on men being the takers driven by their primal instincts while women are the givers. “We can carry so much shame around being sexual, and on our terms; this includes knowing and asking for what we like,” says intimacy coach Jennifer Gunsaullus.

In our piece about Indian women in sexless marriages, holistic wellness coach Luke Coutinho says, “Women who are not in sexually fulfilling relationships, no matter what they say on the outside, they put themselves down — ‘I’m not attractive, they don’t like my body’, and the mind starts telling stories.” Neha was also wracked with guilt at her sexual desires and began to hate her body. Only once her marriage ended did she encounter a sexual awakening, and a new-found confidence . Hear it in her own words.

How ending her sexless marriage led this woman to a sexual awakening

I met Kashish* when we were both wide-eyed 23 year olds. When we first started dating, we’d sneak a kiss here and a touch there. But for the three years that we dated, our physical intimacy fizzled soon after the honeymoon period. I didn’t think too much of it, telling myself we’d wait until we were married. I shut down my sexual desires because I believed it was inappropriate to have them at the time. A nuisance, really. I was always taught my sexuality was something I needed to hide and save so I decided I wouldn’t make a big deal of it and we’d be like normal couples after getting married.

We were 26 when we took our saat pheras in front of our family and friends. Our suhag raat was amazing, it felt like old times. The first few months went away in a breeze as we spent them wrapped in each other, away from the world as if encased in thermocol. But soon after, he started pulling away from me. And if I ever tried to initiate intimacy, he’d shrink away from me as if I had scales on my skin. This gulf between us grew into an ocean in the blink of an eye.

When more than five months passed, I became increasingly impatient. I was willing to try anything. I even offered to watch porn together but he flat-out refused. One day, I couldn’t take it anymore and decided to masturbate in the hopes of him catching me. And catch me he did, but his response was non-existent. He looked at me, told me to carry on and walked out. I came apart, and not in an orgasmic way.

When the one who’s supposed to love and cherish you makes you feel like you’re less than the dirt beneath their feet, it can break even the best of us. When I looked in the mirror, all I saw were imperfections. My terribly tiny love handles and too fat stomach or my pallid skin and ugly face. It brought back unsavoury memories of an old boyfriend of six years who had cheated on me. I started questioning if I even deserved anyone’s love and affection. I didn’t even think about leaving the marriage. Kashish was good to me, never hit me, let me work and be my own person so why couldn’t I just let go of this one thing?

But as our differences grew, my agitated mind was fraught with questions. ‘Why is he like this? Is he gay? Is he asexual?’ I found myself googling these questions one too many times. I went so far as to go to fortune tellers. By now, a year and a half had passed since we got married and I couldn’t even remember the last time we had been intimate. That is when I decided we needed to go to a counsellor to save our sexless marriage.

The counsellor told me I was too independent for my own good. She told me to pretend I needed him to do things for me so he could feel man enough. “Act like you can’t lift that heavy dabba or you need him to zip you up”, she said. Kashish told her he’s very stressed out and had too much on his mind most days to initiate anything. So I was the one tasked with reviving our intimacy. I tried to pamper him for the next week or so, and things started to heat up but never really went anywhere.

By now, I felt more like his roommate than his life partner. He seemed to have no issues with it but I had sexual desires and I was living in denial of them. I wanted to cut off my vagina and throw it away so I wouldn’t be plagued by my wants. How could I have sexual needs if my husband didn’t have any? I started making peace with the fact that I may be 28 now, but I was never going to know what an orgasm is.

I had confided in a close friend about the state of my sexless marriage. He would always tell me I didn’t know what I was missing out on but it wasn’t like I was going to cheat on my husband. I had always been the kind of person who never crossed a red light even if I was on the verge of missing a flight. But it all changed when my friend confessed he liked me and wanted to be intimate with me. He then proceeded to give me an ultimatum that we could either be together or he wouldn’t be a part of my life. I was dumbfounded, but didn’t want to lose the one person who seemed to care about me. Heart-stricken at his declaration, I decided I would go through with it. I had spent so long judging other people for adultery and now I was going to be one of them. After I came home, I scrubbed my skin until it bled.

I decided to confess to Kashish. When I did, he said it was okay. In hindsight, I was disgusted with myself for having these needs but it wasn’t his forgiveness I should have sought. Women are always taught to keep their sexual desires in check, or better yet, have none so when my desires got the best of me, the monster of patriarchy couldn’t let me live without guilt.

Amidst the whirlpool that was our sexless marriage, there was also an increasing pressure to have children. My mother couldn’t stop asking me when we were planning to have a kid now that both of us were 30. I couldn’t help but break down under her scrutinising gaze. “How am I supposed to have a kid when my husband doesn’t touch me, ma?” My parents were beyond shocked. So early into marriage, they couldn’t believe that we were having such issues. Perhaps because my parents had a more enriching sex life than we did. Talk about the irony.

After this episode, my dad sat us down to get clarity. After a little badgering, Kashish confessed he could watch porn and jerk off, but he couldn’t see me in a sexual light. That was the last straw for me. This lack of intimacy had grown its tentacles deep into my personhood and I was doing things I didn’t even want to do while my husband had sexual desires, just none for me.

We’ve been divorced for almost a year now. I battled with depression for more than half of my sexless marriage and even more so when it ended. It often felt like I was underground in a coal mine and there was no light at the end of the tunnel for me. But I’ve finally started putting back together the pieces of me. A part of me held so much guilt for walking out of my marriage for my sexual needs, for putting myself first.

I wish someone had told me it’s okay to want sex. Although I still don’t know why my marriage broke down so spectacularly, I do know now that it wasn’t entirely my fault. There is nothing wrong with my body or its sexual needs.

I have recently started seeing someone new and we can’t keep our hands off of each other. I love being intimate with him, and spending time talking afterwards. But the smallest moments of intimacy, when our eyes lock or our hands accidentally touch and a blush creeps onto our faces, are what I love the most now.

*Names changed upon the contributor’s request