Female Sexuality Can’t Be Defined So Easily
By: Elle Silver
Tags: Sex, Sexuality, Female Sexuality, Feminism, Womens Health

Female Sexuality Can’t Be Defined So Easily

The wild fluctuations of my own sex drive show this.

Photo by Kristina Nor from Pexels

One thing’s certain, it’s impossible to generalize female sexuality in blanket terms. Women desire sex in different ways, at different rates, and the amount of sex that any given woman wants in her lifetime can also fluctuate wildly.

I should know. My own need for sex has not remained static. It’s changed in incredible ways throughout the years depending on all these things.

My desires have ebbed, flowed, morphed, and evolved depending on such factors as my age, my relationship status, and my general health and happiness. I’ve gone from prude teenager to sexual explorer and landed back somewhere in between. In short, my urge for sex has varied — a lot.

I’m sure that other women can identify with this too. The wild fluctuations of a woman’s sex drive show female sexuality can’t be defined so easily.

Sex as a younger woman.

During adolescence, my sex drive was quite low. Though I was curious and lost my virginity at age fifteen, I didn’t start masturbating until age twenty. Sex in my younger years was shrouded in shame. It should surprise no one that I didn’t experience an orgasm during sex until the age of twenty either. Learning to masturbate helped me learn how to even orgasm while having sex.

I couldn’t achieve an orgasm through penetration. I believe I was too terrified of sex to relax. There were so many social pressures that came into play. I was taught that letting men have sex with me was to let them use me. I was afraid of getting a reputation and becoming ostracized by my social group. To have been completely sexually free at that young age would have necessitated a kind of rebelliousness I did not yet possess.

I couldn’t explore. Sexual exploration was looked down on for girls like me. I grew up in a conservative, middle-class family. Even when I first started masturbating at age twenty, this was still a secret exercise, accompanied by a certain indignity. I would have felt ashamed had my friends found out I was doing it, even though they were probably doing it, too.

Exploring beyond social mores.

I kept quiet about my sexual needs until I got out of college. That’s when I began pushing back in earnest against the conventions of my conservative upbringing. In my late-twenties, I began to explore my sexuality fully, experimenting with BDSM and having casual sex.

Sex became almost an obsession for me. It was constantly on my mind. I finally freed myself from the constraints of my upbringing and was pushing my personal boundaries almost daily.

I rejected the idea that women had to deny ourselves sex in order to gain worth in society, but I also began to worry I was a sex addict. I look back on this era now and realize that for a woman to have sex without shame was and still is an act of rebellion.

I was rebelling against everything I had been taught growing up. I was also rebelling against society’s notions that women want sex less than men. However, I still unconsciously held many of these notions to be true. They were ingrained in me, not so easily dismissed.

As a result, I became overwhelmed by so much exploration. I was experiencing too much, too fast. I freaked myself out. At a certain point, I put on the brakes and decided it was better to settle down.

Sex and motherhood.

I met my now-ex-husband at the age of thirty-five. We were married by the time I was thirty-six. We had a very active sex life up until the point that our second son was born.

I had a healthy sex drive on par with my husband’s. With the birth of our second son, though, my libido plummeted.

The birth of our first son had already put a dent in our sex life. I felt ambushed by motherhood.

I was unprepared for how much work it was. I was also pregnant again by the time my first son was nine months old. Getting pregnant again so quickly sent my body into chaos. Sex was the last thing on my mind.

My second son was born by way of a cesarean section, like my first. My second cesarean was more painful though, the procedure more traumatic, the recovery longer. I didn’t have anything left to give my husband. I was hardly able to take care of myself.

Of course, this affected our marriage. And yes, my husband felt neglected. In retrospect, I can understand why. Even then I could understand it, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was too tired, too stressed.

We began to sleep in separate bedrooms. My husband acquiesced for a while, but then he became angry. Again, I could sympathize, but I felt incapable of giving him the attention he needed.

His body hadn’t been ravaged by hormones. His form hadn’t undergone the physical hardship of being pregnant twice in three years. He hadn’t had to heal from two C-sections, to weather sleep deprivation for years, or to deal with the simple stress of having two children constantly wanting him. He wasn’t “touched out.”

Me? I just wanted to be left alone.

Sex post-separation.

I didn’t start thinking about sex again until our youngest was three years old. Maybe my hormones had finally evened out. What I lost chemically during the pregnancies had replenished itself. I started thinking about sex again, only I wasn’t thinking about sex with my husband. I was thinking about sex with everyone but my husband.

Our relationship was in shambles. Yes, the lack of sex had affected it, but other things like financial pressures also came into play. We finally ended up separating when our children were four and five years old. That’s when I went on a sexual rampage.

I dropped whatever shame I might have felt about exploring my sexuality in an earlier era. I met men online, many of them younger than myself. I no longer sought a commitment from any of the men I slept with. I just wanted pleasure.

How my sex drive is today.

Today, I’m once again in a serious relationship. We’re still passionate, but neither of us is as sexually hungry as when we first met. We’re more rational about sex, our drives are more even, and yet I’d say we’re healthy. We’re neither voracious nor neglectful of each other. I’d say we’re in a good place.

And yet, looking back on my sexual life, it’s impossible for me to sum it up with one word. I can’t come up with a single definition to describe my own sexual “type.” Am I promiscuous, prude, or something else in between? During my lifetime I’ve been all these things.

It seems incomprehensible that anyone would ever try to make blanket generalizations about female sexuality. We can’t.

Female sexuality can’t be pinned down so easily. My sex drive has fluctuated wildly throughout the years, and I’m sure I’m not the only woman who has experienced this.

So let’s stop boxing in women when it comes to our sexuality. We’re all different and we’re allowed to change throughout our lifetimes. We’re free to experience sex however we want.