As if to emphasize the moment, two smiling honeymooners stood in my sightline, and the young man pushed dark, rain-soaked curls from his forehead and kissed his wife’s wedding ring. She looked up toward the canvas ceiling and laughed, balancing her cup with an outstretched arm. I imagined this dismal weather was an adventure for them, their marriage new, and he drew her waist into his. The young woman’s cheeks flushed at the motion, and her long, dark hair moved forward to cover her face. As he did with his own curls, the man combed back his wife’s bangs and touched her cheek, whispering, “I love you.”
Trav would never do that.
He would never bring my waist into his for a spontaneous neck nuzzle, and after watching this young couple’s happiness, I no longer had an appetite for the sugary little doughnuts on the plate in front of me.
“Are you going to finish those?” Trav asked, and I nudged the plate closer to him.
“All for you.”
There was something so sensuous about the young couple admiring their new wedding rings on a frigid, rainy day, something primal in the gesture of the young man pushing back his new wife’s hair. I envied that woman, and I wanted to feel a man’s hands touch me with desire.
For years, Trav had backpedaled my assessment. It was, he said, a problem of my own making. I was too needy and too demanding, and my requests were too much. Oversexed was the word that stung most.
This perception is common among sex abuse survivors.
It is easy for a sex abuse survivor to assign blame, and it is especially easy for a partner to feel ashamed of her (or his) sexual self. This can prompt a cycle of diminished self-esteem, and for the two of us, it is among the toughest aspects of healing to negotiate.
For a long time, there was little welcome initiation for Trav.
So, when a former boyfriend of mine reached out with a “how are you doing,” my answer skewed defensive. His question might be innocuous, or it might be suggestive. What did he know? I wondered. It was not the first time I had interacted with former boyfriends, and I lacked a good response.
“Okay” did not seem accurate.
It feels strange and uncomfortable to discuss sex issues outside our marriage, and it feels disloyal to remember any charged sexual history with other men. It feels worse to enjoy the way an ex’s gaze affirms that I do still look good—and it feels abysmal to consider any possibility of a discreet arrangement.
Each time I encountered a man like this, I offered a casual air-kiss and quick hug, but I also calculated logistics, risk, and reward. I sketched out how it might play out, and, shamed, tried to redirect my own perceptions.
Still, it is impossible for partners not to consider.
If I am not connected physically to Trav, I thought, what role do I play? The job titles nurse, mother, cook, accountant, assistant, and friend felt fundamentally bare.
Since neither Trav nor I had requested these issues, I found myself wondering again how I had acquired this particular set of circumstances.
I married a man who grew up six houses away from my childhood home in rural northern Maine. I watched chubby, redheaded Trav pedal his bicycle for the length of our shared street, never imagining that we would meet as adults in the most random circumstance while both living in Washington, DC. I never imagined that after dating for approximately two weeks we would decide to share an apartment, and one year later he would become my husband. If someone had told me I would marry a survivor of institutionalized, prolonged, systemic child sexual abuse, I would not have believed it.
And if these details seemed fantastic, I really could not predict a body pillow dividing my bed for more than a decade and a machete stationed by the nightstand. “My husband doesn’t like to touch me” is a phrase I never thought I would repeat while sitting on a therapist’s couch, either.
“I did not sign up for this” is a common refrain, and I suspect many partners like me inhale sharply, wondering how they got to this place, feeling bitter and weary, too.
For the first year of our marriage, sex with Trav was frequent, varied, energetic, and fantastic. We once spent an entire twenty-four hours in bed, broke a restroom sink with our enthusiasm, and stopped the car en route to a friend’s wedding. He loved my red silk robe, but he preferred it balled up on the floor.
We were equally matched, and I entered the relationship feeling informed and lucky. As Trav grew comfortable, faced his history, and sought treatment, that is when the dark phase began. Trav began to heal, but he retreated sexually.
However, that assessment feels skewed because when he is in the right headspace, I have zero complaints. It just takes so much effort to reach that headspace sometimes.
In what I imagine is another common scenario for partners like me, I feel selfish for supporting his healing but also thinking, What about me?
When Trav asked me to write our story, this is where things got complicated. Trav was the boy who was abused, but his abuse affects nearly every aspect of my life, too. “Our” story is muddy.
To co-opt his experience is wrong, to deny the effects untruthful. Partners like me are often left on the sidelines, watching the effects of childhood sexual abuse play out on the field of our husbands’ psyches—a field where there is little room for our own selves.
“I am glad this happened to me and not you,” Trav mused at the New Orleans café table when his coffee cup was empty. He paused before finishing his thought, skimming the ceramic handle with his thumb.
“Knowing that someone hurt my wife would be so much worse.”
A week or so before we made it to New Orleans, on the morning of our month-long Americana road trip departure, I was stuck in a state of ennui. Last-minute packing, cleaning, and shopping topped my to-do list, but my body stayed weighted and listless under a heavy quilt. The words in my head: overwhelmed, tired, sad, lonely, and angry.
These were all abstractions—intangible words that cannot be tasted, touched, seen, or heard, and I regularly encouraged creative writing students to avoid them. Much better, I taught, are concrete examples. Abstractions are vague non-descriptors, and I illustrate this in my classroom by requesting immediate associations for “love.”
Kittens! My boyfriend! Jesus! Chocolate! My baby! These always topped the responses, and I spoke about command of language and craft. “Do you,” I asked, “want to use a word that elicits such a varied reader response?”
It is always better to use specifics: a blue-edged teacup, a banana peel, or the corn-chip scent of an Australian shepherd puppy paw.
As I burrowed deeper into the blankets, I knew my abstractions were dull, but the concrete expressions felt too depressing: Maine winter temperatures drop to −32oF. My husband must consume six prescription drugs daily. One of our dogs died last month. As a child in the care of the American Boychoir School, Trav experienced a level of sex abuse that profoundly affects all aspects