Excerpted from Overthinking About You: Navigating Romantic Relationships When You Have Anxiety, OCD and/or Depression by Allison Raskin. Workman Publishing © 2022
For a long time, I thought my vagina was broken. Yes. Broken. Damaged. Ruined beyond repair. Why? Because it didn’t work the way I was promised by pop culture. I had watched movies. I had listened to songs. I had read books. All of them exalted the physical pleasure of sexual acts. (Okay, maybe not all, but most!) Enjoying sex appeared to be one of the few things that tied humanity together. It was a rite of passage. A light at the end of a potentially mediocre tunnel of human existence. As for me, I thought it was a pivotal component of the thing I so desperately craved: a romantic relationship. But then I started having sex, and dread began to sink in. Something didn’t feel right. And most of the time, I felt nothing at all.
Here’s one of my more shameful confessions: I don’t remember losing my virginity. Not because I was drunk or high, I simply don’t remember it. This remains one of the weirder details of my life. Sure, I have a historically bad memory, but this feels especially bizarre. Luckily, I do remember who I lost it to: a twenty-four-year-old cop when I was eighteen. He was very nice to me during the brief period of time we dated, and I don’t remember feeling pressured into it in any way. But then again, I don’t remember much! Did I block it from my memory on purpose? Or was it so deeply disappointing that my brain thought, Eh, we don’t need to use up storage on this? If the latter is true, then why do I still remember being bullied at summer camp for peeing naked? (I was wearing a one-piece. You have to pee naked when you’re wearing a one-piece!)
As a result of my faulty retention, I don’t know exactly when it started to bother me that I wasn’t experiencing much of anything other than occasional pain during penetration. But I do know I realized at some point in college that my body wasn’t reacting the way I had been promised. This was pretty upsetting, especially because I was sleeping with a bunch of people in the hope that one of them would grow to love me. As someone with anxiety, I immediately jumped to the worst possible explanation for my “sexual failing”—that my vagina was broken.
And that’s where we arrive at my second shameful confession: When I was a little kid, I masturbated all the time. I didn’t use my hands though. Instead, I would rub myself on the arm of a chair or a couch. I would do it while reading or finishing up homework. It wasn’t so much a sexual experience for me as a purely physical one. As time went on, I learned to tone down my vocal response to it so no one would know what I was up to in the other room. Looking back now, I’m sure this is all fairly common and natural. But when I was eighteen and suddenly letting a partner touch my vagina for the first time, I was CONVINCED all my excessive masturbation had ruined or dulled my nerve endings and my vagina, to put it succinctly, was broken.
Despite my normal verbal diarrhea surrounding my other issues, this was not something I have ever wanted to talk about or admit. I secretly believed there was something physically wrong with me for a very long time. To be honest, a small part of me still does. I’m not sure where my shame around this part of my story comes from. Was it my excessive masturbation? Was it my stupidity in thinking excessive masturbation could ruin my clitoris? Or was it simply the potential embarrassment of being seen as a sexual person by people I wasn’t actively sleeping with? I’m sure it’s a lovely mixture of all three. Whatever the source, this shame kept me quiet, which only led to me feeling more defective and alone.
HOT TIP: Shame is a harmful emotion. Luckily, talking out loud about the things you’re ashamed of can deflate their power. That’s why I’m fighting my instincts and writing to you right now about my genitals. Yippee!
What I didn’t understand at age eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four . . . is how important your mindset is when it comes to sex. I was far too anxious as a late teen to simply lay back and be present in my first few sexual experiences. The anxious voice in my head didn’t take breaks back then, and it certainly wasn’t going to shut up while I was naked with a boy! Love is a battlefield, and I was across enemy lines! This wasn’t some run-of-the-mill activity. I couldn’t turn my brain off during such a crucial mission (i.e., forming physical intimacy that I hoped would quickly turn into emotional intimacy and then, you know, marriage!). This was a high-stakes situation! So that voice in my head was in overdrive: Am I doing this right? Is he doing this right? Why does it feel like this? Why don’t I feel anything? Will he still like me after? Will I still like me after? What if my parents call me right now . . . or right now?
I’m sure I wasn’t alone in overthinking during my formative sexual encounters. Unfortunately, my anxiety irrationally decided that these limited experiences proved a bigger point: There was something physically wrong with my body that made me unable to orgasm or feel any real pleasure alone or with a partner. And that is how it would be forever until I died, with absolutely no room for improvement. (This type of thinking is called catastrophizing. It’s a tendency to blow situations out of proportion and imagine the worst possible outcome as the only possible outcome. An easy way to catch yourself catastrophizing is flagging the use of words like “never” or “always.” For example: “I’ll never be happy again.” Or, “I’ll always be alone on Valentine’s Day.” Catastrophizing is super destructive, and I personally think we should all put a dollar in a jar whenever we do it. And then spend that money on ice cream once we feel better and realize we overreacted.)
Anyway, back to catastrophizing my genitals. This wasn’t just a “penetrative sex doesn’t do it for me” type of thing. This was an “absolutely nothing does it for me, oh god, what is wrong with me” type of thing. Honestly, it all made sense to me at the time. Since I was already so broken mentally, why wouldn’t my vagina be broken too? I was destined to be unhappy! Better to just accept it and move on. Right? (Wrong.)
For a long time, orgasming was not my priority. I had college classes and improv and my ever-present mission to lock down a man. Plus, I often had to struggle to find a will to live, which didn’t leave much time to worry about the little things like sexual pleasure. I did bring it up occasionally over the years to test the waters. I remember briefly mentioning it to my first gynecologist, who wasn’t (1) concerned, or (2) helpful. My psychiatrist at the time was a bit more receptive since antidepressants are notoriously problematic in this area. As we’ve discussed, it’s extremely common for them to lower your sex drive and/or interfere with the ability to orgasm. So she added a prescription of Wellbutrin to whatever I was currently on. (Wellbutrin is often used to combat side effects of SSRIs, especially the sexual ones. Harper’s Bazaar once published an article about it with the headline “The Happy, Sexy, Skinny, Pill?”) I was hopeful that maybe this would be a quick solution to an ongoing problem! It wasn’t. Which only further proved my thesis that the problem was physical and therefore unsolvable. (I was still ignorantly unaware of how people respond differently to medications. Mainly because I hadn’t written chapter five of this book yet.)
As we all know by this point in the book, it’s important to rationally listen when a partner points out a problem. But, if you’re anything like twenty-three-year-old me, your first instinct is to shout, “F*** you! I am the way that I am! Do NOT try to change me!” In some cases, this reaction is actually warranted. If, for example, your partner is suggesting a change to your physical appearance, such as a breast enhancement, scream your heart out. But most of the time, if you’re in a healthy relationship, a partner will only highlight a concern because they think working on it will improve your personal happiness and/or your happiness as a couple. So listen to them. Take time to process what they’re saying. And remember it’s coming from a good place (hopefully!).
Overthinking About You is available from Amazon and Bookshop.