Lovemaking looks like torture to her…

With Auntie Agatha, gataedo@yahoo.com, agatha.edo@gmail.com, Tel: 08054500626

Dear Agatha,

I don’t enjoy having sex with my wife of two years. Since getting married to her, it is been challenging. I have done all I know to help her improve on her performance but nothing is working.

Although she wasn’t a virgin when I met her, from her disposition and attitude that first time, I thought she was.

When I asked her what her problem with lovemaking is, she initially didn’t open up but just started to cry. I was alarmed and knew something was very wrong somewhere in her past.

She eventually told me how her stepfather repeatedly raped her for two years until she ran away from home to stay with her grandmother.

Only her paternal grandmother knows about this episode. She gave her all the protection she needed so didn’t have to go back to her mother and husband.

But that was all she could provide. My wife went through school afraid of men generally. I was very persistent and since her single status was becoming a huge concern to the grandmother, she had no choice but to accept my offer of marriage.

She is one of the nicest women I have ever met. She is very respectful and supportive of me. I really love her so much but I don’t know for how long I can put up with her attitude towards sex. She cries each time we make love. Sincerely, I can’t call our intimacy a lovemaking experience; it appears more of a rape to me. From the expression on her face and her body language, there is no denying the fact that she only endures it all. Deep down I think she sees me as her stepfather who happens to be the only man who has had access into her body until she met me.

I really don’t how to make her come out of it. I feel dirty and like a monster forcing her to do what she doesn’t want to do.

This is one issue, I cannot discuss with my friends or family members because I don’t want anyone mocking her. It is too sensitive to our marriage. You know how cruel people can be. The knowledge that people know about it would crush her completely; I don’t want her hurt than she already is.

Being a woman and mother blessed with usual wisdom, I want you to help us get out of this problem.

Jonny.



Dear Jonny,

In addition to whatever I tell you, there is the need for her to see a psychologist. The wound is deeper than you can handle. All the memories of her abuses by her stepfather are deeply etched in her mind’s eyes.

It would take care and extra understanding by you to help her forget it all. You are doing it all wrong. What she needs first isn’t you teaching her how to make love, but how to come out of her shell. She needs you to help her achieve a better understanding of all the veriables life offers her. She needs you to make the sacrifices to make her happy again.

It couldn’t have been a pleasant experience for her to be constantly raped by a man who should be her father as well as protect her from what he was doing to her.

She must love you to allow you near her. Other women in her shoes ended up not being able to trust any man again and elected to become lesbians.

She needs expert help to come to terms with what happened to her; tell her it wasn’t her fault and how much damage she is doing to herself by remaining in the shadows of what this man did to her.

She has to be told too that refusing to move beyond the point at which she ran away from him is like giving the man all the powers in the world to continue to hurt her forever.

For now, you may have to stop having sex with her since she is still very bothered about her past. Sex can’t be what it should be for her. She has to see a difference between you, your need of her, and her stepfather’s interest in her body.

She has to learn to trust you because that is the only way she can give you her body and soul. What you have now is just her body. Her attitude speaks volume of her mindset about any form of intimacy between her and any man.

By abstaining from being initmate with her, you are exposing her to the other kind of desire a man has for a woman. Granted she is your wife but you need to woo her properly, take her to places, show her how wonderful life can be between a man and woman.

Show her that while the ultimate end of any relationship between a man and woman is lovemaking that it is also possible for a man who cares about a woman to go the extra miles for her. I am sure you didn’t envisage this kind of challenge while you were dating so may not have given the courtship detailed attention as you should have. Had you done that, you may have succeeded in unknowingly dousing some of her fears about men and closeness to them.

Beyond her fears about sex, you also have to get to meet her real person, not the frightened woman who is your wife. Between the time she was repeatedly being raped by her stepfather and becoming your wife, she lost a lot of her original person. You have to help her find and make reconnection with that person all over again.

Before she was raped, she had dreams and plans of how she would achieve them. She must have dreamt of getting married one day and having children. All those things she planned to do became infected by the demonic desires of a man for sex.

So many things must have been going on in her mind at those moments. Top on the agenda would be hatred for all those who should have protected her.

First is against the father who through death or divorce isn’t where he is supposed to be to protect her. She would equally blame the mother for marrying a man who is a monster. Deep in her heart, she feels betrayed by everybody. In a twisted way too, you happen to also fall into the category of those to be blamed on her list.

Every night or day you demand sex from her, you are taking her back to a time she wants to desperately forget. Your blame is not allowing her to forget the experience completely.

If you can afford it, take her away from familiar environment, to a place she has never been too. The experience would relax her to talk about her carefree childhood days, before the stepfather came into her life.

The essence is to give her something pleasant to remember, bring back the smile of her younger days, help her to remember how to smile, hope and be happy. It is also to make her your friend. Once she is able to bring herself to talk about her past, she is on her way to recovery as images of her happy moments would begin to filter into her mind from time to time.

She is becoming rigid and frigid because she has completely blocked out everything that reminds her of her former life.

Your duty as her husband is to make the sacrifices of clearing away all the dirts of these unpleasant memories. Show her unconditional love and encouragement. By being nice and extra gentle with her, she would eventually come to see and desire you as a man. This is because you are through your actions building new and promising memory bank for her, giving her somehting to look forward to and a dream to nurture.

We all need to cradle a dream at every point in our lives else we become zombies that function on the order of others around us.

No matter how terrible her former experience is she would eventually begin to feel a desire for the man that you are once you expose her to how caring a man can be.

Once she is able to cross over, it would be easier for you to enjoy intimacy with her, help her learn how it is like for a man and woman who are in love to achieve oneness in marriage or lovemaking. You have to teach her there is a difference between crude, raw sex, and true lovemaking.

Also, learn to pray for her because only God can completely erase such terrible memories from her mind. One man took away her dream, be the man who gives it back to her through your determined effort to make this marriage work at all cost.

All her life, no one outside her grandmother has made any sacrifice for her. She needs you to do it for her and urgently too before you also get frustrated and unable to move beyond the point you are in now.

Good luck.