5d ago
Okay so I've been sitting with this for a while and I finally need to put it somewhere. My husband and I have been together for nineteen years. We've been through a lot. And I feel like somewhere in the last year and a half, intimacy just quietly... stopped. Not because either of us decided that. It just got painful for me, and then I started dreading it, and then I started avoiding it, and now there's this weird distance between us that neither of us is naming out loud. I didn't connect it to menopause for the longest time. I thought I was just tired, or stressed, or maybe this is just what long marriages become. It wasn't until I fell down a rabbit hole at midnight that I even found the words for what was happening. Dryness, yes, but also this kind of tissue sensitivity that makes everything feel wrong. I've been too embarrassed to say any of this to my OBGYN even though I know she would not judge me. I have an appointment next month and I'm genuinely trying to write it down beforehand so I don't just say "I'm fine" when she asks. I bought a lubricant a few months ago and hid it like it was contraband. I'm 48 years old. Why am I hiding it. I guess I just wanted to say this out loud in a place where someone might actually get it. My husband is kind and patient and I don't think he knows how lost I feel about this. That conversation feels huge and I don't know how to start it. If anyone has been here, I'd really just like to know I'm not the only one. ETA: not looking for anyone to fix it, just needed to say it.