How I Used Sex Toys to Prepare for an Awesome Wedding Night

Contains Amazon Affiliate links. No, I will not know if you decide to buy the same sex toys. That data is not tracked.

If you caught me on Fusion's airing of How to Lose Your Virginity via their show "Documental," then you also had the chance to hear me describe some of the sex toys that Beau and I were using at the time. The filming of "Documental" was two months before our wedding, but Beau and I actually spent about six months with my toys to prepare for our wedding night.

So what toys did we use?

1) Clone a Willy kit
2) A set of dilators (Edit 03/14/2018: This is an updated version of what I used four years ago. It is not exactly what I used, but it is similar).

We actually ordered the Clone a Willy kit first. The idea was for me to slowly learn to adjust to an object approximately the same size as Beau's, um, penis.

Y'all, it's so much easier for me to describe my body and my feelings about sex than to write about Beau.

Luckily Beau had ordered the beginner's kit version which had extra plaster material, because it was really difficult to do. It took us two tries to make the dildo correctly. 

All our assembled tools to clone a willy

It was impossible not to make a mess. That is only some of the plaster that spilled everywhere.

Once it completely set, we were really excited to try it out. We started with our regular non-coital sexy routine, lots of kissing and touching and whatnot. Beau reached for the toy, positioned it, and...

Nope.

You know how some people joke about "just the tip"? Yeah, we could barely get the tip in me, and even that hurt a little. Pushing more than that hurt more than I could manage, so obviously we stopped. And this was with lube.

So then I had this idea for a nesting set of dildos. Like when I explained it to my friends, I described what I wanted as nesting dolls, but dildos. I had no idea what I wanted actually existed, though, so when Beau and I went to our local sex shop, I instead looked for dildos smaller than my personalized one, but bigger than my other toys.

Y'all, the poor guy who helped us was so bewildered by our virginity, but he did suggest the dilator set for us! It was everything I wanted and more! 

The main part is a very thin vibrator. Then it comes with sleeves that attach over the vibrator, one-by-one, expanding both the width and the length. You end up with an option of four different sizes. 

The two small sizes were fine, but we spent a lot of time over our engagement working on the two big sizes. 

I've read the sex literature; I know that a vaginal corona is already elastic and expands with arousal. But I also know that every vagina-holder is different, and our vagina coronas are different. Some might need time and practice to stretch to accommodate an object like a penis.

As Hanne Blank wrote at Scarleteen:

Occasionally, women don't have imperforate hymens but do have very thick or very inflexible hymens. There is a lot more variation in types of hymens than you might think, and while some of them are so fragile that doctors can't even examine them without having them literally fall to pieces, some are so sturdy that they cause problems when women want to use tampons or have penetrative sex.
Most of the time, thick hymens can be gradually stretched by using fingers or objects that can be inserted into the vagina. Doctors sometimes prescribe vaginal insertion devices called stents, but some women bypass that and just use small dildos instead, since both accomplish the same thing. Over time, the hymenal opening gets stretched sufficiently that it no longer causes a problem.

This is actually why we started with the sex toys so early. I wanted enough time to experiment with "stretching my hymen" so that if we still had major problems, I would have enough time to see a doctor in case medical intervention was necessary. 

And it definitely took time. At first, I couldn't insert the second biggest all the way. Getting just part of it in hurt a little, and trying to go further hurt way too much to try. But eventually I was able to insert the biggest size about halfway without pain, which was slightly bigger than we needed. So then I was able to use the Beau-shaped dildo without pain, although it was easier to insert sideways. 

On our actual wedding night (technically, afternoon), we started with the kissing and the touching. We then moved to the toys, slowly, not rushing the process, making sure everything felt good for me. Once I was completely relaxed and comfortable with the toys, we then got ready for IT.

Our big moment.

The moment you've all been waiting for.

COITUS! 

We started with me on top so I could best control the angle and the speed of entry. We moved bit by bit, pausing every 1-2 inches. On our first "pause," Beau looked up at me and grinned.

"I think we're officially no longer virgins."

I laughed. It was pretty fun!

Once I got all adjusted, we were able to move back and forth. I forget which other positions we tried that first time, but over the course of our honeymoon, I think we tried at least one new position per day. Basically we were sexperts at the end of our honeymoon.

5 Things You Should Never Say to a New Bride

Today I've been married for four months and one day, which is pretty exciting! Every day, I feel so blessed to call Beau my husband. I know we're only newlyweds, but we've already weathered a few storms together. Marriage has been amazing, and I look forward to our lifetime together.

That said, I still receive a few comments that range from annoying to infuriating, and I have a feeling I'm not the only bride who has to endure them. So to all well-meaning family members and nosy busybodies, here are a few things you should NOT tell a new bride.

Now that you're married, you don't have to work if you don't want to!

You're kidding, right? Like, I realize my husband has a great job and could support both of us, but I happily supported myself before we got married. I might not earn much money right now, but leaving the workforce to be a housewife would be hugely detrimental to my future earnings potential. I like working. I like having a job. I realize my career choices are no longer entirely my own, but I wouldn't give up working just because my husband earns a lot of money. And if I DID, that's no one else's business but ours.

Your husband is so sweet. You'd better be nice to him.

Yes, please cast me in the role of the evil, nagging wife who is so mean to her perfect, patient husband. These comments are never said jokingly. I literally have people checking in on me to make sure I'm nice to my husband. Um, he married me, so my personality must be okay.

I'm going to call you by your husband's last name because I'm old-fashioned and don't care about your specifically expressed preferences. 

Some thank-you notes have been signed with my full name. All return address labels have both mine and Beau's first and last names.

Have you fixed all of your husband's bad habits yet? 

Stop acting like my husband is a child, unless we're talking about how he and I are adorable and child-like. I am allowed to complain about his tendency to leave laundry everywhere, which is basically the only bad habit I've complained about since we moved in together. No one else gets to judge his life choices AND THEN expect me to fix them to meet your stupid expectations.

When are you having children?

WE'VE BEEN MARRIED FOR FOUR MONTHS. And the vast majority of people know that we saved coitus for marriage, AND we didn't move in together until four weeks before the wedding. Like, can we please be newlyweds for a little bit before you hound us about children? Not to mention this is SUPER-HURTFUL if a couple is dealing with infertility. It's 2014, and people still think it's okay to essentially ask if we're having unprotected sex. Think about it. If you ask me when we're having kids, you're asking me when I want to have unprotected sex with my husband. None of your damn business. 

Fellow brides (and grooms!), what have people said to you that irritated or infuriated you? Let me know in the comments!

Linking up with Nancy J, Meredith, and Mary for Wedding Wednesday! 

Wedding Wednesday: Liebster Award

Writing a weekly Wedding Wednesday post has proven to be very difficult, so I set a goal of blogging about wedding stuff every other week. Except sometimes that is not easy either.

BUT I was recently nominated by Emily at Southern Expectations for a Liebster Award. Being the clever cat that I am, I'm killing two birds with one stone. 

RULES

1. Each person must post 11 things about themselves. 2. Answer the questions that the nominator has set for you, plus create 11 questions for the  people you've nominated to answer. 3. Choose 11 people (with 200 followers of less) and link them in your post. 4. Go to their page and tell them. 5. No tag backs!

 

11 Facts About My Wedding

 

1. We chose our wedding date based on my younger brother's college spring break.
2. Beau and I appeared in a local TV news segment two nights before our wedding, discussing why the church and its food pantry should be saved from new zoning laws.
3. I was sick on our wedding night.
4. Luckily our wedding was in the morning, so we had married sex in the afternoon before I got sick.
5. I intentionally chose a morning wedding because I wanted both a champagne brunch afterwards and more time for married sex.
6. Our "first look" was pretty anti-climatic because Beau is not a crier. 

   

   This was faked, remember?

7. My younger brother got ordained on the Internet and co-led the service with the church's actual minister. 
8. My twin brother proposed to his fiancée before Beau and I got engaged, but their wedding isn't until October. 
9. I didn't have a bridal party because I didn't want to choose a Maid of Honor. Or bridesmaids. 
10. Not having a bridal party led to my idea of only having parents and siblings at the wedding itself. 
11. Having coitus for the first time did not hurt. It actually felt pretty awesome. 

11 Answers to 11 Questions

 

1. What is your favorite part of blogging? Meeting new people and exchanging ideas!

2. If you could move to any country in the world, where would it be? France, bien sûr!

3. Favorite 'adult' beverage? Sparkling wine.

4. Favorite hobby? Writing.

5. If you could have a super power, what would it be and why? Telekinesis because I could save people from getting crushed by heavy stuff and because I wouldn't have to get out of bed to get food or drink.

6. What does your last text message say? Who was it from? My husband texted me about his sweet hotel suite.

7. What is your idea of a perfect date night? Date Night In: pizza and/or boneless wings, beer, Star Trek, sex, cuddles, sleep. Date Night Out: Zoo trip followed by hibachi for dinner.

8. Favorite food/foods? Candy. Cereal. Chips. Bacon. Pizza. Boneless wings. 

9. You have just one 1 million dollars, you have 24 hours to spend it, what do you do with the money? Book a private jet for me, my family, and my friends to Paris! Shopping spree for everyone, freely flowing champagne (real champagne), and gourmet meals.

10. Best 4th of July Memory? Spending the 4th with my best friend Rose, her grandparents, and her great-aunts. Rose made us all dinner, and then we went to the neighborhood fireworks show. Afterward, Rose and I watched Beauty and the Beast while I drank white wine from a light-up wine glass, and she drank scotch. 

11. Coffee or Tea? Tea!

Thanks for the nomination, Emily! This is my third nomination for the Liebster Award (see previous awards HERE and HERE), so I'm following my friend Dana's lead and not tagging anyone else.

Wedding Wednesday: The Demi-Vièrge Wore White

Contrary to popular belief, brides wearing white on their wedding day has nothing to do with virginity. Of course, Americans tend to rewrite history all the time, so I'm not that surprised that the average person assumes the white wedding dress has something to do with "sexual purity." In reality, Queen Victoria started a new fashion trend among the elite when she opted to wear an off-white wedding dress in 1840. Or at least, she eventually popularized a trend that was already rising among the very wealthy.

via

From this really awesome article, "Queen Victoria's Wedding Dress: The One That Started It All."

Long before Victoria, white was a popular choice for wedding dresses, at least among the wealthy nobility... Weddings were usually more about political alliances and transfers of wealth than they were about romance, and so the wedding dress was just another excuse to show the wealth and culture of the brides family... Before the invention of effective bleaching techniques, white was a valued colour: it was both difficult to achieve, and hard to maintain. Wealthy brides, then, often wore white to demonstrate their money, not their purity.

In order to stimulate and support the lace industry [struggling due to industrialization], Victoria chose for her wedding dress a large piece of handmade Honiton lace... The rest of the dress then became a vehicle to showcase the lace, and white was chosen as the most suitable colour to do this. In the case of Victoria’s dress, white symbolised practicality and patriotism, rather than purity.

So if a white dress didn't actually represent my virginal status, why did everyone's favorite demi-vièrge choose to wear one?

I didn't always intend to wear a white wedding dress. When I was a kid, I told my parents I wanted to get married in a rainbow-colored wedding dress. In high school, when I wore a big pink poofy princess dress in the Junior Miss pageant, I told the other girls that I wanted to get married in it. 

But after my debutante ball, I assumed I would just wear my debutante dress again. Spending a lot of money on two formal white dresses to wear one time only just didn't make sense to me, and I LOVED my debutante dress. So why wouldn't I wear it to get married?

One of my formal debutante portraits

Wedding Wednesday: "I Want to Look Natural, but Bridal" (Hair, Makeup, & Nails for the Big Day)

My last Wedding Wednesday post was obviously before I found out about my mom's brain cancer. Things are slowly getting back to a new kind of normal in my life, and I'm trying to bring my blog back to normal as well.

Considering how infrequently I wear makeup, and how little time I spend on my hair, I was surprisingly stressed out about my hair and makeup for my wedding day. Having a mani/pedi was a given--getting my nails professionally done is a semi-regular indulgence of mine. But how was I supposed to find time to:

• figure out what kind of bridal "look" I wanted to copy
• know what kind of products to buy to replicate that look
• learn how to create that look so it would last half the day
• know which hair tools to buy
• experiment with those hair tools to get just the right curls
• find the right hair products to keep those curls curly and not frizzy in humidity 

My anti-frizz oil is fighting a losing battle... pic.twitter.com/MQ0xYpw4Eh
— Belle Femme (@SaBelleFemme) March 21, 2014

I spent so much time on Pinterest and reading my favorite beauty blogs, but I was still so lost. 

Then my mother-in-law emailed me and the other women (my mom, my sister-in-law-in-law E, and my future sister-in-law C) to see if we were interested in manicures and pedicures the day before the wedding. She also offered to find a spa or salon and coordinate the appointment. 

I immediately said yes. She quickly found options, and the best one also did hair and makeup. This was not the first time I'd considered having those professionally done, but I honestly just didn't know if it was in our budget. When I mentioned this to my mom, she insisted that paying for my hair and makeup was part of what they wanted to cover in our wedding costs.

Burden. Lifted. Between my mom and my MIL, a huge stressful part of wedding planning was handled, and I didn't have to do a thing.

My week-old bridal mani is going strong! Please ignore my blotchy sunburn. pic.twitter.com/ICCAGhVELH
— Belle Femme (@SaBelleFemme) March 28, 2014

All of us except for E had mani/pedis at a fabulous salon and spa within walking distance of our hotel. I chose a very sheer pink for my hands and a hot pink for my feet. Then I had my hair and makeup trial. Normally this would be a sooner than the day of the rehearsal, but we obviously don't live in San Antonio. I explained to my hair stylist that I wanted bigger, more defined curls than my natural wavy hair, and I showed her the tiara headband I wanted to wear. I told my makeup artist that I wanted my look to be "natural, but bridal."

I was thrilled with how it turned out! 

Between the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner

My appointment Saturday morning didn't go quite as planned, but I still looked beautiful, and the hiccups were minor in the grand scheme of things. 

This is a staged "first look" picture.

Clearly Beau thought I was beautiful! But then again, he always thinks I'm beautiful, even when I'm bare-faced with my hair all messy. That's why I married him! ♥ 

P.S. For a different perspective on bridal beauty, please look at my friend Carolyn's post on why she didn't wear makeup on her wedding day!
Linking up with Meredith, Nancy J, and Mary for Wedding Wednesday! 

Wedding Wednesday: Loved Ones Far and Wide

It’s all over.

A wedding, a honeymoon, and three wedding receptions are finally done.

It’s a little bittersweet, to be honest.

I’m excited to be done with all the stress of planning. I’m excited to take time to settle into our house, unpack the rest of my boxes, find the perfect spot for our wedding presents, just bask in the everyday adventure of being newlyweds.

But celebrating with our friends and family has been such a joy to me. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how many people love me when I don’t get to see them often, but throwing three wedding receptions reminded Beau and me of how blessed we are. We have so many loved ones we needed three parties to accommodate them all!

While our receptions provided a lovely and needed reminder of how great the people are in my life, seeing my long-distance friends also reminded me of how hard it is to maintain long-distance relationships. I have best friends in Australia and in Canada, in Washington, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Florida. At our first reception, I reunited with my best friend and step-cousin, after almost seven years. This past weekend, I reunited with one of my au pair besties for the first time in more than three years. 

I only show mine and Beau's faces, not those of my friends and family. Les filles de 78!

It’s been just as difficult seeing my best friends who couldn’t attend either reception. My other two au pair besties I haven’t seen since July 2010 and October 2010 (Canadian and Australian, respectively). I haven’t seen one of my college best friends, a fellow French major who taught English in France while I was an au pair, since October 2011 at Homecoming.

Now I live in Small City, and I remind Beau more often than he’d like that we can’t live here forever. I’m slowly turning acquaintances into friends, and I do love his family. Game Night is the highlight of my week, with the occasional Friday night wine tasting coming in at a close second. Our house is the BEST, and the city is charming.

But seeing all of my friends this past month was a stark reminder of what I don’t have anymore. While I do have Lauren and Hardy in Big City, less than two hours away, it’s not the same as living down the street from Lauren. It’s not the same as seeing the au pairs every single day. It’s not the same as spontaneous tea parties and midnight trips to Jack-in-the-Box.

So while I’m glad not to be stressed out with wedding planning, I’m sad that I don’t know when I’ll see all my friends again. It could honestly be years, and that’s hard for me to acknowledge.

Luckily for me, I’m actually spending the rest of the week with Lauren and Hardy! Beau and I spent last night with them, and I drove Beau to the airport this morning. Instead of going back home, I’m working in the actual office all week and hanging out with besties every night. Then Saturday, Lauren and I will cheer on Hardy as he runs a half-marathon! It’s almost like the glory days from when Lauren and I were roommates!

Well… this blog post took an unexpected turn. I didn’t intend on writing such a melancholy post for Wedding Wednesday, but sometimes you don’t realize what you’re feeling until you write it all out.

Linking up with Nancy J, Meredith, and Ashlen for Wedding Wednesday!
Linking up with One Tipsy Chick for The Wednesday Roundup. 

Wedding Wednesday: A Timeline of Events

I think Beau's proposal and our months of wedding planning was our best-kept secret from the blog. My motivation for the secrecy was two-fold.

1. I wanted to control the narrative of my own story of sex and virginity. I didn't want to force the blog conversation before I was ready.
2. I thought announcing our wedding by linking this video was HILARIOUS, and so did both Beau and my best friend Lauren. That was actually planned before we even got engaged.

All the wedding madness isn't quite over yet, but I'm at the point where I can start blogging about all the fun details!

I present to you...

Our Love Story: A Timeline of Events

First Week of Sex & Marriage, After 2 1/2 Years of Love!

It's hard to believe that Beau and I have already been married a week! We have been overwhelmed at the outpouring of love and support not just from our friends and family in person, but from the online community we have discovered in the last 2 1/2 years.

Since I haven't spent the last five months sharing our wedding planning details, y'all can look forward to at least a few months of scattered posts on the proposal, our engagement, the wedding, and our receptions! (Yes, receptions, plural--I hope y'all didn't expect us to celebrate our marriage normally). 

Not to mention that with our week in Puerto Rico, I have quite a few travel posts planned as well. Our honeymoon has been AWESOME so far!

Colorful buildings in Old San Juan

We've also already done a follow-up interview with Therese Schechter, director of How to Lose Your Virginity. Clearly all our "fans" who saw us in the documentary are dying to know about MARRIED SEX! Keep your eyes peeled for that video, coming soon!

But getting married and having coitus for the first time is bigger than all the blog posts I have planned. I am deliriously happy and head-over-heels in love with Beau. Making our wedding vows in front of our families and God was such a beautiful, intimate moment, a formal recognition of how our relationship has grown over the years. Then allowing our bodies to entwine as one, in a way neither of us had ever experienced before, was just... perfect. Beau and I are both so glad to have made the sexual choices we did.

Since I am on my honeymoon, and Beau is in bed next to me, looking as cute and snuggly as ever, I think it's time to cut this blog post short.

MARRIED!

P.S. On Thursday, we discovered a very mutually-pleasurable position, and our second time in that position, we even had near-simultaneous orgasms! So, yeah, obviously I'll be blogging about that in the near-future too.

Post-coital pillow talk includes my analysis of the feminist ramifications of the life-changing sex we just had.
— Belle Femme (@SaBelleFemme) March 27, 2014

I Was a Virgin on My Wedding Night--The Best and Worst Thing for My First Year of Marriage (A Guest Post)

I am THRILLED to feature a guest post by the Vintage Housewife herself. Christine and I are basically opposites, except for that whole "saving sex for marriage thing," but we totally respect our differences. She has undertaken the unique project of learning what housekeeping was like in the 1950s, straight from vintage guides themselves! You gotta respect a woman who understands the importance of primary sources. Today she's writing about one of the failures of purity culture--the lack of frank discussions about sex. Just a gentle reminder to my readers that I actively seek out guest writers with opinions different from my own. I absolutely love what Christine has written today, and I'm honored to feature her on my blog.

I was a virgin on my wedding night, and a pretty “virginal” one at that.  My new husband and I had never seen each other naked or done any of the activities that would follow that step (blow jobs, hand jobs, etc.), so most sexual activities were new to us in this union of “Holy Matrimony.”  The main factor for us in this decision was religious reasons – we felt that God wanted us to be as pure as possible for our wedding night.

Looking back, this is one of the best decisions my husband and I made in our relationship, and we both agree on that.  There would have been a lot of guilt and resentment if we would have gone against our consciences to do something we knew was wrong.  It was definitely the right decision for us, so perhaps the “worst” part of this title is a little misleading.  The reason why I put that there, however, is because being a “hard-core virgin” on my wedding night presented some problems for my marriage that I never anticipated.  I wish that people would warn other dating, abstinent Christians of these things.  They need some sort of disclaimer, like, “This is what’s right, and it will be very advantageous to your relationship, but here is what you’re going to struggle with because of this choice.”  I’ll go through the pros and cons of our decision so you can see what we went through on the “other side” of that magical wedding night – we are now almost four years into a happy, fulfilling marriage, so I think I have some authority to speak on the topic. 

BEST THING EVER 

(I’ll gloss over these quickly because they’re the ones that are preached to everyone on “why to remain abstinent”).

1.        An obvious benefit of being virgins on your wedding night is that neither of you have been with anyone else.  You don’t have to worry about being compared and thinking, “Oh no, am I the best he ever had?  Does he regret this decision?  Am I good enough?”  He has nothing to compare it to, so you’re obviously the best.

2.       Beyond the comparison issue, neither of you bring the emotional baggage that comes with having multiple sex partners.  Any exes are pretty PG, so no one has to harbor the anger and jealousy that can come with the thought of your partner being with someone else. 

3.       STDs are clearly not going to be an issue.

4.       Saving yourself for marriage builds a lot of self-control, and this is a quality that carries over into the marriage realm too.  I’m not worried that my husband will cheat on me.  I’m sure that this is mostly because we’re in a good relationship, however I also know that if he were ever tempted to stray, he has the self-control to “keep it in his pants” and not just go with how he’s feeling in a moment.  It takes strength to be passionately with someone for years and not sleep with them just because you don’t believe it is right.  That strength we built is useful in other areas of our marriage too.

WORST THING EVER 

(I’ll go into a little more detail on these, because I don’t feel like people talk about them enough).

1.       There is a huge mental/emotional block that comes with suddenly becoming sexually active.  There is nothing else on earth that is completely forbidden one second, and then with a few “I do’s,” it’s suddenly not only permissible, but essential to the health of your relationship.  That is super strange.  I was supposed to be “pure pure pure” one night and then a veritable porn star the next.  That’s impossible.  I definitely struggled with this.  For a long time, sex felt “dirty,” and I felt guilty for doing it even though I knew it was okay.  I really blame society for this: they’ve set up this virgin/whore dichotomy where women can’t be righteous in God’s eyes and still enjoy a healthy sexuality.  Why is this?  The Bible is full of sensuality (Um.  Have you read Song of Solomon?), but I couldn’t seem to grasp that concept.  For the first few months of our marriage, that made me feel like an extremely inadequate wife.  My husband is great and was obviously more than understanding (after all, guys are “supposed” to be sexual, so he didn’t really have the same block but understood why I did), but I still felt like such a loser for not being able to do an instantaneous mind switch on this topic.

2.       For a while, you’ll have no idea what you’re doing.  People make jokes about “awkward honeymoon sex,” but for real – it’s so strange.  I mean, prior to my wedding night, no one had seen me naked since I was in diapers.  Now I was supposed to confidently stride around a honeymoon suite naked and jump my new husband every chance I had?  Weird.  Also, there’s just the mechanics of sex in general.  I realize that sex itself isn’t that difficult (after all, teenagers do it), but I would argue that good sex takes time to figure out.  Especially when I’d never “explored myself” or my husband prior to this – how were we supposed to know what felt good and what didn’t?  In short, we didn’t know.  So we just kept trying different stuff.  The awkwardness is cute on the honeymoon, like, “Oh, look at us, so new to all this…ha ha ha!” but as the months roll by and orgasms aren’t easy and mind-blowing, frustration sets in.  It starts to cause tension – is something wrong with me?  Him?  Both of us?  Do we “practice” more often or just give up for a while?  And it can cause division in your relationship.  Sex was the #1 reason my husband and I fought in our first year of marriage, which is something I never would have expected!  Fights about sex?  What?  But apparently that’s one of the top two causes of marital discord in the country (the other one is finances).

3.       The idea of “sexual compatibility” is pretty deceiving.  This one will link to #2.  People talk about making sure that you’re “sexually compatible” with your partner prior to marrying them, and this was something I struggled with a lot at the beginning.  I felt that if two people were “sexually compatible,” then they would quickly understand each other’s preferences and rhythms (because theirs were the same, right?), and sex would become mind-blowingly fantastic after a handful of tries.  When sex wasn’t instantly amazing, I started to wonder if maybe my husband and I weren’t “sexually compatible.”  That was frustrating.  I would never cheat on him, obviously, but I started to wonder if maybe I had given up a chance for better sex by marrying him.   I wondered if maybe I should have slept with more people to learn who was really best in bed.  Ugh – I feel so horrible even typing those words because they’re so ridiculous and selfish, but that’s how I felt.  I’m sure other new brides have felt this way too.  Now, four years in, I can say that our sex life has gotten consistently better from Day 1 until now, and I anticipate it will continue to get better in the future.  It’s not about finding the person who knows all of your exact sexual preferences immediately; it’s about finding someone who is so emotionally and mentally committed to you that they’re willing to put in the work to learn what you like and do it for you.  That’s going to produce some amazing sex.

Being virgins on our wedding night has, overall, been a great choice for my husband and me.  I just wish I would have known the struggles that come along with that decision before I made it.  It wouldn’t have changed my decision, but it would have made me more ready for my first year of marriage, and it would probably have saved some fights.  I think I had this subconscious notion that because I was doing things “God’s way” that He would bless me instantly with amazing sex.  That’s not really a mature viewpoint, but it’s one that I think a lot of romance-stricken abstinent Christian have.  “It will be different for us” or “We know each other so well…it will be amazing.”  I’m sure that’s true for some people, and good for them.  For the other 99% of us, though, I want people to know that there are struggles with getting used to your new sex life, but that going through those experiences with your new spouse brings you closer together and ultimately will produce a great sex life – just maybe not on Night Three of your honeymoon.

Beau and I just finished up Night Three of our honeymoon last night! This post has obviously been scheduled in advance, and no, I am not interrupting my steady stream of sex, sleep, alcohol, books, and the beach to update my blog. So here's hoping that all our preparation got us ready for great sex! If not, Christine is right. We  have the rest of our lives to communicate our desires and become closer every day.