The Three Stages of Sexual Grief
What happened and what happens now?
When you’re a forty-year-old virgin, you can’t help but think about sex. When you’re a forty-year-old virgin with who’s a recovering porn addict, you have to be careful to not think about sex too much. When you’re a forty-year-old virgin who has a chronic back condition and can’t even attempt sex at the moment, then brother, you are going down.
*Note: That last line was a nod to Al Pacino in the famous coffee shop scene with De Niro in Heat. I re-watched the film recently. Here it is for you, free of charge.
Back to my reality, most days I wake up wondering, how in the world did I get here? How did I arrive at a place with almost insurmountable odds, an existence with no girlfriends, no relationships, and no sexual experience at the age of forty-three? More pressing, a place where I can barely sit in a chair for more than a few minutes at a time due to extreme joint pain in my lower back? Wherever “here” is, I want to leave as soon as possible. It feels wrong and criminal, as if I am living another man’s life.
Since it is my life, just yesterday, temptation came to my brain to cope with drugs, to relapse, and break my sobriety streak. It doesn’t matter, I thought. Resign yourself. The experience of sex passed you by, so you might as well give in, and I began thinking of the stages of life where we experience this intimacy, in large or small doses, whether consistently or not, even if we are not yet present enough to understand the power of what we’ve discovered.
I’m in mourning, I thought. Not for who I am, but for who I was meant to be. Let me show you what I mean.
First, there is the experience that most people have in their twenties, where the college years act as the entry point to sex. This is a time of forming crushes and acting on them. It’s messy, but it’s the beginning stages of adult dating. During this time, I attended West Point, where sex was outlawed on campus, and while most cadets sought it elsewhere, I focused on surviving the academic rigor. I was also a Christian and discouraged from having pre-marital sex. I went to class and bible study and avoided temptation as the four years quickly passed.
Even if I had somehow stumbled on an opportunity then, my use of internet pornography during this stage killed any desire I had for the opposite sex. While friends were flying to see their girlfriends on the weekends, I remained online in my room. While others took the train to Manhattan, I visited restricted sites on my computer. Ironically, the self-soothing effects of porn calmed my stress levels enough to succeed at West Point - to improve academically, make the rugby team, join the Honor Committee - but the damage would soon reveal itself and remain with me long after I had graduated. I still wonder what it would have been like to have avoided porn, met someone, and fallen in love, and the regret has stayed with me past my twenty-year reunion. I would like to forgive myself and travel back in time. I would like to discover this phase for the first time despite the poor choices and self-inflicted pain.
The second stage is more purposeful and involves relationships in the dating pool of one’s late twenties to mid-thirties. Jobs are gained, and new friendships are formed. Students scatter from campus and return to their hometowns to become entry-level citizens and begin their lives. In my case, I left New York for Houston, but struggled to meet people. I made friends at church, but did not date anyone. As a Christian, pre-marital sex was still forbidden as it was during college, and it wasn’t until I arrived in Kansas City that I worked up the courage to experience it for the first time. There, amid the harsh, Midwest winters, I made advances toward women and attempted to lose my virginity, but came face-to-face with an even harsher reality that porn had impacted my neural pathways, inhibiting the ability to become erect. These days, the acronym is P.I.E.D (Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction). It happened consecutively over many months until eventually the phases merged - the guilt of the first mixed with the embarrassment of the second - to form a mental hurdle that was not easily conquered.
I’ve written pieces about this before, but there have been few times in life when I've felt as humbled as those years. My intentions were good, but my mind was broken. In hindsight, the past had caught up to me in more ways than one. I remember, after I developed a crush on a friend, we were briefly in agreement when it came to casual sex, but since my false starts caused an inability to experience it together, we stopped trying. I did not speak to her for several months as I transitioned to Los Angeles. The months turned to years, and I had all but erased her, not from anger, but self-judgment and shame.
One day, I came across an email where she mentioned she had been praying for me, and I became emotional, realizing she never knew how I’d succeeded in changing my life: how I’d left Christianity, entered rehab, and no longer viewed sex as wrong. I wondered if she did. I began drafting a reply, but stopped when her profile showed she’d moved back home, and married a pastor. Together, they had several children, and in the moment, I was reminded of how quickly life changes, how the sides of a coin remain strangers despite their shared history. I was born a Christian, but was no longer. I was an addict, but I was seeking help. Both were mine to control, and control them I did, changing the narrative and improving my communication surrounding sex, not long after we parted ways.
The email draft is still there waiting, reminding me of my past and how those who became part of it still find peace in Jesus, and how my peace came by going the opposite direction, toward a reality that embraces mental health, modernity, and desire without guilt. I’d still like to speak to her. One day, I’ll press send and continue the conversation.
When it comes to my present life, I don’t know what to call the third phase; I just know that I’m in it. For my age group, gone are the college and pre-marital years, the exploratory phases. Gone are the beginnings of dating with their exclusivity, engagements, and moving forward to build a life together. Recently, I was thinking about how though each person is unique, most forty-year-olds have been practicing sex for over two decades, through singlehood, marriage, and divorce - and then there’s me, a virgin, facing my toughest battle yet, a spinal condition that shows no signs of healing.
Where did it come from? It began in childhood with a diagnosis from our family doctor. My Mom took my brothers and me for check-ups, where he examined me, watching me bend and walk. I had scoliosis, albeit a slight case. He called it a curvature. It never affected me as a youth.
I played sports throughout high school and earned an appointment to West Point. I played rugby and lifted weights. At the end of college, I was medically discharged due to a shoulder injury, yet here I am with the original storyline: injury-prone and too weak to play. I feel disqualified. I need my back if I’m to be intimate with someone.
A few nights ago, I had a dream I’d returned to Houston and was living in an apartment near Rice University, riding my bike to the stadium, jogging the track, and running the steps. The air was thick and humid, and I exercised like I did in high school: training for the military, finishing my laps and descending to the astroturf to sprint until exhaustion. I was as strong as I was back then; my spine was straight. I was not fighting nerve pain, injury, or rehab. I was not drowning in medical debt and climbing out to fall back in. When I woke, I thought of how simple it would be to take that strength and transfer it to the sexual act. It could be the first of many workouts. I could become an athlete. In my attempts, I’ve experienced back spasms and the inability to be connect because I’m too focused on my pain.
Though I know little, I know the act is pleasure, and my fear is never experiencing it at the level I long for. I wish I could pause time to recover. I’d like to return my body for another model, the one I experienced in the dream, with a guarantee it would stay healthy over the next thirty thousand miles.
The irony is not lost on me. After overcoming religious and addiction, I still can’t try my hand at sex. In my current state, my body is failing. I’ve scaled mountains only to run full speed into a wall of chronic pain.
I move it, sidestep it, but with every breath, feel the impact of its weight. This is not soreness, but joint dysfunction, and just as it has taken years to manifest, so it could take twice as many to recover. I hear the clock ticking, and try my best to extend the days. I watch the sun glide slowly. I fill the hours with writing, editing, and publishing work, reminding myself there is something to be said for releasing energy into the world in the form of thought-provoking art.
I may no longer talk to God, but somehow, I am still angry at Him, or whoever’s in charge. I think, How dare this be my life! At the same time, it is, and I can complain all I want, retrace my steps only to end up in the same place again: alone with an hourglass. I don’t have much, but I do have time. For every uncomfortable situation, every stretch of life I wish would be over already lies a chance to peel back the layers - the expired, rotten fruit - past the point of discomfort, until I am ready to witness it and eat my fill. At least, I can say that about myself: I am learning. I have found adult life difficult, but I have not let that stop me from growing up.
If there is one left to do, it is to say goodbye properly to the twenty-something version of me and the thirty and forty-year-old. I’ll include the dozens in between. To mourn them, the ones in New York, at West Point, and the one who struggled to find his way to California and back. Those men had no instruction manual and tried to experience the world anyway, right down to the act itself, and despite the fear surrounding it, pressed on to the extent their mind allowed, at least until their body shut down against their will. I wish, for their sakes, they could have experienced the erotic and the intimate. I can picture them, somewhere in their late twenties, having arranged things, the touch of a lover or the mystery of a woman’s embrace. Perhaps it was in the city, or perhaps upstate. At least, there is tomorrow. What is deferred until then will become something else entirely.
Despite my obstacles, setbacks, and a longing for the past, I feel renewed at the outskirts of my bones. I am in pain, but aware of it. I am emotionally charged like a horse at the starting gate.
My heart is beating. My ears are pointed forward, listening.
I am more curious than defeated. The three stages are over, and I am busy writing the next.
Poignant Writing,