Free Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage by Jenny Block Page B

like? I was conscious enough of media messaging to know that social expectations were also partly at fault, that I was being blasted by images that made me want to look thin and stay young and unmarred by pregnancy. I had a healthy baby girl and a loving husband. What I needed, I decided, was to get over myself.
    But knowing the source of my vanity didn’t make my desire to look better any less powerful. It’s a crummy paradox: We’re not supposed to care about appearance, but we live in a world that values the way a person looks over nearly everything else. In her book Full Frontal Feminism, Jessica Valenti explains, “We’re expected to be hot—but if we are, we’re vain and stupid. And if we’re not hot, we’re useless. Kind of hard to get around.” 2 So true, and I wasn’t having any luck avoiding this dilemma. So I decided to

    accept the paradox for what it was, despite its unfortunate source, and do what felt right for me.
    The very next day after Christopher told me I still looked pregnant to him, I called the amazing plastic surgeon who had worked on my nose when I was in college. I had been unhappy with the large, crooked version my family’s genes had provided me with, and was thrilled with the one that Dr. Williams put in its place. So, when I decided to have liposuction and a tummy tuck, I dialed his number without hesitation. Vanity had taken over, but I was unhappy with my body not looking and feeling the way I was used to it looking and feeling. And the surgery had the desired results. I felt normal again. Our sex life improved, but only because I was feeling good enough to be the one to initiate sex again. We went right back to the vanilla sex that we had had before we got married, but with less frequency. I thought I could deal with it. I rationalized that sex wasn’t that big a part of marriage.
    Ultimately, though, it was big to me. I missed it, and not having it made me sad. I was also angry—at Christopher for not craving me sexually, and at myself for not being attractive enough to inspire such craving. And since I was now feeling good about my body again, I found myself blaming him more readily and less compelled to blame myself. I even thought about leaving. But everything else was fine. He was lovely to me and wonderful with the baby. Sex was really the only issue we were on opposing planets about, barring all the

    usual stuff couples and parents argue about, like whose turn it is to do the dishes, change the baby, walk the dog, or figure out what’s for dinner. It was impossible for me to fathom that a marriage could end over sex.
    As I began to examine the history of our sex life, I thought about what I had given up to be with Christopher. Getting engaged to him meant that my lifestyle of safe but relatively casual, open sexuality had come to an abrupt halt. And that way of life hadn’t just been handed to me—I’d had to work at it. I’d made a conscious decision that that was the way I wanted to express my sexuality, and my experiences had validated me. But when he proposed and I said yes, I was buying into the idea of monogamy. In my marriage, I was making a pact with my husband, and with society, that he would be the only man—rather, the only person—I would ever sleep with again. And I went along with it, just like everyone does. I’d hung in for three years by that point. The early stages of love will do that for you.
    And now we’d conceived a baby, and I was a new mother. I’d heard that new mothers often don’t want to have sex, but I can’t say that I had heard the same thing said about dads. Still, we were both overworked and sleep deprived, and so I continued to assess and reassess my needs, reminding myself all the while, This happens to everyone; this is normal; this too will pass. I could hear all of the conventional wisdom echoing in my ears. I convinced myself that everything I had learned about sex and about myself applied only to my

    single self, and