![]() After two years of starts and stops, his reasons for not wanting to have sex, however valid, floated from his mouth and immediately vaporized into thick, gray clouds that followed me around, threatening to dampen my self-esteem at any moment. I knew this was about him, his childhood (always the childhood), his work, and his insecurities. So different from what it was when I was a dancer in college, spending whole days in pale pink tights - when I was leaner, younger. I knew our lack of sexual intimacy wasn’t about the soft, expanding skin that stubbornly clung to my midsection, or my thighs, so much thicker, dimplier now than they used to be, my entire shape a soft, aging pear. ![]() And then I treat my body poorly, and then I hate the way I look and feel.” “When he doesn’t touch me, it makes me feel bad about my body. I kneaded a wet tissue, worn into holes, between my thumbs. “I don’t feel sexy,” I told our therapist from the gray, tufted chenille seat adjacent to my husband’s. Around that time, my husband stopped touching me. Deenie Hartzog-Mislock | Longreads | April 2020 | 13 minutes (3,341 words)Ībout two years ago, I stopped feeling beautiful.
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