Welcome to How I Do It , the series in which we give you a seven-day sneak peek into the sex life of a stranger. This week we hear from Elaine*, 38, from East Anglia, who is pansexual and married. Elaine is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
At just 14 she was groomed and raped by a man almost ten years her senior, who she met online. This deeply traumatic experience has had a profound impact on Elaine’s romantic relationships. ‘I thought that sex and love meant the same thing,’ she says.
‘I thought I needed to have sex with people straight away to prove my seriousness about wanting a relationship with them.’ She says she had many one night stands trying to ‘find the one’, and was married for seven years, during which time she had three children, who are now 11, nine and sex. While going through her divorce in 2018, she met her husband, David* who she describes as an ‘amazing man’.
‘He showed me respect, and how amazing, fulling, and special sex can be. When we met, I felt safe again. I felt excited again.
Finally, there was no shame in enjoying sex, the thing that almost ruined me.’ Elaine says that with David, she found the right person to be ‘naked and intimate with’ and they recently got married. But despite this, their sex life is currently ‘non-existent’ and even though Elaine tries to initiate sex, they’ve only done it twice this year.
She assumes David may be struggling to process her past trauma and how it impacts their intimacy –.
