I want to say something out loud that a lot of women whisper to me in private sessions, DMs, or after a workshop when everyone else has signed off: you can like sex with your husband and still not be straight. — This part matters just as much — you can also be the woman who did not like sex with your husband, who tried to avoid it, who went along because you felt you were supposed to, and you’re not more “broken,” you’re not dramatic, and you’re not alone in that either.

So many of us were handed this really narrow story about queerness: “If you enjoyed straight sex, you can’t be gay,” and right next to it, “If you didn’t enjoy straight sex, it’s because you’re repressed, frigid, traumatized, or you just need to ‘spice it up.’” Neither of those stories is big enough for who we actually are.

Here’s the truer version: some of us were very comfortable with straight sex. We could orgasm with men. We liked the closeness, we liked being wanted, we knew the choreography, and honestly, we did have good sex. That was real inside the life we were living. And then we slept with a woman and everything rearranged, because our bodies finally had access to desire that didn’t have to run through straightness first. It felt like home in a way we hadn’t felt before.

But some of us were on the other side — maybe this is you. You didn’t like sex with your husband. You avoided it. You got tired. You had headaches. You became very, very good at timing bedtime so you didn’t have to navigate it. You loved him, but sex felt like one more place you had to disappear a little. Maybe you could be present if you pushed yourself, but it rarely felt like delight. Maybe you felt guilty, like you were failing “wifehood,” or you worried he’d think he wasn’t attractive. Maybe you wondered, quietly at 2 a.m., “Why doesn’t my body want this?” And because no one told you that queerness could be buried under decades of compulsory heterosexuality, you blamed yourself.

We need to say this out loud: not liking sex with your husband doesn’t mean you were a bad wife. It can simply mean your body was telling the truth long before your mind caught up. Sometimes avoidance is wisdom. Sometimes the low desire wasn’t a hormone issue or a marriage issue — it was a “this is not my orientation” issue. You can honor him and still believe your body.

What makes all of this complicated is that we were all living inside the same straight script. Some of us adapted by making sex work and even enjoying it. Some of us adapted by shutting parts of ourselves down to get through it. Same system, different nervous system responses. Neither group is more “real” or more “queer.” We were all doing what we needed to do to stay loved, safe, respectable, married, or simply okay in our families and faith communities.

And then — we meet a woman, or we allow ourselves to want women, or we finally have language for being queer — and the contrast is stunning. For those of us who liked straight sex, it’s like, “Ohhh, it can feel like this?” For those of us who avoided straight sex, it’s like, “Ohhh, I’m not broken — I was just in the wrong story.” Same relief, different starting point.

This is why I keep saying: pleasure is not a sexuality test. The fact that you could orgasm with men doesn’t disqualify you from queerness. And the fact that you couldn’t doesn’t make you defective. Both experiences make total sense when you zoom out and see the forces at work — patriarchy, heteronormativity, religious expectation, trauma, safety needs, money, kids, the whole stew. Our bodies responded the way they needed to inside all of that.

So you get to say, with a full heart: “I enjoyed sex with him, and being with a woman woke something up in me I can’t unknow.”

And you also get to say: “I didn’t enjoy sex with him, and being with a woman finally made sense of that.”

Both are holy, honest sentences.

The work now — the work we’re doing together — is to stop interrogating the past to earn your present. You don’t have to erase the chapter where sex was good. You don’t have to be ashamed of the chapter where you avoided it. You get to bless the woman you were in both scenarios, thank her for getting you this far, and keep moving toward what feels like home.

If this triggers a response in you, I would love to hear it. Please email me, or schedule a clarity call! Get started today.