Learned the phrase Sexual Anorexia by way of this Huffpost article. Lot of ponder about in reading the first person account of waiting until forty one and also the Psych Today piece explaining how anorexia and bulimia works in this context. Some many women I know would fit the profile of anorexics - even the ones that are married. For women of my mother's generation and older this was the only control they had in their marriage - by way of denying themselves and wresting some power out of their husbands who were the sole breadwinners for the family. While they may have gained some of what they sought, it often at a terrible cost to physical and mental health.
An older relative once told me this story about how things went for her on the night of her wedding. In scary intimacy of laying with a stranger in the conjugal bed festooned with garlands of tuberose and jasmine, the husband she had been arranged to marry by her family, asked her if any other man had seen her in this state and if they had thought she was beautiful. The woman in question was under twenty at the time and did not have the presence of mind or the wisdom to know how to deal with such assault.
She answered "No" and in that moment she felt violated, shamed and rejected. The marriage was over even before it had begun. It is no surprise that the woman went on to develop a myriad of illnesses over the years, was severely depressed for decades. Now in her seventies, she is a shell of who she might have been as a woman and a human being. She is a Sexual anorexic? Most certainly based on the operating definition though how she arrived to that condition may a bit different
An older relative once told me this story about how things went for her on the night of her wedding. In scary intimacy of laying with a stranger in the conjugal bed festooned with garlands of tuberose and jasmine, the husband she had been arranged to marry by her family, asked her if any other man had seen her in this state and if they had thought she was beautiful. The woman in question was under twenty at the time and did not have the presence of mind or the wisdom to know how to deal with such assault.
She answered "No" and in that moment she felt violated, shamed and rejected. The marriage was over even before it had begun. It is no surprise that the woman went on to develop a myriad of illnesses over the years, was severely depressed for decades. Now in her seventies, she is a shell of who she might have been as a woman and a human being. She is a Sexual anorexic? Most certainly based on the operating definition though how she arrived to that condition may a bit different
