I've spent my entire life having sex for other people.

I've had sex because I wanted people to like me. I've had sex because I didn't want my partner to be angry with me anymore. I've had sex because I wanted drugs from someone. I've had sex because I felt like I had to.

Growing up in a world that tells women that we are sexual objects, that wants us to know that our worth lies in how attractive we are to men, I internalized those messages. I learned to see my value being measured by how many men wanted to sleep with me.

I entered relationships as a sexual object first and a human being second. I performed the kind of sex I thought men wanted from me, acting like the performers I'd seen in porn films. I tried anything my partners wanted to try, regardless of how I felt about it. I didn't know I was allowed to say no.

The first time I had anal sex, I cried through the whole thing. But afterward, he told me how beautiful I was, how sexy I was, how much he cared about me. So I believed him, and believed that his affection was conditionally attached to the things I was willing to do in bed. So I let him have anal sex with me. I thought it was consensual, but it wasn't really. I didn't know how to consent.

This behavior left me at an emotional rock bottom and incredibly traumatized. To this day, I do not know what it means to have sex because I actually want to have sex. Whenever I feel the desire to have sex, it's usually because I want to make my partner happy in some way.

But I refuse to spend any more of my life having sex for other people. I'm sick of the messages that tell us we should do it for our husbands, to make them happy. Resigned silence, for me, is not consent. Compromise sex, for me, is not pleasurable.

I'm 30 years old and determined to learn how to have sex for myself.

And because my husband loves me and wants to have sex with a fully active, invested participant — and not just someone who lies there and lets him happen, because who is that fun for? — supports me 100 percent. Together, we're helping me navigate the kind of sexual boundaries I should have developed as a young woman but could not, because I lived in a world that taught me to hate myself.

I remember the first time I had to stop myself from doing something that I knew he would have loved. We were on a tight budget and I'd seen a raincoat I loved. I bought it, and then panicked. I didn't know how to tell him. So I concocted a plan to surprise him when he got home — wearing nothing but the raincoat and heels.

And then it hit me — that was manipulative. That was having sex to avoid a fight. That was not having sex because I actually wanted to. So, much to my husband's disappointment, he did not come home to a scene from a porn movie that day. He came home to a wife who told him what she'd done. And he told me the raincoat was so me, how could I not have bought it? He wasn't mad. The manipulation wasn't even necessary, it was just so ingrained with the way I navigated the world.

I hope that one day I'll know what it feels like to have sex because I want to. I have glimpses of that now, and it's pretty great, for both me and my husband. But what I do know is that I love myself too much to keep giving my body away to someone else, instead of sharing it with them.

So no, I won't have sex once per week "for my husband," because it's "good for our relationship." We'll have sex when we both want to, and our relationship is actually stronger than it's ever been.

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