Reclaiming My Sexual Identity As A Mother
Mothers are hanging by a thread - not by the chandeliers.
Motherhood isn’t glamorous. It isn’t airbrushed or edited to perfection. It can’t be filtered or adjusted to suit what we think it should look like. Not in real life, anyway.
Motherhood is an intense role made out of blood, sweat, and tears. It’s gross. It’s messy. It’s often unappreciated.
As a mother, it’s a real challenge for me to merge feeling ‘sexy’ with the act of mothering. I have a husband who’s a wonderful partner and I sometimes feel guilty when my libido simply doesn’t show up for our sex life. I wish it was there. I want to enjoy sex too!
When you’re changing diapers, cleaning up after sloppy little humans, fielding various meltdowns, or otherwise strung out from the exhaustion that is raising children, feeling romantic just isn’t on the menu for many moms.
And it’s not just little kids that suck the sex drive out of a relationship. When you’re dealing with moody teenagers who test the limits of your patience day in and day out, that can affect libido as well.
Kids of any age can cause a strain on a couple’s sex life.
This is not a rant about how awful motherhood is. This is not some sort of pity party for the consequences of my own choices in life. This is about the genuine battle that so many women other than myself are wading through in their struggle to remain who they are as humans, women, and sexual partners while also being mothers to the children they are raising.
Even though the act of sex creates life and produces children, that ultimate feeling of being free and sexy doesn’t exactly jive with the reality of motherhood in most instances.
The role of a sex kitten and the role of a nurturing mother could not be more opposite. Whether you’re a mother who’s married to a partner, a single mother who is dating, or even a single mother who isn’t dating, balancing the identities of motherhood and womanhood isn’t exactly a piece of cake.
Can mothers be sexy? Absolutely! My point is that we don’t always feel sexy.
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During the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020, women who were already struggling with being everything to everyone in their households were stretched to the limits of human capacity. Whether you were a working mother or a stay-at-home mother, your child’s daily care and education became your job — regardless of your work schedule or your other responsibilities.
If a child was struggling with remote learning that burden immediately fell to the parents — the moms and the dads.
As many hard-working dads and stay-at-home dads as there are out there, the spotlight seems to shine brightest on mothers as being ultimately responsible for their children’s care and learning, especially when a crisis hits.
Mothers are hanging by a thread — not by the chandeliers. Unbridled, passionate sex sounds amazing, but the reality is that most of us can rarely focus on our sexual identities long enough to partake in the kind of sexual trysts we may fantasize about.
As a mother, I’ve often struggled with feeling in sync with my inner sex goddess.
So, what does one do to feel more sensual? How does a mother shrug off all the emotional, mental, and physical stress that mothering can bring to reconnect with her sexuality as a woman?
I’m working through that now. It takes effort. It takes speaking up and demanding time on your own. It takes connecting with other women who are going through the same thing and who are willing to talk about it. It takes getting to know yourself again — as an individual.
When you’re a mother it can be challenging not to feel ONLY like a mother and nothing else. But you are more. You’re so many things. At the root of it all — you are a human being with your own needs, wants, and desires.
Other people thinking that you’re a sexy woman or telling you that you’re sexy and you legitimately feeling sexy are two different things. I’m in the middle of that battle. I’m slowly wading my way through — as a human, sexual woman who also happens to be a mother.
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