SENSUALITY, SEXUALITY AND 30s

Yours truly is officially in her mid-thirties.

It is an interesting time to say the least.

While in my 20s, I read that a woman becomes more sensual and sexual in her 30s, it gets even higher in her 40s and only starts to decrease in her 50s.

I started adding weight in my 30s and thought that somehow the heightened 30s had missed me.

Boy, was I wrong!

Delay is not denial, apparently!

If you asked me about myself before now,I would describe myself as someone with ample self control.

Other feelings that females my age say they struggle with, I couldn’t relate.

Celibacy and abstinence wasn’t a challenge, it was a walk in the park.

Now, a year of celibacy is a legit struggle! By the 12th month, the verse of bringing my flesh into submission becomes my mantra! By the 15th month, looking at the lips of a man I find remotely attractive becomes a struggle because yours truly starts imagining the same lips in areas that don’t glorify God! By the time we are reaching the 2 year mark, even the fingers of an attractive man typing, does things to yours truly. Because my mind conjures up images of places those fingers can trace as well!

But the good Lord was kind enough to put a caveat in all of this: types and patterns.

Now, I have a type!

I didn’t have a type before now because I wasn’t even interested in men (or women), now, I have a type.

Before now, you have to cultivate a friendship with me to get me remotely attracted to you. Now, I find myself battling demons who supply my mind’s eye with different sexual pictures, desires and thoughts just by settling my eyes on a man who is my type! I start feeling hot and bothered, and finally understand why women say “lord have mercy” when looking at an attractive man! 

But God is good, because this only happens with men I find attractive who are also my type! I can find you attractive but if you are not my type, it’s like looking at a beautiful painting. It does nothing to me.

However, with my type?! It’s a legit struggle!

I can finally understand what my friend was talking about when we were both 27 about sexual desires!

There are times when I have to pray with my eyes open and fixed on the cross or any other Christian sacrament because closing them would mean seeing different sexual images instead in the middle of prayer.

These are real struggles. Sometimes I feel that there is a sexual monster that would burst out of me or that I would become if I didn’t hold on to my self control properly. Like if I let the self control slip like this, otilo!

And in a time when it is literally taboo for a woman to have sexual desires, I think talking about it strips it of its taboo nature.

There are different developmental markers that the absence of, means that there is a problem.

However, I don’t know if I am exhibiting the symptoms of a late bloomer, if this experience is peculiar to me or if this is the experience of every woman because I haven’t heard any woman, Christian or traditional (the type that are used as examples of femaleness in African society) talk about this.

Am I therefore not Christian enough or are we all just holding on to the helm of Jesus’ garment for self control? 

Because at this point, na only one thread Dey hold me o! If the thread use by mistake cut like this, otilo!