Naked Night
Some of us take longer than others to to discover that sex is fun! While I wish I had learned this lesson earlier, especially for my husband's sake, I am glad to be learning now. It has been a wonderful journey.
Thursday nights at my house have been dubbed "Naked Night." The concept started about six years ago, when a coworker talked about her 4-year-old son's aversion to wearing clothes. The compromise she made with him was that on Saturday mornings he could stay undressed for awhile - he called it naked Saturday. Because our daughter, who lives at home works on Thursday night, we have the house to ourselves -- so Naked Night was born!
I never liked being naked. I didn't like my husband to see me naked, and my style of dress has always been very conservative. No cleavage, no bare shoulders, nothing tight or revealing in any way. There are many reasons that I did not want to draw attention to my body -- general shyness, Catholic upbringing, abusive relationship in high school, lack of confidence about my body, etc., so I didn't like my husband to see me naked or even in my underwear. In the early years of our marriage, he would comment on the underwear commercials and he would ask why I didn't run around dressed like that. I was horrified at the thought! Despite the fact that we had two children together, I would not let him see me in the bathtub or shower. I didn't like him to see me getting undressed or dressed. I did not even like him to see my feet without socks.
We have now been married 31 years. Over the last decade, I started to become more comfortable with my body, to accept my body, to accept myself as I am, and to understand that we are all created as sexual beings. Part of this change has been due to my husband gently nudging me (well, sometimes shoving me in a loving way) in this new direction. Some of the change in attitude may be just age - with age comes wisdom, right?
So, at our house, we have established Naked Nights! It has taken a long time to become comfortable being naked in front of him. It has taken even longer to figure out that sex is fun and experimenting is natural and normal. There is nothing wrong with feeling good with a partner who loves you. Some nights we just lounge around and watch television. Sometimes it is sleeping naked. Some naked nights are for role-playing, being blindfolded and bound, or for an enema, or a naughty story time. No matter what we do, naked night is something we both look forward to. It is time for embracing a part of myself that I denied for a very long time. You are never too old to change, to grow, to learn!