Something is definitely wrong with me, I thought to myself all through what seemed like the longest night ever. My mind was still racing when the sound of the adhan pierced through the window blinds, interrupting my thoughts. As the call to prayer filled the room, I looked to my left to find my husband also awake, staring into nothing. My stomach churned with embarrassment. What had just happened? I had so many questions, all waiting to be answered by whomever I could summon the courage to talk to. Without saying anything, my husband moved closer and placed my head on his chest as if to comfort me and tell me everything would be fine.
This is not how I had expected to feel the morning after my wedding night. I may have been inexperienced sexually going into my honeymoon, but I had done my research. I had a pretty good idea of what I’d like and what I wouldn’t. I’d read books about sex, devoured erotic novels, scoured the internet, and sought the advice of my “experienced” friends. They mostly told me how wonderful and pleasurable sex was, and how I shouldn’t be too anxious about my wedding night. I was told to be calm and just revel in it. Armed with my research and this well-intentioned advice, I was confident that I had learned enough to have a terrific honeymoon.
Waiting till my wedding night to have sex was not just a religious tradition; it was also a family custom, one that I chose to abide by. In Islam, sex outside the bounds of marriage is a no-no for both men and women. Those who did engage in it were not supposed to talk about it publicly.
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Most of us learned this sort of thing from Dolly Doctor when we were 16.
Starting off with ice cream for your first time was never going to turn out well.
Totally concur regarding the need for open discussion and a loss of shame over talking about one's body and sexuality, but I wonder how the author was "scouring the internet" if she wasn't aware of all of this stuff beforehand? Part of the discussion we need to have is how to look for and process information and facts about our bodies. There's actually heaps of great information out on the internet already, but for all the research the author claims to have done before marriage, it seems she didn't find any of it (but conversely she did seem to happen upon a whole stack of misinformation about what first sexual encounters are like).