I am 45 years old, have been happily married for twenty-one years and have two children, 19 and 14. I met my husband at the age of 22 years, and he was the first and only man I have ever had sexual relations with. I had been frigid all my life (it took me many years to come to that conclusion) and, when I finally gathered enough courage to tell my husband, just a few months ago, it was he who went to the library to get Masters & Johnson and Helen Singer Kaplan to try to reverse a lifetime’s bad habits. Up until that time, the only orgasms I had ever had were upon waking from sleep and a dream (which dreams I could never recall).
Together we’re working on it, with some success, but I feel that I am and will always be a sexual retard for having gotten started in sexual activity at such a late date (23 years). I tried masturbating when I was a teen, mainly because I had heard that all kids did it, even though they were not supposed to. I never could get any agreeable sensations out of it and quit trying. I cannot remember my parents being particularly repressive or punishing me for anything of that nature that I might have done at a young age, but I do remember a nurse in summer camp telling several of us that we would get cancer if we “abused” our bodies.
I am indebted to you for your book, not only because it showed me that I was not unnatural, as I had feared, for having a rich fantasy life, but also for showing me that my fantasies were rather unusual in that I was never able to imagine anyone actually making love to me. My fantasies are al¬most exclusively concerned with my saving some handsome and virile man’s life and then, as a result of this, his wanting to make love to me. I have been particularly attracted to astronauts, and each time a capsule, space station, or shuttle has taken off has been for me a particularly fruitful time for these fantasies. I imagine that I am particularly attracted to one of the men on board – someone who is very clean-cut, dark and quite well muscled. Then some emergency arises on board, an electrical fire or a leak, and somehow I am the one who risks life and limb, getting burned or what¬ever as a result, and saves the lives of everyone on board. As a result of this the gentleman that I am particularly attracted to is so grateful that he wishes to make love to me.