By Phoebe Mutetsi
For some reason, during the flight to their beautiful honeymoon destination, she wasn’t thinking about it. It hadn’t crossed her mind even once. Okay, it had, but you know, in passing. “From the time he proposed [two years before the wedding], I had visions of my honeymoon destination,” says Cindy (not her real name). You know, some brides fuss about their wedding venues, others about the dress. I was the kind who couldn’t stop talking about the honeymoon. For all I cared, we could have done the church, then kissed our parents and friends goodbye and rode to the airport.”
Cindy confesses to being a pathetic romantic. “I had not stayed a virgin by accident or lack of opportunity. I was waiting for Mr Right.” Cindy says that when she said yes to his proposal, she started planning on where her virginity gift should be unwrapped. “Maybe I’m a little too much but I wanted everything to be right: the place to be exotic, the air to be fresh,” she says. “I wanted everything to be perfect. I had been to the Seychelles with a couple of my friends and I knew I wanted my honeymoon to be there. So it was definite that I would start making phone calls and booking flights, crosschecking which area is better than the other, which hotel is better among those many exotic hotels.
Cindy adds, “I didn’t exactly forget that I would be having sex, but I was not anxious at all. And the day we reached our hotel room, it was late. I was exhausted from the flights and just wanted to sleep. The reality dawned on me the next day.”
With encouragement and gentle pressing, she reveals some more. “The night before, I had just put on my ‘nightie’ and gone to bed, sleeping in his arms. I guess he didn’t want to pressure me into it because, while unpacking, I had been saying how exhausted I was.
“It was very early in the morning, before room service even, and I decided to dazzle him. So I go to the bathroom, take a warm shower with the sweet-scented shower gels I had purchased, and move to the dressing room to put on some sexy lingerie. I was in high spirits. Then, it hit me. This was it. I was going to lose my virginity at 26. I was in a panic. I was sad. I was anxious. I was angry. I felt so many things in the same minute and I just broke down and cried – little muffled sobs. It is funny really because I thought that if I had to cry at all on my honeymoon, it would be during the time my hymen breaks not when I was trying to put my lingerie on.” Cindy says that first-time sex, especially on the honeymoon, is rare and this makes it special. She says every little detail of that moment is savoured and remembered every day of your lives.
“It creates this unexplained bond between you and your husband,” she says. “It is not love, it is not appreciation, it is more like an understanding of one another in ways you can’t put into words.” Looks like she did have a great time after that little meltdown in the dressing room; if one is to go by her secret smiles and eye gestures when she refused to reveal any more.
There are, however, some people with horrid stories of first-time intimacy – during their honeymoon. One woman says she couldn’t believe how different, disrespectful and rude her once sweet suitor turned out to be on that critical night. It was more like rape, she says. He was rough and paid no attention to her pleas for him to just stop. All he cared about was himself. Other times it is not even about the sex exactly. It is about what to do and how to do it with this still strange husband of yours – at least strange in that field.
Is it okay if you pack some of your favourite but old underwear, or should everything be new? Do you initiate the sex, as in seduce him, and ask him what gives him pleasure so you can do just that? Can you? Will he be comparing you (if he is not a virgin) quietly to other women?
Do you wear the temptress kind of lingerie or is that too out there? Will you have to touch him? Do you have to be totally naked with him now that he is your husband, leave the light on or will he, in the meantime, take what you are comfortable to give, to reveal… or is that unwifely? It is a jigsaw puzzle. Yet thanks to the Sengas, some brides have been able to find a few answers to this confusion. They are told what and what no to do, what to say, and what to wear.
But sometimes, the Sengas do not know everything. What are the odds that all the men out there want the same things? Do all men, for example, worship women who tell them: “Kulikayo ssebo” (welcome back) after the deed has been done?
Maybe, just maybe, the answer is this simple. We need to relax and learn to live in the moment. First -time experiences are different and unique for each one. Find your comfort with your partner, do it your way, in your moment.
