Finding your voice

A story of leaving religion, finding BDSM, and embracing who you are

All stories in Sexual Empowerment in Midlife are anonymized and published with the explicit approval of their subjects, who are wholly separate from my coaching clients. For more on how this publication was created, check out my intro post.

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No time to think

Rachel grew up a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which she refers to as “high-demand religion.” The church engulfed her, occupying all space in her life. Even as an adult, she was never alone: religious obligations were plentiful, and free time was spent with family. As she says, “The church keeps you very busy. It doesn’t leave you much time to think.”

Rachel sensed from a young age that she was attracted to women. Sometimes at night she would steal down to the living room to catch a glimpse of a breast on HBO. But she was told that those thoughts were sinful, so she followed the church’s teachings and squashed them by immersing herself more fully in religious activities. Her commitment was so intense that she rose up through the ranks and achieved a women’s leadership position. With her husband and children, she lived an exemplary Mormon life.

Female pleasure at age 34

After 15 years of marriage, Rachel’s husband took their children on an extended service trip. Suddenly alone, Rachel seized on the opportunity to explore a longstanding curiosity: female pleasure. She had been taught that a woman’s role is to serve her husband, and at 34 she had never had an orgasm. But she knew masturbation existed and wanted to learn how.

Rachel had a cousin outside the church, and a quick phone call (and a wink and a nod) led her to pornhub.com. Rachel binged on videos of women pleasuring themselves. She had been taught the evils of porn and rightly understood that the videos were unrealistic portrayals designed for men, but there was enough anatomy involved for her to figure out what she needed to do. She went to work immediately.

Rachel only had her fingers, but many of the women in the video had the Magic Wand vibrator. “They were squirting across the room!” she told me. The window of opportunity was small, so Rachel rush-ordered one. “And I squirted across the room!”

Rachel also explored lesbian porn. She was accustomed to fantasizing about women when she was having sex with her husband, so it was a natural choice among Pornhub’s offerings. But it is hard to shake homophobic values, so she still didn’t put it together that she was attracted to women.

Masturbation became an obsession for Rachel. She would create challenges for herself, like how many days could she masturbate before work, or on her lunch break. She got creative in where she did it, knowing that no one in the church would suspect.

When her husband returned, Rachel dutifully showed him the vibrator. True to form, he told her it was bad, something she should not have. But he didn’t push her further, so she kept it.

From that point on, after they would have sex, Rachel’s husband would take a shower, leaving her to pull out the vibrator. He didn’t approve, but he never criticized her for it.

The rupture

Rachel led a women’s group that required her to develop deep expertise in the church’s teachings. As a devout follower, she never strayed from condoned texts. But even with those filters, certain details always seemed askew to her.

The breaking point came in a single day. Rachel was scheduled to deliver a sermon, and her topic led her to delve into polygamy. The standard lessons were that men could take multiple wives only during crises such as war, to care for the disproportionate number of women left in the community. But the church website turned up ample evidence that church founder Joseph Smith took wives purely for his own pleasure. She found examples that appalled her, like married women taken from their husbands, and even mother-daughter pairs.

Distressed and confused, Rachel immersed herself in prayer and journaling. But by the end of the afternoon, she saw no way to reconcile what the church preached with what she had discovered. She told her husband she wanted a divorce, and asked the bishop to release her from her duty to the church.

From Mormonism to BDSM

On her own for the first time in her life, Rachel’s priority was sex education. She knew enough to recognize how much more there was to learn, and her researcher brain craved information.

The first resource Rachel truly valued was Our Whole Lives (OWL), an expansive sex education curriculum developed by the Unitarian Universalist Church. In her region, OWL offered live classes on everything from healthy relationships to polyamory, and Rachel filled her schedule like an eager new student.

One of her classes was on BDSM. Although the bondage and power exchange felt theoretical at first, a fellow classmate invited Rachel to explore more with her, and the appeal was immediate. BDSM’s stigma is widespread, but Rachel learned that it is consensual, designed for mutual pleasure, and deeply intimate.

Rachel began attending BDSM parties, but she was dismayed to find that many people there held the misconception that BDSM was mostly about inflicting pain rather than fostering a safe and caring environment. She began applying her former religious passion to understanding and educating others about BDSM. Her home became a classroom where she hosted learning events, complete with live demonstrations by Dom-sub pairs. And she pursued a mental health degree and certification in sex therapy so she could build a new career.

BDSM helped Rachel find her voice. “I was taught from a young age that girls should be seen and not heard—it took me a long time to get over that,” she said. The church had systematically indoctrinated her to believe that it was her role to placate other people, but in true BDSM the submissive advocates for themself in setting clear boundaries beforehand and giving clear feedback after. As someone who had always been told the “right” thing to do, these were skills and self-awareness she had to develop from scratch. BDSM also forced her to get in touch with her own instincts, and learn to trust them for the first time.

Finding her sexuality

Rachel considered joining a less intense religion that might give her solace in her new life. She explored Unitarianism and Buddhism in some depth. But she found that, after a lifetime of having someone else’s values force-fed to her, she preferred to define her own morality and what it means to be a good person.

So she focused on her work, and on finding new love.

When she first started dating, Rachel went out with both men and women. “I dated men because that’s what I was supposed to do, and I dated women because I wanted to,” she told me.

She noticed that, when she was having sex with a man, her mind would wander to the things she needed to do that week: household chores, the grocery list. With women, Rachel was completely present in her body.

One morning she was lying in bed with a woman. Sunlight streamed through a skylight, leading Rachel’s eyes to the curve of the woman’s hip. At that moment, for the first time, she thought, “I am a lesbian.”

Today she has a partner who she is head over heels for. She paused when she told me that: “Wow, this is big for me.” She has moved beyond the healing stage to a committed, loving, and adventurous relationship with a woman. One where she can be her whole self.