Mind-boggling story of my great-granny

[SafeMouse]

I've been looking into my family tree a little bit, and my great granny. My gran (her daughter) is still alive, sharp as a tack and a wonderful character. I saw her Monday evening with my findings.... welll.....

I think I knew great granny had been married twice but that was about it. She'd actually got married at 15 (!) And was married for 9 years before first husband died. 14 months later she married my great grandad. She had no children from her first marriage, and 5 from second (Inc my gran her only girl).

So, I bring this up with gran and she says, all nonchalant 😆 'well she didn't know how' . Apparently she was very 'proper' (higher working class, devoutly religious Victorian family) and never consummated her marriage because she had no idea what sex was. Neither did husband 1 by the sounds of it. She desperately loved and wanted children and didn't know why she wasn't getting pregnant and far too embarrassed to ask anyone.

Husband 1 shuffled off his mortal coil, then I'm guessing she had quite a startling wedding night with husband 2.

My gran knows this as just before her marriage great granny sat her down to have what sounds like a very painful conversation about how babies are made 😆

I just can't stop thinking about the poor woman now. 9 years! What did they do? Had DH1 not tragically died young would she have been a virgin all her life? Would someone (a doctor?) At some point explained sex to her? It's very mind-boggling

My mother only knew 'vaguely' what sex was about before marriage. I had a very awkward conversation with her trying to make sure I was aware. I was definitely not a virgin by that point. She married in the early 1960s, having had a very sheltered upbringing, with older parents who had struggled to conceive...

I am having some wine and this made me smile 😊

In the 1980s, I heard of a couple who wanted to share responsibility for contraception. So, they took it in turns to take contraceptive pill on alternate days

Very sad

Yeah, I don't thin that's true OP. He was infertile most likely (what did he die of) and passed herself off as virginal to apease the new husbands values.
I knew my GGM very well - she died at 101 and was born in 1881. She told me the truth - the mad insane absurd and horrific truth of what women's lives were like then.
Her DH1 comited suicide after beating her to a pulp. She found herself pregnant soon after. She met DH@ soon after and 'trapped him in" with a 'knee trembler' outside the pub - he married her, battered bruised pregnant Nan aged 22 because he was a very good and dim witted man. He loved his son. He died in a factory accident aged 29 and DGGM fessed up about who grabdads dad really was and they moved forward. She remarried in her 50s to a middle class man she met at work and after that she was quite prima and proper - until he died - aged 62 when she became her old self again.
Women's lives were so so hard, so hard. We cannot imagine. I doubt your GGM had no idea what sex was, but I am sure she did her absolute best, and did all she could for your grandma, who in turn did this for mum or dad and then you.
Family is such a gift.

I’ve heard about infertility drs discovering the infertile couple had been doing anal only for years. Not sure how true that is.

Well, they do call it the Tree of Knowledge, after all. I don't think the Serpent was explaining to Eve the intricacies of the Offside Rule with how eager she was to let Adam in on what she knew. Or that Apples taste good.

Probably accounts for the 'in sorrow shall you bring forth children' too - not because they weren't in the garden anymore (the non embarrassing explanation), more 'yeah, this is what happens when you have sex and pushing them out hurts'.

My great grandfather had children with something like 8 different women. One of his wives was sick, so the 17yo sister of the wife came to care for her and he got her knocked up and then after the wife died married the 17yo a year later.

one of his offspring was my grandad and I only found out last year he was my grandad. My grandma was married to someone else. I had a very surprising load of dna matches when I did an Ancestry match! Shame my grandma is long passed as I’d have loved to have found out the details.

I read about a couple who had been trying to get pregnant for two years with no luck. After quite a lot of gentle questioning from a doctor it came about that they were only having anal sex. Some people are quite naive but if no one tells them...

Your great gran sounds wonderful as does your gran.

Completely get your point that women would pretend to be 'pure' but if that was the case I don't think she'd have gone on to have the 'how babies are made' conversation with her daughter.
Reading between the lines I think he died of Spanish Flu or similar in 1920.

My DM, married and pregnant at 16, was waiting for the doctor to get the baby out. She had no idea about giving birth, she thought they made an opening from your navel down. Strangely that's how my own son was actually born.

Or not, as the case may be..

My mum was abroad when she married Dad in 1965. Her mum (my Nana) who was born about 1910 wrote to her just before the wedding telling her there were things she was expected to do as a wife and she needed to accept that.
Little did she know that until she met Dad my mum was having an absolute ball as a female army officer in the Far East!!

I remember seeing in a documentary that a couple in Japan went to the doctors for infertility issues and it turns out that they were using the wrong hole!

If I remember correctly the documentary was about a wider trend of Japanese men losing interest in sex altogether - tv games and anime were apparently to blame! I may have got the country wrong but I don’t think so.

So your great grandmother’s experience doesn’t shock me.

I'm not sure why you think you know better than the OP. It's just as likely the first husband was impotent, or gay or asexual and had no interest in sex with a woman, but married because it was what you were expected to do/ he wanted a woman to cook and clean and look after him.

A woman I worked with - would have been born early 1950's swore to me she had no idea what sex was when she got married. Another colleague was older and had lived through the war and had a few love affairs but as we discussed, she was middle/ upper middle class - they knew more and got away with more. It was the working class girls who were often kept ignorant - even as late as the 50s.

Edited to add her marriage would have been mid 60's - it clearly wasn't swinging for everyone. Again I think we discussed this - swinging 60s didn't happen for working class lasses in the north.

I can’t be the only one who thought he must be gay! It was much more common knowledge among men.

how did he die op? Was he also young?

I don't I was offering a different perspective from someone who knew someone in this era, due to her longevity, that is all. OP is gracious, I am not sure why you took offence.

Nowadays there is so much information that is easily accessible, it's almost impossible not to know how sex works.
In the past though, they may have seen farm animals at it, dogs certainly, and if in a crowded home (again very common) may have been aware of parents 'doing the deed', but the graphics of which exact bit fitted into which orifice may not have been known.
As others have said, fertility clinics do need to check exactly what the couple are doing: I remember one tale where it transpired the man was putting his penis in the woman's urethra (!) which the woman found painful (!!!) but they thought sex should be painful (both were virgins).

My great grandmother had an illegitimate daughter at the age of 18. The father, the same age as her was killed in an accident a few months after their daughter was born. She then married another man, a widower with a young son, 2 years later. Her new husband refused to let the illegitimate daughter live with them so she was brought up by my great great grandparents.

My great grandmother, her husband and stepson moved away due to her husband's work and I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for her to leave her daughter behind. Back then women had to do what their husband's told them.

Yes, this is absolutely true! So many fertility doctors have to ask this before anything else. One told me of a poor couple where the man was - brace yourselves - weeing inside his wife, rather than ejaculating.

The both found the whole thing a very difficult ordeal, and completely unenjoyable, for obvious reasons. And she wasn’t getting pregnant, for even more obvious reasons. Poor souls.

😂😂

Hmm that’s possible although seems unlikely. Surely the man she met would have assumed she’d had sex as was a widow? It’s not like she would have gone up to him and said “I’ve never had sex before” and he liked her then. The truth would surely be more embarssing.

Both Catherine and Heathcliffe clearly had sex, just not with each other!

Jane Eyre also had children.

They all got married first though.

Absolutely. It’s nonsense, these couldn’t figure out what to do stories.
Sex is, after all, our most basic instinct.
It is far more likely that couples were revolted by the thought, as they didn’t actually desire each other.

Oh come on! A man with a full erection, pissing inside his wife.

Absolute nonsense.