Gas lighting, manipulation, entitlement, ownership, and boundaries being crossed. From the beginning, female characters were persuaded to accept someone else's interpretation of reality instead of trusting their own senses and memories. This happens in relationships all the damn time. I enjoyed how the writer wove in classic scary stories and urban legends, but told them with a twist that emphasized how the female characters were manipulated, ignored, or harmed themselves to avoid angering an abuser.
AND NOW SEX STUFF...
So many things in this story resonated with me and reminded me too much of previous relationships with people who wanted me to do things that didn't feel good or when i wasn't in the mood to, obsessed over parts of my body that i didn't even like or want, and insisted that i send them pictures of certain body parts when i never truly felt comfortable doing so.
My feelings about sex are probably different from most peoples' because i am trans and spent years struggling to maintain desire for the people i was with, wondering why most acts didn't feel good, trying to make them feel good, and being told i had some mental "hang up" about sex. This was before i fully came to understand my identity. Doctors still don't know why i barely feel any sensation in other than pain or discomfort in a certain area.
Since we generally view stories through the filter of our own experiences, i wondered if the protagonist was trying to convince herself she was feeling something that she didn't, at least not all the time. It is difficult for me to understand the long-term desire she claims to feel for her husband, especially when i picked up on his possessiveness and entitlement straight away.
I interpreted the ribbons in a few ways. If we are relating this story to the real world, they could represent something private, a burden, or the one thing or idea that keeps a person able to hold themselves together...literally in this story. Since only the female characters had them, i see them also as a symbol of subjugation that females often experience.
I related the ribbon around the protagonist's neck to the secret i told one of the people who was getting really fed up with my inability to enjoy sex. It was my secret sexual fetish, which might relate to my transness...i have a few hypotheses as to why i have had it all of my life. The person did not condemn me for it, but there was this time when they asked if i had engaged in it recently, and i reluctantly told them that i had. They were angry and asked why i didn't call them if i wanted something like that, completely not understanding that when i was ~horny~ for the fetish activity, i was not horny for a person. Sex with a person would not do the same thing for me as engaging in the fetish, and it is not something i do with another person. They didn't understand its function in my life. That was my ribbon, and I took it off to mollify them. This also ties back to the protagonist's reluctantly professed attraction to the woman in her art class, which her husband...sort of exploits for his own pleasure.
The ending reminds me of my ex coming to my apartment to pick up something they left there and raping me two days after i broke up with them. They insisted that i had given them a disease, which i didn't have by the way, and that having sex now would give them the semblance of a choice as to whether or not they were exposed to it. I repeatedly told them i didn't want to, but they kept bullying. I am not seeking pity for this, only explaining how i can relate my experiences to this story. I was afraid of what would happen if i refused. This was one of the people who insisted on sex during times i was in pain and accused me of having a shitty attitude about it.
The last line, while anti-climactic, speaks so loudly to me. "I feel as lonely as i have ever been." I remember feeling lonely in relationships, lonely during sex, lonely for someone who really understood and would respect me. She set a boundary, but he just had to keep pushing and pushing, to have all that is her, possibly to her own destruction.