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Fri 10 Jun, 2011 10:37 am
I sit here on now what is the twenty-fourth day in a row with no sexual interactions from my partner, twenty-four days ago we began to what I thought was make love. But then as things began moving along after caressing her body and kissing her, doing everything that I thought was right. I then climbed on top of her and as her legs straddled my hips I continued kissing her as I entered her body. Just moments into it I gazed deep into her eyes, we have always been able to do so with nothing but a fire and a pure passion of love burning in our looks where we knew we were in love, we knew that this was more than sex, that we connected not only on a physical level but as well as mental and emotional ones as well. But all I could see was the blank stare of a stranger looking back at me with only the thoughts of, “Are you finished yet? I don’t want to be here”. I thought inside my head, that can’t be what she is thinking, there is no way that could be going through my love’s head.
We continued on and sure enough when it was all over and we were laying there in bed I began to ask her questions about the stare I received. I told her that I didn’t feel like it was our normal and told her how I got a feeling that it was meaning something much worse. She confirmed to me later that my thought’s were right this time, that she indeed did not want to have sex with me that day, that she was only doing it or giving in to make me happy because she knew that I wanted it. This grew an awkward silence as we laid next to each other in bed. As the time passed I began to try to brush it off and be the typical guy most women think that we are and just be like, “Well buddy, you got yours and that’s all that matters.” But contrary to popular belief ladies, not all men are that way. Some of us do have feelings, emotions and want sex to have meaning and not just be the wham, bam, thank you ma’am, lay you down and then I’m done with you when I say I am.
The more I thought about it laying there the more I felt hurt, lied to, and betrayed. This woman is my love, my everything, the one person who I am closest to in my entire life, wanting to do nothing but spend the rest of my life next to her side. She did the one thing she told me that she wouldn’t ever, ever do, which was have sex with me if she wasn’t wanting to. She has had an experience in her past in which was explained to me only by her mentioning to me that she was in fact raped. Early on in our relationship is when this was told to me and that is all that has ever been said about the matter. But then there were different things about our sex life back then that I had to be aware of, because I didn’t want her to feel like she was reliving that situation. Just make myself cautious of how I would grab her or hold her during intercourse so that I didn’t make her feel like she was being forced or being the one with out control.
I had expressed my deepest sorrows to her for ever having to go through something like that. That she deserved so much better than that and that I wouldn’t ever make her feel like that or wanted her to feel like she had to have sex with me. From that point on it was a clear understanding that she told me that she wouldn’t ever do it if she didn’t want to as well. After that talk our sex life went on and was as strong and passionate as ever with there being times that she didn’t want to and me being a man of my word accepting that because I love her and will do anything in the world for her. As I laid there with a million thought zooming through my head she asks me what I was thinking about. With tears in my eyes I explained to her that to me, from what just happened, that I felt like I was just as bad as the man who raped her, that I had in some odd way myself, molested her and had taken our sex life to somewhere where I never wanted it to be, that I felt like filth because she had chosen to lie to me and have sex with me when she was unwilling to do so. To me, there was no difference there between me and the man of her past.
As you can probably imagine this lead to a bit of, not what I would call a fight, but a very weird and awkward evening of her apologizing and then me apologizing telling her that it was ok and that it wasn’t her fault, that it was all my fault. I seem to do that some times, take all of the burden of a problem because I feel that my love for her is so strong that I can’t make it seem that she does anything wrong. But in turn I know that she does the same to me too, anyone in a good relationship does that for each other from time to time, it’s good to show people you care for them that way. We continued to talk it out that night coming to a bit of an understanding of the matter that it shouldn’t have happened, not like that, and that we wont do it like that ever again.
I expressed to her that I felt like that I would need a little more time before I could feel comfortable having sex with her again because I wouldn’t want to look into her eyes and just see that stare again and wonder every time if she was just going through the motions again for me of if it was something that she wanted. That I wanted her to be able to have sex with me because she wanted to. So the conversation ended with me letting her know that I would like it if when it was time for us to have sex again that she would be the one to engage it so I would know that she was the one that was wanting it, not just me after sex again. We agreed, made up and I had to leave to go to work for the evening.
Now let me touch base with an underlying issue, this is not the first time there has this been a drought in our sex life. Before this, there was a ten day stretch, and before that there was a eight day period, and before that there were scattered weeks here and there. It is also not just “sex” that I am referring to either. I am talking about anything sexual oriented at all, touching, talking, and even thinking, she is having nothing to do with any of it. I love to feel her body close to mine, I pull her tight and hold her as she should be, rubbing her body, letting her know that I am into her, that I am interested in her and her alone. Making her aware that I do want her and her body. I rub her back, I give her full body massages on beds of roses with the room lit by candle light. I tickle her in all of her ticklish spots to have her get those chills and for me to hear her sounds. I do everything in my power to make her know that I lover her and that I am all about her and that I want her. We take showers together and a caress her body with the soft sweet smelling soap as I wash her body for her, trying to get her to have some reaction from all of this, to maybe, just maybe react one time back to me in a manner so I know that she still wants me the way that I want her.
But I fail to get this, nothing, I have to pull her arms to me to get her to rub my chest, or ask her to, not ever just because she wants to. Never does she just kiss or nibble on me like she use to letting me know that she wants me. Sometimes when I feel like I have gotten all worked up from showing her so much attention I roll away from her in bed, aroused to the point to where I am throbbing and it almost kind of hurts. She will follow sometimes and ask me what is wrong and I have grabbed her hand and slowly rubbed it from my chest down my stomach to my waist line and by that point she pulls her hand away as if I were trying to place it in some sort of bare trap and she wouldn’t ever get it back. So it is not just the sex that I am talking about not being there, it’s the whole lack of physical attention that I do not receive from her anymore.
This has been going on for about three months so far, but if I am adding things up correctly that means that in the last forty-two days I have had sex with my partner three times, one of which I know she wanted no part in. We have discussed this matter numerous times, getting nowhere at all with the matter besides her telling me that she just doesn’t have any sexual desires any more, right now. That life’s craziness has her mind always full of everything else in life that she doesn’t really have the time to just focus on sex, that the desire for it is gone. She hates her job, both of them, and has been looking for a new one for some time now, and I have some financial issues and custody issues going on in my life that she gets pretty upset about and we do have some of the normal relationship arguments that all couples have.
But I fail to comprehend how any of that can take away from her love, or emotions, or desires to have sex with me any more. She has explained to me that, “It’s not just you I don’t have the desire to have sex with, I don’t have the desire to have sex with anyone.” She tells me that so I can believe that it isn’t anything that I have done wrong, so that I will believe that this is all on her and has nothing to do with me. I ask her then why all of this? What’s behind it? Can’t you give me a reason? Because to me, no matter what I have going on in my life, I will never let it take away from us and her. At least that’s the way that I feel and maybe we are just different that way on being able to handle our stressors. But at the end of the day I still get the answer, “I don’t know why I don’t have the desire to, I wish I could tell you why.” Therefore putting it back to me thinking that I did something horribly wrong and irreversible.
I ask her from time to time random questions about maybe it being me, “Do I not pleasure you well enough? Do I do something wrong during now? Does it hurt? Do I stink?” Even sometimes make jokes telling her that its ok that I need the arm exercise anyway, just to make light of the situation. At this point any simple answer would hold me over that way I knew what it was and that I could work on it and fix it, but I still get nothing. Then it seemed that it was all that we talked about and then it began to frustrate her more and more when it was brought up, me getting the response, “You think that I know why or what’s going on and I’m just not telling you, and that is not the case I promise” So I took it upon my self to shut my mouth about it and start researching a bit about the loss of sexual desire in women.
In doing so there are many reasoning’s that doctors have put on the table for why women just don’t have the sexual desire any more. There is even a technical term for it these days, called Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) as I have read in an article on “Why Women Stop Having Sex” written by Bob Berkowitz, Ph.D. and Susan Yager-Berkowitz M.A.. It stated that this disorder is “a deficiency or absence of sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity, producing marked personal or interpersonal distress, but not the result of alcoholism, , a general medical condition or substance use (medication) or abuse (street drugs)”. They go on in this article to talk about how if two people are in love and that they no longer care about sex then the low libido is not an issue, but unfortunately that is not the case in most situations. That one person still desired intimacy as the other one doesn’t, so of course I read deeper into this article. It touched up on the fact that there are many women who state that there libido levels are low and they just don’t know why, but they wish it a fast and safe return. Really? I say? Really, Really? I’m pretty sure that Sir Isaac Newton, a genius, stated it best with the “For every action there is always and opposed and equal reaction”. Even though this man was talking about law’s of motion it corresponds with life very well saying that things just don’t happen for no reason at all. Other listed reasons of not wanting to have sex are, pain, depression, angry, think the man is cheating, feel like they are ignored, or just being flat out bored. Pretty much this article as well as all else had gotten me nowhere. I have talked to her and brought up all of the underlying issues and still no solution or answer to this problem.
Next I chose to read “Thoughts on Female Sexual Psychology” written by Dr. Nelson Soucassaux, a Brazilian gynecologist. He began by explaining how we all know that the self-erotic and narcissist of female sexuality is very strong. Talking about how in all this aspect of a woman is all balanced out to what makes a man attracted to a her. He states that the high degree of self-eroticism charlatanistic of the female sex also plays an important role, given the pleasure that women feel in exhibiting their bodies. That frequently only be doing that do many women feel a good degree of sexual satisfaction though, obviously this is not all. He then gets into how this process was started at puberty, the woman’s pleasure of being desired and that being a fundamental importance. And as I have explained I make her well aware that I desire her and that her body is blissfully amazing. He goes on talking about how the male sexual libido directs itself straight to a woman, but the woman’s sexual libido starts from herself, “envelopes” and uses the man to return through him to the woman herself. That to some extent we could say that through men, women admire themselves. Which again confused me because I do all of that, or at least I believe I do and she makes me think that I do those types of mental correspondences well. This article goes on for paragraphs, but still I read nothing that I thought was going to help me.
I have sat here now for four hours after her departure for work, putting off mowing the lawn and my morning run, reading more material than I though I ever would on the subject of sex, or better yet, even why someone would not want to have sex with me. Which puts me to my next crossroads, She tells me that it is not that she does not want to have sex with me, it that there is no desire there to have sex. Is there a difference? To me there is and there isn’t I believe. I want to do things all of the time, but that doesn’t mean that I have a desire to do them. And vise versa, I desire and wish that I could do things, but not necessarily do I want to do them. To me if I want to do something then I do it, I don’t have to have an alterative motive other than that’s what I want to do and I’m going to do because it makes me happy. Unless it is something that is hurting someone else and then there are always different things to take into consideration.
There just isn’t that much more of a thought process to it for me, why dissect something that you want to do all the way down to something that your now looking at like at like, eh, do I even want to do that now? From looking up the definitions for want and desire in the dictionary it has made it seem that in her case, the two words are one in the same. Want’s meaning is to feel a need for or a desire for; to wish, need, crave, demand, desire; to be without or deficient. Then with the word desire’s meaning is to wish or long for, crave, want; to express a wish or make a request for, ask for; sexual appetite, lust. All in all besides just a few words in definition they are the same. So with her telling me that she does not have the desire to have sex does that actually mean that she just does not want to have sex with me? I wish that sometimes that I could be in her head to figure out her thought process or for her to be in my head to see how emotionally confusing this is to me. Upon going to another website I found that there is a difference between want and desire. Desire is what motivates you within your intent, a subjective movement. A want is an objective expression which is based on a perception of lack. Your wants do not always follow your desire. Your desire is that movement which follows your intent, and many times your desire is a subjective element. Your want is always an objective element. Your want may not necessarily follow your desire, and therefore you may not necessarily be creating of your want. But if you are creating within your intent, following your desire and not creating a conflict in this area, you may be actualizing any of your wants within your objective awareness.
Desire happens when we want something. The strength of that desire can range from weak 'would like to sometime' to a raging thirst to possess something now. The paradox of desire, however, is that once we have got what we desired, we no longer desire it and hence may no longer find it attractive in any way. People get trapped by this pattern, for example in the way they chase members of the opposite sex, only to dump them when they have captured their affections.
Note the difference between love and desire. I can love a person but not desire them. Desire is the need to possess. Arguably, true love is not about possessing at all. Desire is the opposite of fear. Desire attracts us towards something. Fear makes us want to run away. Desire is triggered when we see or think about something we want. Desire increase when what we want is visible, but just out of reach. It may also increase when we have closer contact with the item, but which we still do not possess. Supermarkets know this well, as they place foods and other items right under our noses. Desire also increase with teasing, where we are offered something, and it is taken away, offered back, taken away.
With all of this said there are probably a lot of thoughts that I am not happy and that life I miserable. Wrong is what I’ll tell you, she still is the most amazing woman that I have ever met and makes me love her, me and the life that we life together. I still want to marry her and spend the rest of my life with her. Yes I do wish that we could get this issue that has been on hand fixed, but by no means does that mean that I do not love her or have thought about not loving her or leaving her, or looking elsewhere for sex because of this. I have tried to express this to her when she tells me how sorry she is and that she wishes that she could be different. I don’t want her to feel like I am mad or like I am angry with her, in all reality I am just trying to help because it seems that it is something that she is struggling with that she has never had to come across before.
In conclusion this is my attempt to open up to new ideas, new theories, maybe there is something that I am just not understanding or am failing to see. I will continue my search to find what it is that I need to do to fix this and to make my love happy in life with everything, I owe her that, I just hope she understands how much I really love her and the things that I would do for her.
If she is all that to you then why aren't you telling this to her instead of a bunch of people you don't even know?
I stopped reading when you said she 'just doesn't do the things she used to".
She is either 1) depressed 2) falling out of love with you and needs her space 3) being suffocated by you.
Her apathetic behavior sounds like she is exhausted . Has she had a physical? Two jobs, maybe she's just tired!
Perhaps you need some space apart for a while. But insist she get counseling. If only to get the courage to tell you what's wrong with the relationship.
@ossobuco,
Actually, it sounds like chapter 1 of a romance novel. Read it again and see what you think.
@roger,
Nope, I only got through the first 3 paragraphs, but my advice on this is to seek counselling, whether general psychologists (note spelling, please) or a sexual therapist. Either way, help is what's required here.
@roger,
But, wait, Roger: I've never read a romance novel.
Give me a clue for the clues..
@confused740,
That was an incredibly long introductory post, confused.
Sorry, I ran out of steam around a third of the way through.
Could you tell us what the issue is in a shorter post, please?
Your partner has lost interest in sex?
@msolga,
I pick it for a novel as well, and I read less than one paragraph.
@confused740,
I am sorry, I am going to have to be blunt here: from what I read (I was exasperated before halfway through), it appears your relationship is dysfunctional. There are problems coming from both sides. Sorry as I am to hear of your gf's painful past, it IS her prerogative to have sex with you for your sake, even if she didn't feel like it. Her big mistake was ever telling you that's what she did, and then you made it worse by assuming the guilt. But she really shouldn't have told you. Judging by your tedious use of inordinate details (ie., all the explicit sexual details have no pertinence to the problem), I would have to agree with some other reply posters that she may feel smothered by your over-analizing, over-protection, and over-sensitivity. I'm sure you would be a wonderful match for another woman. I believe you said you are not married, so it may be wise to decide before it's too late if this can be a lasting and healthy relationship.
@confused740,
I did read the whole thing, I am married to a childhood sex abuse survivor, and I for many years was active in the survivor community............I have meet many guys who tell much the same story you tell, though they are normally already married. They are almost always in sexless marriages, the longest sexless portion that I can remember is 29 years.
My advise is assuming that I read right that you have not married her yet, don't. You are in way over your head, and your instincts are to give way out of fear of being an abuser which means that you cant give her what she needs.
If you do decide to stay then educate yourself as best you can. Almost all of the books for intimate loved ones of sexual abuse trauma victims are crap, they will tell you to do just what you are doing, which as you are beginning to find out does not work......but read them anyways. The only useful in a positive way book that I have ever found is
Ghosts in the Bedroom: A Guide for the Partners of Incest Survivors .
Allies in Healing is a book that a lot of the pro's used to push at partners but I found its value mostly in being a guide for what NOT to do (what you are doing now). Go on line and look for web communities for loved ones of sexual abuse survivors, but dont expect to find much or much that is helpful, the needs of those who love women such as yours are almost universally ignored.
Eventually if all goes well you will connect with guys like me, guys who have lived the life successfully. There are not a lot of us because most guys who get mixed up with sexually traumatized women get ground up and spit out eventually, but this situation is not hopeless, there are some things that tend to work.
@hawkeye10,
Also, though it is intended for victims only for sure read
Beauty for Ashes by Joyce Meyer, whether you are a Christian or not.
@hawkeye10,
Hawkeye, you gave a heartfelt and constructive reply. Much better than mine. Reading back on my reply, I see how harsh it came off, so I apologize, Confused. Best of luck in whatever the future holds.
@MrsZiggyB,
MrsZiggyB wrote:
Hawkeye, you gave a heartfelt and constructive reply. Much better than mine. Reading back on my reply, I see how harsh it came off, so I apologize, Confused. Best of luck in whatever the future holds.
It is impossible to know if Confused came back to read, though he probably did. He needs to get used to the rough reception that he found here, because that is the norm for guys who struggle to stay with the sexually damaged women whom they love. Arella Mae's response was actually the one I found most harsh, because I know that she comes from an abuse background, she should know damn well that Confused can not talk about this stuff to his real life friends, because they can never understand what it is that he is going through, and will think badly of him.
It is said that the women who are abused are constrained by a code of silence, but that was true a long time ago, not now. Now saying that you have been sexually abused is like saying that you are addicted to drugs, alcohol , what not and that you are in a program to get help....these people get cheered on. It is the people who are connected to those damaged by abuse who are not allowed to talk about it, for us the quick retort is to either leave or stop complaining.....either way shut up.