How to cope with sexual uninterestingness?

[riviera]

Hi,

This weekend has been a bit difficult for me.
On Friday night we went out for a drink and my boyfriend confessed that lately he feels cold inside and he does not show much affection and that is making him feel terrible cause he is totally in love with me and he worships me (he was so emotional telling me this and both were in tears). The truth is that he is more affectionate now than he was before (he is kissing and huging me and many times he is asking for affection) but in bed we cuddle and nothing else happens. He is always saying that he misses me very much (my body, our sexual life, etc). So he is not telling me that he does not love me but how lately he has lost interest in sex (although he never used the word sex or making love).

I have been reading many posts in here and I knew that at one point this was going to happen. He reckons this is happening since he told me about one of his most intruding memories (pillow). I told him that I understand, and I am here for him and what we have is good enough for me and things will get back to normal and we will recover our sexual life and so on. I pointed out how glad I was that he was being honest with me and he trusted me to tell me all that. He said that I am putting up with a lot lately and I don't deserve it. He said that I must love him very much. I said he should not feel bad about it but good that we have each other. We kissed and huged and he felt asleep in my arms. He is so grateful but yet he keeps apologizing.

We also talked about his "guilt" complex which in a way has much to do with it. He apologizes about everything lately. If he writes music and records he apologizes that he did not spend time with me although I was off doing other things and being ok with it. If I am cleaning and he is doing something else he would start cleaning with me cause he feels bad that I am doing it on my own... Anyway we both agree that he is the only one who can overcome the guilt (and I gave him hints of how the guilt feeling in the "now" is coming from the past). I try to help him the best way that I can.

Back to the main issue today the truth is that I am a very passionate woman and young and although I totally understand everything I am devastated inside as I am very sexual and sex for me like love are very important in my life. Although I am very logical I cannot help myself feeling lonely, pushed aside, not desired, etc.. and these feelings are affecting my mood. I have been quiet all weekend, wandering all the time and feeling sad. Usually I am very extrovert, happy, noisy (in a good way) and it is very noticeable when something goes wrong... He is noticing and I want to stop feeling like this.

How can I be patient, not be selfish, and yet feel ok? I guess it is not easy.
I am very down .
H

 

[medicb4]

Originally posted by riviera:
How can I be patient, not be selfish, and yet feel ok? I guess it is not easy.
I am very down .
H

My wife and I are facing the same issues (we are both survivors). The only way to do it is maintian an open line of communication.

Sadness and other emotional states will certainly come, but TALK and they won't be as bad.

Just writing this has made me realize that, for me at least, I need my wife to read my thoughts and feelings (if she is up to this in her own process)...I am going to invite her to join.

 

Hi, Riviera and Medicb4...

I would like to quote something each of you said, but I don't know how to use the quote function here, so I will just make the references to what you said.

I am also a survivor of SA but it's not been what I would call "violent" SA. I have been stereotyped and treated as if I were the worst kind of woman from the time I was 9 because of my superficial appearance and I have been rejected sexually in the couple of relationships I have had. I have not had a sex life at all and have been waiting all these years figuring that I never would. My big concern relative to sex has been the fear of rejection.. I mean actually having my partner turn me away, push me away, not want me sexually, which has been most of what I have experienced. I love to be desired for the first time in my life by a partner who I love and who loves me..and I love for a healhty and free love/intimate/ and sex life within the relationship of love and marriage.

By some miracle, I have fallen deeply in love with a man who I have never even met in real life. We began a correspondence relationship and I got to know him at the core instead of in the physical world. He is the best human being there can ever be and I have every positive feeling about him that it is possible for one human being to feel about another. And, as a woman feels about a man, I also have every positive feeling there can be about him and he is the ONLY man I have ever wanted intimately... the one who who has ever "turned me on" sexually.. the only one I have ever wanted to marry and spend my life with and have true love and intimacy..and a sex life with.. (I regard intimacy as the deep and trusting relationship with also includes sex, but is not defined by sex or defined as sex. To me, intimacy and sex are two different things, but sex takes place within intimcy.)

When we first "met," we just natually flowed into the most wonderful and the most free relationship in all ways except physical. He invited me to meet with him, but now I realize that I had no confidence in myself, the voices of the abusers telling me that I was not worthy of him, but I was so in love with him and so desirous of spending my life with him that I asked for six months to get my head together so that we could finally meet and I would feel confident. I asked him to wait for me, but he pulled the plug on the relationship after four months and he has built a solid "wall of silence" between us ever since. Had I not chased him relentlessly, he would have walked away. Instead, he has continued to sort of "correspond" with me through very covert messages by email, messages which are so ambigous that I have had to play guessing games with him for four years now.

Covertly, he managed to "disclose" to me that he is a sufferer of CSA. He led me here. I thought that he led me hear so that I would understand what has kept us apart, what the "wall of silence" actually is. I hoped that in my new understanding, I would be able to convey to him my deep understanding that that, while I do fully understand and feel deep compassion, it makes no difference at all in my feelings for him or my deep respect for him.. and I have considered it very carefully and have declared to him my full and lifelong support for him and my true belief that we would work these issues, his CSA and my SA, out together and make them part of a good and healthy, happy and successful life partnership relationship. I have always believed this because I love him for "who he is and not who he is supposed to be," which is what he even asked of me four years ago.. and this is my true feeling and I am one who only deals with Truth and Love.

But, he has only treated me with rejection and he has pushed me away with every kind of suspicion as if I am some kind of monster..like I am the abuser and he is punishing me like I want to get close to him to harm him and not to share love and life and intimacy with him. It seems that the more support I declare for him, the more he can find new reasons to convey to me that I am a monster not to be trusted anywhere near him and I only gain more and more rejection.

I want and need him in my life. I also want to have a healthy and fulfilling intimate life with him which includes sex... safe and free and mutually fulfilling sex. I read a quote somewhere which pretty closely describes my feeling for him. "Don't say you love me because you need me; say you need me because you love me." Well, I do need him because I love him, but things between us only seem to get more and more distant as whe refuses to communicate with me so I keep getting the messages from him that he sees me as a monster to be fear and pushed away. With my own SA fears of rejection, this is probably more painful to me than the sexual rejection which would hurt most potential partners who love someone who pushes them away. I can't even get close enough to see him and talk to him.. nor even to see words from him, himself, and I am just rejected hands down like I am the abuser from the past and so I must be punished. I have suffered that from men in my past, also, because I was assumed to be the same kind of woman who hurt them only because I may look like some woman who might have hurt them, but I am as good a human being as anyone can be and I have never hurt anyone and I am the "innocent victim" of assumptions only based on how I look and not "who I am." So, I can't be loved for "who I am instead of who I am supposed to be." Who I am is worthy of love and respect. I have worked hard to overcome the lies of my past abusers and I am ready for a healthy and loving relationship and I cannot buy the lie that I am a monster to be feared.. because some other woman was.. I am me, not her and Don needs to be "who he is and not who he is supposed to be" to himself and see me for "who I am and not who I am supposed to be" so that we can recognize and affirm and then communicate and try to negotiate this relationship with Truth and Love... or... well.. or what, I don't even know because he won't even treat me with the respect of even communicating with me so I can't even know his true feelings or have any idea of his true plans or intentions.... and I have no idea where I stand with him or how he feels about me.. just that he treats me as if I am a monster to be regarded as very dangerous and someone to be avoided at all costs and to protect himself from also at all costs.

I have worked hard to fend off the lies of my abusers and I don't want him to abuse me with lies which don't fit me. I am not his abuser and I have done nothing to hurt him ever and he has to decide if he can let go of that irrational view of me or not.... If he can't, then I don't why we are even bothering to play what seems to me to be a cruel game because I only want to be with him and share life and love and happiness with him and he only seems to want to keep teasing me into thinking we are going to meet for the first time and have a relationship... but then the very second that I feel we are coming closer, he hold the monster messages up to me again and I feel pushed out...and it all seems to be totally about sex. I have done nothing to him and I have never hurt anyone in my life and I am not a monster and not an abuser.

Yes, I wish he would come here and begin to negotiate a real relationship with me and either try to overcome these issues of his CSA with me based on Truth and Love or just tell me to get lost if that is what he really wants. But, I don't deserve to be treated like a second class citizen or a monster.. and I do want a healthy life with him.. one that includes sex, even if we have to be slow and gentle and negotiate how to begin it.. but we can't do it reading minds and making assumptions.. We both deserve a better chance at life and happiness that what we are being denied by the "wall of silence" which his abusers have built between us. I wish he would come here and communicate with me... and I do know that he is here.

I cannot proof this before sending it because I am late for work now.. but I will be back later hoping that there will be some help here to bring us together so that the hopelessness of this blasted "wall of silence" will crumble and two human beings who are both the highest quality there can be can find one another again after four years of lies and fear. I love him with all my heart and that is my Truth and Love. I need his Turth and Love now and it must come with words from his heart and not from his abusers...

Thank you for listening.. I am pretty lost and discouraged.. Sorry about the typos from being in such a hurry....

We need HELP big time.....