Looking for support.....

[Grace]

Wow, I just found this site through Delphi Forums yesterday.

I am engaged to be married to a survivor of sexual abuse. We have just started therapy with another therapist because the last five out of seven years we have been together has been almost without sexual intimacy. I told him, we couldn't plan the marriage without some changes in this area.

The good news is that he is focusing on this now and we hoping for some help in this area.
Also, we both have been in recovery from alcoholism for the past 10 years and have experience with AA, therapists and other outside therapy programs.

But it is so frustrating! Because its me (of course) that suffers from the lack of intimacy and my patience is wearing thin. I also needed his assurances that he believes himself to be heterosexual because there is no point in continuing this relationship if he is not. He has blotted out what happened from 11 years old back but does remember instances of experiences from 12 to 20 with older boys, hitchhiking, etc. that until two years ago, he didn't remember. His longtime therapist believes he was abuses at an earlier age because of what happened in his teens.

I hope to get some hope on this board.

 

[Shelby]

Grace...
This sounds very familiar in sorts to my relationship with my, soon to be, ex-wife. Because of the preasure she put on me in the bedroom and her lack of caring for my pleasure, only her own, it was like she was re-abusing me and caused me to be unable to perform. Thus, due to our male hormones and egos, we shy away from activities that we are afraid of.

What my therapist has told me is that had she been a mutual partner in the bedroom much of this would have never happened. As far as him being gay as you have suggested, I rather doubt it, but one never really knows and that includes him probably. When we are unable to perform with a woman, it causes not only you to doubt him but for him to doubt himself. He very well may be truggling to find his sexual identity as all of us have who have survived male sexual abuse. Therapy in this area will for sure be a good idea and probably as you say mandatory before you go any further.

Depending on how comfortable the topic is with the two of you, you might want to sit down and discuss what pleases and turnes each other off in the bedroom and then try focusing on the turn on's and avoiding the turn off's. Another thing my therapist did and it was a little corny at the time, but it could have worked had she put forth any effort was colored cards. We each had a set and depending on the color each hung from the bed post each night determined what happened. For example: If we both hung white, we did nothing, Blue, we just cuddled, Green a little touching and Red all the way. Whoever hung the least was what set the pace, so you always knew what the other expected that night. Kinda corny, but it eliminated all guessing and for me, if I couldn't tell if she was in the mood or not and tried to do anything, I was always afraid I would be forcing to do something she didn't want, thus, in my mind, being the perpatrator. We never really used them as by this time she was already having an affair and could have cared less, but I still think it is a good exercise.

The key is still going to be open and very frank discussions and getting a qualified therapist. Don't expect miracles overnight the recovery will be long and slow at times, but hopefully well worth it.

Good luck

 

[Grace]

But what is strange about this situation is that everything seemed "normal" sexually for the first two years, then things waned for weeks then months. My fiance has been in two long-term marriages plus an affair or two in the past, and apparently that is his pattern--starting out sexual then becoming less so to nothing.

I am certainly willing to work around his issues but he is either unwilling or unable to talk about them; hopefully, with this program we are going to we can have some progress. He says he wants to change. But he has been saying that for a couple of years.

He is a doll in all other areas of our lives but I feel like we are just roommates without the sexual side. And if we are just roommates, then I need to be somewhere else.