Posted by toetapper on April 24, 2007, at 18:22:21
In reply to Question re:sex and honesty, posted by muffled on April 23, 2007, at 13:59:55
Crap. I wonder if I’ll have the balls to actually post this?
I was repeatedly molested and then raped before I was a teenager. About 5 years ago I started cracking up, and finally a while back I cracked up entirely and stopped having sex altogether. You asked about rage recently, rage is the only emotion I have felt for most of my life, along with fear and shame, and it nearly destroyed me. What was so surprising is the rage just went away when I stopped being sexually intimate, it is GONE. I don’t just mean intercourse, I can’t do any of it. Hugs, talking, touching, kissing, jokes, stories, movies, even being in the same bed. I just can’t do it. Like you, I disassociate. I disassociate if he leaves the room to masturbate, I disassociate when I see a woman’s breasts, I disassociate if he touches my behind as he walks by, it all makes me disappear. Sometimes for just the during time, sometimes I’ll lose a whole chunk of time. One time I “came back” in a town several hours from my mine. I just can’t do it, the cost is too high. I hope someday, I really do, but it is nowhere on the horizon for me and I’m going to lose my marriage over it. My husband is a good man, like yours, who genuinely loves me. I should say genuinely WANTS to love me but I can’t seem to figure out how to let him. I don’t even know what plain old love is, forget about romantic love or sexual love. There is NO WAY I can contemplate any kind of interaction with him or anyone else that has intimate or sexual overtones. I have never had normal, healthy sex, I don’t even know what it is. And right now, I don’t want to find out.
Many people have told me what some other people here have told you, give it a try, go slow, try other things first, etc. There is no middle ground for me, there just isn’t. And the constant suggestion to TRY really hurts my feelings, like I’m being unreasonable. Typing that I realize that is why I am compelled to throw my $.02 in here, I apologize for throwing my defensiveness into the mix. I HAVE tried, and it ate at me from the inside out. It is so very sad, and so very unfortunate, that one of you is going to feel bad. Him for the “rejection” or you for the guilt over genuineness or whatever the feeling of the moment is. My husband’s perceived rejection isn’t going to kill him (it’s not HIM, it’s SEX), but the repeated re-enactment of being with someone I don’t want to be with drove me to the very tip of the razor’s edge, I almost killed myself to get out of having sex. I still struggle mightily with the meltdown of my marriage, and sometimes say to myself buck up and just do it, but I won't compromise my sanity that way anymore, for anyone or any reason, not even to "save" my marriage. And, as a bonus, at least the rage is gone and I’m mostly present.
What I’m trying to say is it may be that the answer is you need to give yourself some space to let your reluctance and confusion sit in a safe space.
I’m sorry Muffled, there is no even remotely easy solution sometimes.
poster:toetapper
thread:752745
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070419/msgs/753088.html