My partner and I are struggling to overcome sexual anxiety regarding oral

A few months ago I noticed my partner, who used to *love* going down on me, and he even had a face sitting kink, started to seem less enthusiastic, and twice he cut oral short. The second time it was immediate so I asked him and he said it was strong that day. I immediately started trying to investigate what could be the issue.

Fast forward a few days I realized I was pretty insecure about it and brought it up, and he confessed that the taste and odor had been strong for a while but he didn’t want to not return the favor so he was trying to push through without saying anything. I told him I was hurt that he didn’t tell me and that I felt insecure about him going down on me anymore, since he didn’t tell me right away. He was understanding.

I felt bad the next day because I knew he was trying to be caring, so I told him I was working on figuring it out and I wanted to get to a place where we could do that again. He was happy about that. It still took us some time to warm back up sexually but we did.

All tests came back clean but I still couldn’t pinpoint what was going on, so I asked him to describe it. It was difficult for us to do but very helpful, and I was able to pin point it to a combo of dehydration and my underwear being synthetic. Once I addressed those two things, we were in agreement that the smell is back to normal, even lighter than before, and my personal “taste tests” confirm that we should be good to go. I gave him the green light that I was comfortable trying again.

But even though he was happy to hear that, he was still avoiding it, even after a few reminders. Then he even started changing the subject if I made flirty comments about oral like I used to. I kept trying to renormalize it, but he just kept avoiding it.

Finally I asked again and he said he keeps picturing my face when he originally described everything to me, and is worried about hurting me by saying something stupid. And he said every time he has a chance to go down, he said he really wants to but then he freaks out and does something else.

So when he told me all this, I just felt defeated and said that he doesn’t need to worry, that I won’t bring up anything to do with oral anymore. (Oral referring to him on me. I still go down on him every time and there’s no issues there for either of us). I apologized for making oral an anxious topic for him, and that if he doesn’t ever bring it up, then oral just won’t exist for us. He didn’t fight it at all, but he didn’t address the idea of never doing it again either. He simply thanked me for being so caring about it all… but since I just said that it was my “last thing I’ll say on the topic” I just accepted his thanks and didn’t ask any more out of him.

I didn’t expect to feel so depressed following that, but here we are. I don’t know if that’s because I feel rejected, or if I think I just made it worse for him. Probably both, since he has shown an inability to start the hard conversations, I don’t know that he will ever bring it up, even if he wants to.

Has this ship sailed for us? Is there any way we can reapproach this in a way that can begin to heal that anxiety? If it was just something I wanted, I don’t think I’d feel nearly as bad, but I am really struggling with the idea that I “ruined” one of his favorite sex acts. It’s this elephant in the room. I literally changed the car thermostat from 69 to 68 before he got in because our normal jokes about 69 feel awkward… Even if we don’t end up together in the end, I worry that this could be an anxiety that follows him in future relationships. For that reason alone, I care more about helping undo the anxiety damage, more than actually having the act done to me. He is very agreeable, and overly considerate of not making me uncomfortable, so a part of me is also wondering if he only didn’t fight me on “nixing” it because he thinks that’s what *I* need to be comfortable.

TL;DR: After my partner struggled to go down on me due to a temporary odor/taste issue, he can’t get over the mental hurdle of actually going down on me for fear of hurting my feelings, and so I took it off the table in a misguided defeated attempt to take the pressure off, but am now thinking that was a hasty decision that will only make his/our anxiety worse in the future. How can I fix this for both our sakes?