My wife and I are a same sex couple and have been together for ten years. We got together in our very early 20s, and had a great sex life for the first two years of our relationship. Life hit us hard: a major injury, job loss, turned down from a major life goal. We struggled through years of financial stress, and now it looks like things are finally starting to stabilize. I miss our sexual connection, but I’m having a hard time being honest about my lack of desire for her. From experience, I know that feelings are something you choose and cultivate. I want to cultivate lust and desire for her again.
I have a much higher libido than her, and spent years in the bad times trying everything I could to generate desire in her: flirting, kissing, massages, asking what she liked, doing chores, managing my own mental health so it’s not a burden. She turned me down for so many years that I’m having a hard time revving the desire to initiate back up again.
For a long time I was only interested in being the giving/active partner. Now that I’m interested in receiving, I am ashamed to say that the way 2-4 times we’ve tried having her be the active partner doesn’t do it for me. I like it very rough, playful and imaginative. She’s very sensitive to anything that has a whiff of criticism, and so I have hesitated to speak up about what I would like differently in bed with her.
So: how do you get the lust back? How do I balance her sensitivity to criticism with the need to be honest about what I want sexually? How do I cultivate lust when things have been fallow?
4 comments
Aversion to criticism. Signs of depression. Was she abused? I’ll spare any talk about sex stuff because that doesn’t sound like the root of the problem. Some people with change completely after a traumatic experience like a sexual assault they might not even tell you about and what they need is support and a friend. It isn’t even a matter of understanding it yourself or trying to get inside her head. I don’t know anyone who wants to hear that somethings wrong when they aren’t ready to talk about it. It should be therapy, one on one, for both of you until you can both see the value of couples counselling. That might need to start with you getting some therapy. Maybe she’ll follow your lead. If not … luck, time, patience. Don’t let my user name fool you I am not saying you should leave this person or anything like that. She sounds like someone who needs to know you care.
You seem sexually incompatible.
Just tell her the reason why, she might fix it or wsnt to work on it
You don’t.
It takes both of you.
You have a desire to want to get that spark back, and you are willing to try.
She has to be willing to try, as well.
It’s never going to return unless she wants to put the work in, too.
If not, then she’s not interested, and you should use that to inform where you go in your relationship from there.