My wife (32F) and I (38M) have been together for 11 years, married for one. Our sex life early on in our relationship was fantastic, but as the years wore on things got significantly less great. For the past five years, I was the only person to ever initiate contact of any kind, and would be rejected 90% of the time for one reason or another. It came to a peak recently after she didn’t want to engage in any level of intimacy beyond a quick kiss or a hug, this lasted six months.
She has been saying that she is stuck in her head, and feels over stimulated when anything happens beyond kissing. (She has recently self diagnosed as being on the spectrum due to high anxiety, which I’m a bit unsure of as this arose very recently with no past visible history of it). I’ve been supportive of her wishes, setting the appropriate expectations that nothing needs to go further than she wants and following through if we make out for thirty minutes and then go to sleep.
At times this will flow into a discussion of how things are between us, how she is feeling, what can I do to make this better for her, with little progress as a whole. Recently I asked what turns her on, as the usual things weren’t doing anything, and she wasn’t able to answer it. I left the question open to not put any pressure on her, but it’s already been a week without any thoughts.
This progress (kissing vs nothing) has been happening for about two months now, and I’m still willing to be patient, but hoping for some kind of help or insight here to make it easier for both of us to be intimate or not. Physical chemistry has been a big part of our relationship and despite still being head over heels in love, this would be difficult to commit the rest of my life to knowing my feelings won’t be reciprocated.
3 comments
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OP. Why are you with this exhausting woman. She sounds like she’s absolutely no fun, and kind of annoying. Who “self diagnoses” with ASD? Worse, who *goes along with that?*
At what point in your life did you consciously decide that giving up your self respect and not questioning the absurd behaviour of others was a justifiable trade to avoid your fear of loneliness?
This almost sounds like those romance books where the plot is that the female protagonist becomes as ridiculous as possible to try to goad her partner into reclaiming some shred of masculinity and assertiveness and “putting her in her place.” This literally reads like brat fiction.
You two are a poor match. This won’t get better.
You’ll hear all kinds of inspirational bullshit and toxic positivity about how to improve things.
This won’t get better. You already knew this was the situation when you decided to marry. Now you have to deal with cleaning this up.