| Hi everyone! First time poster. Long time reader, and I can't express enough how helpful this place is as a resource. I'm sorry for this long post, but I really need your help. I'm crushed. Long and short of my story: Our sex life is shot. My wife and I are 6 months into marriage, and we've only had sex once in the last month. This decline started pretty early, and has only gotten worse with time. We've talked about it the issue to the point that it has created a complex. Now, the idea of "sex" itself is a turn-off for her. When things are getting remotely passionate, my wife very clearly slams on the brakes and distances herself. I don't know what to do with that. It's pretty overwhelming. I'm a fairly humble guy, but I know I'm a great husband. I make tons of time for my wife, I go out of my way every single day to make her feel appreciated, always do little gestures here and there to let her know how loved she is. I am the only one to ever initiate romance, and I don't pressure her if she's not in the mood (I might get visibly hurt more as the weeks of dry spell go on, but I make sure she knows that I don't want her to feel bad about it). Even when I'm being upbeat about it, if we go more than a week or two she starts feeling guilty about it even when I'm not trying to be romantic, and that guilt GUARANTEES that she won't feel sexy, which means longer dry spell, which means more guilt. Vicious cycle. And to pre-emptively cover this base: I haven't let myself go. I'm actually in slightly better shape than I was when we started dating. Backstory- she's had a tough sexual history. She was raped by her first boyfriend in high school as a sophomore, developed all kinds of problems afterwards, and didn't willingly lose her virginity until 18. Most of her sexual partners in life have made her feel pressured and used. She says she felt like a wh*re for a while. She had a long term boyfriend of 4 years, and their relationship deteriorated and ended in part due to the same death of their sex life. Except he would get angry and guilt her into having sex when she didn't want to, which she is adamantly against doing now (as well she should be). Full disclosure: she is the only woman I've ever had sex with. That does not help our issue, since I have no personal point of reference to work from when trying to sort feelings out. But at the beginning, our sex life was fantastic. I could barely keep up with her! I think a large part of the issue for her is the assumption of expectation/obligation now. That creates pressure for her that just shuts everything down (even when I'm not pushing). The sexual decline corresponds pretty closely with two events: 1) we got pregnant early in the relationship, decided to keep and raise the baby together, and then immediately miscarried, all in the span of a week. Pretty traumatizing. But her sex drive recovered afterwards, and, event 2) we decided to switch from condoms-only BC to the Nuvaring. I've heard that the Nuvaring can contribute to loss of sex drive, but she gets furious when I suggest that, like I'm suggesting that she doesn't know her own body. I don't know what to do. Clearly she has baggage about sex in general (as do I), but I'm at my wit's end. She says she loves everything about it when we actually have sex (and based on her no-nonsense, no-BS, straight-shooting approach to absolutely everything, I believe her). When I try to communicate how impossible it is for me to feel attractive, loved, and appreciated when there's absolutely ZERO passion in our mutual day-to-day interactions, she just gets frustrated and feels like the lack of sex invalidates any other affection we have. Please... help, insight, anything. This woman and I are absolutely perfect for each other in every other way. And I know it sounds like she gets angry a lot, but that's a very small percentage of our usually civil discourse about the problem. How can I help her? | |||
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