A
male
age
51-59,
*oris Grushenko
writes:For those sensitive to sexuality, the following does contain some - I do believe modest - references ot sexual activity as they are at the root of what currently drives me into madness.I started a relationship a little over a month ago. I had been agonizein gover somebody who was not interested and came to the conclusion that there was a person with whom I had been building up a beautiful connection for some time. I gave that contact extra attention and indeed, we had two wonderful months and at some point we kissed. Astonishinly, I haven’t felt anxious at all for months, I was even confident we would become a couple. Being near her ave me so much confidence on all levels.I think we have a great connection. We kiss often, we cuddle a lot. I had a few sleepovers and though nothing much happened, they were great. We went to bed, cuddled and kissed, the lights went out and it was even harder to not touch each other. In fact, we don’t manage to sleep when we touch each other, we really have to move to the extreme sides of the bed. It is a new experience for the both of us. And still, the last week all this remains merely a silver lining.Early on we tried to have coitus. It didn’t work but we got through it by talking. We agreed we would wait. All in all, I had a good feeling about the night. The proximity of somebody is what I missed most, so it was for her. I told her that for years I had believed I lost to ability to feel connected to somebody (I explain later why) and that I had never felt so close to somebody. Holding each other gives us both a kind of energy we have never experienced. And we could talk, we managed to find a way out. But this conversation also involved talk about the source of my insecurities (a previous relationship in which I was subjected to pain during sex). Ever since that, there have been a few things she said - out of concern for me probably - that bothered me. We did have a moment - twice - when she reached an orgasm when I was massaging her breasts, she had given me a hint and I picked it up. I have never seen her face so relaxed and content, she was surprised this could happen so early on in a relationship (I will call this our special moment). There is "Normally I take more initiative but with you now, I dont know," it gave me the impression of an extremely experienced woman. Another is "I don't want to put you off, I dont know what to do", while she was carressing my shorts after that special moment (and I wonder if it was an invitation to point her to what I desired at the time). This remark too gave me the feeling that she is extremely experienced.I think I should elaborate a bit on the source of my insecurities. I started late with a one night stand at 23 and a first relationship that lasted 3 years when I was 25. She was two years younger and I was her first. We explored a lot of thins; we would try out every positions we could think of. We have both been tied to the bed, blindfolded, we experimented with hot wax and ice cubes. On a rational level, I do realize that I am not that inexperienced. That relationship ended shortly after we bought a house together. Sex was on a relative low because of work I had to do around the house, she started to cheat on me and her last comment was that sex with me was boring and always the same (which was probably true these last months, I had other things on my mind).After that, I was sinle for eight years. Without even a kiss.I was 36 when I met a woman who was 12 years younger than me. She had had around 80 one night stands and could not stop talking about it. She said she had done all kinds of dominance based experiments and started doing these things to me, unasked. It stopped when I stopped resisting her. It was in those days that the anguish I experienced the last week surfaced for the first time. It lead to a severe depression, I lost my job and I have been struggling to get back to my feet ever since. We did get over it and had five or six years when sex was great and some of these problematic things were repeated and felt safe in the altered context. We never shied away from trying whatever came to mind. Nevertheless, this relationship had a lot more problematic aspects: I lost contact with almost all of my friends, with my entire family and she really undermined my confidence on all levels. We were together for 10 years and the last three years, frequency of sex dropped. I had gone back to university and was struggling with my masterthesis; I remember the last time we had sex, a little over a half year before we broke up, and that she said: "I was ion gto wait until you graduated but it became too pathetic" the day after.After that, I have been in a psychiatric hospital where I met somebody with whom I was toghether for a year. I never had really strong feelings for her and her past did not bother me at all.My current girlfriend wanted to talk about my insecurity last week. Opening up about my concern that I percieved her as having so much experience and having done all that a person can imagine was stressful. I am on two tracks here: there is fear that I will never be able to satisfy her. I lack the skill and the experience. I remember saying that I would not match the frequency she would desire, she said she used to like doing it often but that she also had a relationship with somebody who was prestation-driven and it made him insecure and they hardly had sex and that she valued the love and respect in those occasions. For me only the doing-it-often part remained and added to my being intimidated.The other track is the idea that none of the things I do will ever be special and meaningful to her as everything will be a been-there, done-that experience. She replied it is not about keeping a checklist. She referred to our special moment and that she had indeed experienced this before, but never this way, never with the intensity it had between us. And I do know what kissing after that meant to me, I remember the impact of her carressing my back at that moment and that even these things felt so special so me but I can't believe they can be for her, given all her experience.Since that conversation, my thoughts have been running out of hand, "counting" ex partners (as I did before with my ex-wife, where my caldulations added up to a number well over a thousand) and agonizing about my skill and the meaninglessness of what I can bring into this relationship sexually.Wednesday she asked if we could talk. It was the second time she stressed she had never had a one night stand, that she only had sex in relationships that lasted for years (she has been together with the father of her daughter for 19 years, starting when she was 24. It was not a loving relationship in which sex was down to once in a few months because she had to for years). She also said she did know the difference between making love and having sex, from even before her marriage.She also had noticed that I was guessing and blowing up things. She thought that telling me that her relationships were always lasting years - I do not know when she started, nor a number but that issue seems to be solved for now -. She thought that opening up about her experimental attitude and that she had done exactly these pain-driven things that had bothered me before and that they were a theme in a boudoir photoshoot would help me. She had commented before that these things can be "fun like crazy" with the right person, in the right context and she had noticed what that remark had done to me. For half a day I was more peaceful but now it is worse than ever.Somehow my anxiety pinned things together: I do now see confirmed that she has done everything one can possibly think of and that her not wanting to compare relationships and not having expectations is a result of that phase - she did name it as such - being so spectacularly great that everything (why else the phososhoot?) she will experience henceforth can only be a disappointment.What's new, is that I feel left out. I will never be part of the most beautiful part of her life because that lies long behind her.But for some reason she does not let me go. She keeps supporting me. She stresses this is not my fault. She will have a surgery on September 12th and I will go to her to take care of her. But the situation is weighing on her. She is spontaneous and she has lost that because she does not want to confront me too much. For her, at this moment part of the connection is lost. Not only does she not want me to sleep over for now, she even is reluctant to hug me. It think it is partly out of concern for my well-being and seeing the impact of the situation but at times a hug is what I need most.I am not sure what to do. I am terrified this will be the end of what started as a beautiful dream (but I do know I did get over similar feelings previously, however hard it was). I want to be special and important to her, but I am scared that I will have to perform sexually to achieve that and I am simply not on that level. At the same time, I am afraid that I will never be confident enough to engage in any sexual actitivy with her and afraid that she will want to see my confidence restored before she wants to (part of what helped me before is that my ex-wife was able to not anticipate on possible emotional disturbance, which eventually gave us a number of experiences that did help me).And also, if this does end over this, does it mean I will have to accept I can never have a relationship again because this will always bother me?But for now, I am willing ot try and get over this. I am not sure how. My psychologist stresses the importance of building up our own story but the idea of disappointing her when I am clumsy or just plain boring terrifies me. She doesn't want to for now, nor can she for medical reasons. But I will also disappoint her when doing nothing. At moments I think that accepting this will have to be a sexless relationship would help me, but this will probably not last long.And also, is it a good idea to talk about my thoughts and feelings with? I think they can be very confronting but on the other hand, I cant' deal with them alone; I have been crying on and off the entire day yesterday. I have been hurting myself.My therapist is on vacation for two weeks ...
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