Is it wrong for me to stay?

yes i would let him know you don't want kids right now. the sex thing may just be a temporary thing but maybe you could see a gyn and see what the problem is too. i also have a low sex drive after a vaginal operation and don't do it that often anymore. good luck

Oh and BTW just wanted to thank everyone for your replies I was surprised at how many of you offered advice and am very thankful. Im not really used to posting on forums and getting results. So thanks again to all of you!

Thanks!

You can have a different life, a life that you want. But I think you will need to make some changes in order to do that.

The main problem as I see it is the tendency to see a serious relationship as something so exclusive that you don't take anything for yourself, you feel a lot of guilt if you do take things for yourself, and you become isolated and suffocated.

I would ask you to pay close attention to your daily life and be aware of those times that you sacrifice/isolate yourself. Notice when you sacrifice/isolate. Without judging yourself, say to yourself: There I go again.

And then I would propose acting in the opposite way: contacting friends, even if they are far away; getting involved in something in your city--something you like: volunteering, politics, classes, taking up a hobby, learning a craft, work in a soup kitchen, going out of your way to meet/socialize with your neighbors, whatever that may be and helps you meet people. Meeting people is your priority.

If you are working now, are you satisfied with your job? If not, think about changing it.

Doing these things will I expect make you feel anxious and guilty. My advice is to ignore the anxiety and the guilt and do them anyways. If you allow guilt and anxiety to dictate what you do or don't do, your life will keep being narrowed and diminished. Here is how you will overcome the guilt, the isolation: by putting yourself out there into things that you want to do and enjoy.

You can have a serious relationship without being suffocated.

And in your serious relationships: what happens if you say what you think--if for example you express irritation? Is it a relationship in which it is safe to express yourself? This is very important. A key question is this: Do you mainly suffocate yourself in serious relationships by isolating and limiting yourself...or do you find yourself in relationships where the guy demands that you suffocate and isolate yourself?

If it is the latter, then you should in my opinion look at your background to try to understand why this pattern repeats itself. You could start another thread on that!

My expectation is that when you find the voice and freedom to act on your own, and when your serious partner supports you in that, it will start to be easier to be sexual with him.

In a while, when you find ways to have some freedom in serious relationships, you might decide to reconsider about children. Might. (It is possible to have children without being suffocated.) But if that happens it will be a ways down the road. First (in my opinion) work on fixing how you function in serious relationships, and then you will be able to look again at what to do, or not do, with regard to kids.

I will tell you something that will shock you about having kids. Imagine you are in love. you tell each-other you love each-other then one day your gf says I am unable to bear children. that's what happened to me. she was on the pill too which she said was to balance her period. I never questioned her and promptly one year later I dumped her.

It's not your ex girlfriend's fault she cannot bear children. Have you considered adoption? I don't know if this is connected but is this the reason why you dumped her?

I was on drugs. She was taking advantage of my vulnerableness. When she said it I was trying not to believe her. I was in no way angry. Instead I despised her.

I'm sorry you had to go through that She shouldn't have taken advantage of you.

You win some you lose some. That a long time ago now. I have given up ladies for artificial relationships now.

So update. My bf already knew I don't want kids but feels I may consider adoption or a surrogate in the future. Idk if I will or won't 5 or more years from now. Guess my main issues now are that I still have no sex drive and he's not unattractive. But I still have to fight myself from turning away when he kisses me and I don't like feeling that way I want to feel the ability to be affectionate again.

lonelygirl4, what do you think of my response, #28?

On that note. I am not with a guy that makes me isolate i do it to myself. But I have more freedom in this relationship because he is probably the most understanding person ive ever been with. Our work schedules keep us from really seeing each other very often except for when i get home and he is leaving for work. So I know its nothing on his end. I know it falls on me. I think its because in my past i was a party girl. I went out all the time and did whatever i wanted. Now i dont want to be that person and i limit myself to stay away from drinking or temptation. I also gained a lot of weight and even though he finds me beautiful i don't like the way i look and have some self image issues as well. I am going to the gym now to try and remedy at least that part of my life. I am also scheduled for a docs appt soon for a physical and im going to see if he can test for any hormone issues.

Thanks!

I'm glad to hear that he treats you well.

Thanks for explaining about going out and temptation. I wonder if there are activities to get involved in that would not involve temptations to drink and not mean returning to being a party girl. The gym for example sounds good, and maybe you can meet like-minded people there.

Well one of my hobbies is Cosplay and my bf has starting getting into it to. We work on costumes for conventions I even started my own fan page and have gotten a lot of compliments on my costumes which has helped with my self esteem but at the same time raises my anxiety because i don't want to make any thing that isn't as good as the last thing i made. But with work and the gym ive been to tired to work on it. And for meeting ppl at the gym i dont think so. I am a nervous reck at the gym and get very intimidated i can barely look at others there let alone talk to any of them. Take me to a convention though and ill talk to everyone

I would like to make you aware of the concept of safety behaviors. Safety behaviors are ways in which we change our behavior so as to avoid or minimize anxiety. So for example a person might go to the food store in the early morning because a crowded store makes them anxious, even though their actual preference (aside from the anxiety) is to go at midday.

If one uses safety behaviors to avoid anxiety, one's world narrows and diminishes.

The better approach in the long run often is to face the anxiety. To go ahead and do what you want to do anyways, and tow the anxiety along if you will.

It's good that you go to the gym even though a nervous wreck. You go despite the anxiety, this is good. Over time you can start to feel better about the gym, especially if you talk with someone about what makes you so anxious about the gym.

If the anxiety is too much, though, one can use tools like breathing exercises and self-talk to get past the anxiety and still do what you really want to do.

So with the costumes: if you do not act opposite to the anxiety, you might never make another costume. Imagine how diminished your life would be then: to never make another costume for fear that it won't be as good as your previous or best costume. In my view, it's better to question, face, manage the anxiety and keep making the costumes! So for example: let's say that the next costume isn't as good as the last one. What does that mean about you? What bad things will happen?

The bad things that could happen well the cosplay world can be very critical so they can make fun of me put down my costume, i could lose fans on my page and followers. But that stuff doesn't bother me I am my biggest critic and i will feel like i let myself down. Or that im not good enough to make more costumes or that i shouldn't wear it because its not up to my standards.

My main concern now is not feeling like I don't want him around or touching me. I don't know why I can't just feel like I did when we were first together. He is not ugly but just a bit over weight but so am I. I pull away when he touches me and I just don't know why. I really would like to be able to be in a normal relationship. Not one that starts off hot then I get weird after falling in love.

I went to the doctors and they gave me a referral to see a psychologist but its a year waiting list. So that doesn't help me now.

Maybe there are other psychologists that you could be referred to?

i don't think my insurance will cover it.

I would guess that your insurance will cover more than one psychologist. But I suppose that you need the referral from your doctor. I am just wondering if the doctor can be told about the year long wait, and then asked if they could give--or find--a few different psychologists.

I would tell your boyfriend your problems and see if you can work on them together. I know you said you cannot afford counselling at all but maybe the two of you can afford couples counselling that might help or maybe you can go see someone for a time or two and see if they have any ideas -- counselling does not have to be long-term or particularly expensive and I cannot imagine that a city as big as the one you live in doesn't have something that might help: Home | MentalHealthKC

Ill try and contact my doc tomorrow and see if I can get a referral.

Hi lonelygirl. I am just now seeing this thread for the first time. I am in my early 50s and have never been married or had any relationships since college that have lasted longer than a year or two.

What you're describing about how you start to feel about sex when you're in a close relationship sounds exactly like the way I react.

I also want to say that I started having both medical and psychiatric health problems in my late 20s and spent most of my 30s and early 40s trying to get those under control. I think maybe I would have spend more time trying to figure out why I react the way I do if I had been healthier and had felt like I could have handled marriage and having children.

My childhood was different from yours. My parents were strict but usually fair. They were very loyal to each other but always seemed to argue a lot until they were in their 50s. They were married for over 50 years (until my father died.)

I wanted to give you the link to an article that I ran across about two years ago that seemed to explain some things for me. It's from Psychology Today and it's by Alain de Botton (some English guy.)

Twelve Rude Revelations About Sex

The parts of the article that were most helpful to me started about halfway into it, but there are good bits all through it. I've quoted some below:

In the intro to the article:
"(the author) makes the case that our (sexual) difficulties stem more from the multiplicity of things we want out of life, or the accrual of everyday resentments."

Some quotes from the article:

"Sex is not fundamentally democratic or kind. It refuses to sit neatly on top of love."

"Most innocently, the paucity of sex within established relationships has to do with the difficulty of shifting registers between the everyday and the erotic."

Section near the end of the article about the "accrued resentments" and how they affect our desire to have sex with our partner:

"Why are bread crumbs in the kitchen bad for sex?"

"We tend to forget we are angry with our partner, and hence become anaesthetized, melancholic, and unable to have sex with him or her because the specific incidents that anger us happen so quickly and so invisibly, in such chaotic settings (at the breakfast table, before the school run) that we can't recognize the offense well enough to mount a coherent protest against it.


And we frequently don't articulate our anger, even when we do understand it, because the things that offend us can seem so trivial or odd that they would sound ridiculous if spoken aloud: "I am angry with you because you cut the bread in the wrong way." But once we are involved in a relationship, there is no longer any such thing as a minor detail."

Anyway, to sum up for me, I think my problems come from accumulating resentments about small things plus finding it more difficult to feel erotic feelings for someone that I also grocery shop with, manage money with, etc.

Besides feeling silly about complaining to a partner about their leaving crumbs or something small like that, I am not good at dealing with anger and confrontations in an intimate relationship. I came by that honestly during my upbringing and never have really solved the problem.

My dad was a rager, so I grew up being very uncomfortable with anger. That's both being on the receiving end of it and being angry myself (what if I lose control like my dad did so often?)

It sounds like maybe you're with a good guy that you can talk to about what's going on with you. That's a huge plus.

I hope that things will get better for you. If you do find out that you're able to go to psychotherapy, couples therapy might be helpful too.

Okay, got to go. It's time to feed the cats.

jo thorne, thanks for sharing that article! I found it quite interesting.

Not sure if any one is still reading this but I have been doing research I'm I've found many women a bit younger than me have an issue of losing interest in partners after things become more serious. I'm starting to feel that maybe that's my problem more than just sex drive that loss of drive is a side affect of losing interest. Specially since this happens with every serious relationship.