Really Want To Change

How can I stop him from triggering me to be traumatized? I've been on here a long time already, and I have yet to see any other person with this same issue in a relationship. Someone who is triggered to SH over a relationship with only one person in their life.

How can I change myself?

Oh, dear - i dont think you are in a unique position at all. I identify so strongly with you. I could give you a list of current pc members! I would guess that the reason you dont know who we are, is that you keep looking to place the responsibility to CHANGE in the wrong half of the partnership.

Meaning it's he who needs to change?

He maybe needs to change but you can't make people change. You either have to accept it or leave. Whatever you doing isn't working.

As about your particular issue I have hard time relating as I barely ever want sex as I hit menopause. I need affection but sex I can live without. Plus I work too much. My husband wants it all the time though regardless how tired he is.

But anyways. Do you have fulfilling career or hobbies? Maybe go to school? Take a class? Take focus of your marriage and sex

Say I can accept that there is going to be a sexual initiation by him and he is going to do it in a way that makes me jump out of my skin and have a panic attack. Say I can accept that this guy has a Jekyll/Hyde strange way about him with this. If I expect and accept that, can I endure it without freaking out? If I start acting more like a teacher or more like I am a sex therapist maybe. If I can learn to not be who I am, if I can become what I detest being in this scenario.

Never mind, IDK what I am saying...

So - is he coming into a room with a creepy rubber face mask on and nothing else, or are you just really turned off by his lack of basic hygiene or stg?

Im sorry to start at the beginning again, but if he is that creepy, why didnt the ts see it? And how can you stand it?

Is he violent in a bedroom? Or demands kinky stuff? What's the deal? It seems that you still want sex with him though? I am confused

He has a hygiene issue???? Or its hypothetical?

Why, though? Why put yourself through that? Why not just move on? I don't understand why you feel you must be with THIS person instead of someone more suited to you and vice versa. It's beyond my comprehension, there are millions of men in the world.

You seem to have several options, but maybe it's best to find a t specialising in sex. There are some in the U.K., I'm sure there must be in the States. If the way he initiates it freaks you out, perhaps you've got a deeper trauma of some sort that needs to be understood. Or you could react differently to him, making it less weird. Or adjust your libido with meds? If he knows it's a problem for you and won't/ can't change, then he needs to continue t with you to work it out together. It doesn't sound like a quick fix. It must be something in your relationship and/ or life going back years. So your SH is linked to how you deal with your frustration. There are some good threads on here about how to replace SH with something else but that still allows you to deal with the emotion. Have a browse. Maybe look at other threads where people talk about sexual issues too. Like chunking up your problems into symptoms and then checking out those topics. Reading your posts also sounds like you don't think there will ever be a solution, and you oscillate a lot. There is always an answer, and maybe yours is that this is all going to be a work in progress for some time, and you need to love both him AND you throughout all the rollercoaster stuff. Or is that too zen?!

OK...you don't explain exactly how he is traumatizing but I wonder if there are any similarities to what I have felt...the day I attempted, my H intiated sex in a perfectly normal way yet I was disgusted by it. I always felt like I should respond to his needs yet I hadn't felt tenderly toward him in a while. I said "No" the day I attempted and called him all kinds of names. He responded by leaving for a while then I immediately made the attempt. I said the myself, "this will show him" (no, it ended up showing me how screwed up I was). After I came back from this attempt, we were living in the same house but keeping our distance emotionally and sexually (no sex for more than 6 months). About a year after my attempt, something sort of shifted in my brain (perhaps therapy was helping) and I started feeling genuinely tenderly and empathetic toward him. He was mostly the same person. I have put up with a lot concerning some of the things we have gone through (but there have also been good times). When I felt so disgusted with him--I had a lot of anger and resentment build up and had never vented, just buried it. While he never had a problem venting and insisting that I be all the things he expected of me. Never talked about my frustrations to anyone. I know you post about your frustrations here (that is good), and seem much more assertive than I am but do you relate to any of these things? Or is it actually something specific that he does or says! (ie--something that is mean?)

And I don't know if talking about my experience helps you but at the beginning of our marriage, I sort of viewed him with "rose-colored glasses". I mean, I was 23, he was 30--he had big dreams/goals, understood finance/ investing, owned a home, a motorcycle, a BMW and pickup truck, talked about and played powergames at work, was technically savy etc. so, really, he taught me many things. I felt that way for years then started to slowly feel different. Now that I am not as "mad" (but I still have some days where I am)--I realize that there are some areas where he has better judgement than me and others where I am totally right and have so much more understanding about how to best approach an issue. Some of it is that I have become more reflective and he needs to be more reflective but is pigheaded and doesn't get it. He loves me in a more straightforward way and I am more conflicted about it all--especially when he doesn't listen to me about somethings (you know about some but not all of them). So every once in a while we have a real "give and take" conversation and he will acknowledge some small thing that I feel but mostly, his needs are just very straight forward and simple. It feels like he loves me when I love him because he is so responsive when I feel tenderly toward him. And I feel like I have always met his needs (I do what he asks though with varying levels of enthusiasm) and will always have on and off frustrations that he doesn't fully appreciate. It is what it is......<sigh>

Someone has said on here "Don't date potential, find the man you want just as he is." Well, I never found any such animal, they were all just potential. I had a bf who also called me potential, literally. He was an exec in the film industry in LA and felt with me on his arm he would rise to the top. But I wasn't that into him, and that's another story.

When I was marrying my h, his best friend said to me, "What do you want him for, he just watches a lot of TV?" So, there it was right before me, but I also had on rose colored glasses and thought I could groom his potential.

He is a fairly good looking, very clean, mild mannered man. He has a lot of hair, will never go bald. He is brilliant with a great career, makes money. We look good together. We have similar beliefs and tastes. We are good friends together. He even enjoys shopping.

Yes, he is a total TV addict, but he is very easy going and up for anything I suggest we do. Except for the stuff that he doesn't want to do. Like where I want to live, like how I want us to have a dog, etc... There isn't one thing he wanted that he didn't do. He even very frivolously spend a lot of money on a sports car that he hardly even used.

So the sex nightmare began with me getting repulsed and jumping out of bed and it is still happening. He doesn't turn me on. He doesn't know how to turn me on.

This last time that set me off: I was just opening my eyes. He leaps at me having come from the bathroom. I was fine with that and open to the sex. But he is over aggressive to over compensate for his usual overly passive approach. He starts aggressively slobbering in my ear, giving me a Wet Willie. I am trying to relax. I am stroking his hair, his back, trying to get aroused. Then he really aggressively shoves his hands between my legs and strokes me hard. With that I jumped out of bed. Panic attack!

So he acts like he doesn't know what he is doing and is either too gentle or too rough. 50 Shades of S*ck! It's like the movie Groundhog Day, where it is just slightly different, but each time just so forced, fake, and wrong for all eternity.

But then, after I have become hysterical, angry, and SH for hours or days, he is suddenly Casanova. The man knows exactly how to turn me on. He is not fake. He is just the right amount of genuinely passionate. We have great sex. Then like a fool, I am happy and feel normal again. I am Suzy Homemaker cooking and cleaning and waiting on him. I am loving and giving and hopeful of repairing our dysfunction.

Then it starts all over again!

I'm scared that the problem is me. I flip flop on a dime. I am caught in this vicious cycle. I am hoping it will all just play out and end in some way eventually. I accept my fate? I am not optimistic about my future? I have Stockholm Syndrome?

We are both playing our part in this dysfunction. This is all just S&M?

So I wonder if either consciously (but more likely sort of subconsciously) he's abusing (definitely not feeling love toward you at this moment) then acts lovingly because he doesn't want you to leave. By abuse, I mean the desire to control or dominate you by throwing you off balance in this way.

Here's a similiar example in my life. As you know, I walk with H nearly everyday. He insists that I walk between the side of the road and him so that when cars go by they are the closest to him. Sounds like a very loving thing to do right? But sometimes when a car is about to go by, he literally shoves/pushes me to the side of the road in an unloving way. Earlier this year, I literally got upset (I've never been one to ever cry but I got a panic attack, refused to walk, shouted at him) when he grabbed my arm to push me to the side of the road. By the next day I had convinced myself that this must just be me blowing something out of preportion and I have accepted the "direction" since then. Then, 20 days ago, my T had me read, The Verbally Abusive Relationship--you know, that book talks about how subtle that the domination can be (and sometimes abusers shove, push, bump) and how that you have to trust your feelings about these things. And when I was not feeling loving toward him during Thanksgiving week--his "direction" was extremely rough! Then when we had made up a week later, the direction felt so gentle and loving. What a contrast!

So I've only read part of the book then I stopped. Sometimes I wonder why I am so clueless and overlook so many things! I do see parallels between his foreplay and my Hs safety patrol behavior. Do you? Though since I am trying to be more assertive, I have noticed that he backs down about many things when I am firmer with him. So say "no sex" when he acts like that?

I also find my H physically attractive, we sometimes have great conversations when we are getting along (but othertimes he makes me feel totally shut down) Sometimes I wonder why I didn't realize what was going on years ago when making a "break" would have been simpler (like when I had some very good jobs/a future). So I have felt the things you mention above.

Yea, the more I think about it, I wonder if I am making way to much of it all! Perhaps this is why you flip flop too. Maybe he has bad days, I have bad (and off my rocker crazy) days. Maybe I should move on about all this stuff and just get a life (ie: find more work, get some other hobbies) instead of psychoanalyzing my relationship? I think I'm going to go read my novel (NOT the one about abuse) now.......

What am i missing here? When he acts creepy, you say stop that you creep, hit him with a pillow and one of you goes to sleep in the guest room?

I apologized if I am totally off but it sounds as he isn't particularly into sex at this point or into sex with you or he likes different kind of sex than you. But you insist that he initiates sex. So maybe he either does it to deliberately turn you off or to piss you off so you leave him alone or he actually enjoys control. You said when you two got married he did something that you didn't even want to do. Yet he still did. And you said nothing. You might not be compatible in sex.

Why don't you two find something to do together with no sex like join a class or have craft project or develop mutual hobby? Like why does it have to be about sex all the time? What do you like to do together?

I don't have anything useful to say.. but just wanted to tell you, we understand how you feel and I hope one day things will get better for you..