Cut Eye (Photo credit: lindes)
One of the big highs over the last month I suppose was when we made some progress in the bedroom. I’m not sure how many of you would consider what I am about to tell you a ‘high point’. What we do is by no means ‘normal’ but its what works for us in our situation and has progressed and evolved to suit us over time. Of course its still not ideal but you work with what you’ve got don’t you?
Usually we would have intercourse and then I would straddle him and ‘give him a hand’ to him help him finish. It worked but the lack of eye contact made me feel shit. Over time we had removed barriers and things got better but every now and then the insecurities and embarrassment crept back in. – I posted about that here
Well for a while its been difficult, both going through stages of awkwardness, emotions making it either amazing or non existent… Triggers preventing me from wanting to do what we usually do so for a while we had “normal” sex and after he would “do himself” while I lay with him kissing him (and him kissing back) for us that worked. (Again I posted here about it) We both had fun and we both got the release which usually comes from sex. For us – with our history considered it was a mini breakthrough… Knowing he would still climax with me kissing him and touching him… Being there with him in a loving way and not just another hand helping him out.
Well at some point I was laying next to him and just kept thinking how wrong all of this was, THIS was not what I pictured my sex life to be like… my marriage to be like…I felt so irrelevant… So unnecessary… So useless. I could feel my stomach turning and my eyes watering and realised this wasn’t the first time I had felt like this…THIS was turning into a trigger for me. It was at that point that I thought…NO! This needs to stop now. I am NOT going to let myself feel like this, I am NOT going to do this more often than I want to just to stop myself worrying about him sneaking off for a wank if I say no! I will NOT lay here and feel like shit to -in essence- cock block my own husband – I shouldn’t fucking have to! At the end of the day if he WANTS to sneak off for some DIY then he will regardless of whether we went through this 2 days before or 2 hours before…there is nothing I can do about it and really what good is it doing? its not, its giving him a release and every time its making ME feel worse…its letting him have it his way while my confidence slams lower and lower every time he squeezes his eyes shut to block ME out! that is not taking care of myself. I either need to take control of this and protect myself or get the hell out before I get dragged down any further, I can not live this way forever.
I said nothing about it to him and instead vowed to say no more often, to say no unless i was actually in the mood for it, unless i felt confident enough for it…WANTED enough. no kind of game playing involved here by the way, this wasn’t some kind of ‘turn him down to make him want me’ game…this was me growing a pair and putting my foot down. So for the next few nights I said no. I told him I would rather ‘cuddle’ tonight (lol) and in truth it WAS nice just cuddling and talking, it took away that anxiety.
Eventually, I felt stronger again and we did our thing and instantly I felt better for holding off on it, it felt less wrong and more right. Obviously the set up was the same but I was doing it because I wanted to which took away a massive amount of doubt and insecurity. This time the kissing was more passionate too – rather than going through the motions…it was more intense…more enjoyable. Afterwards we lay together and out of nowhere he said
‘you did that’
-Not understanding what he meant he explained that he had been thinking about me/us the majority of the time rather than focusing on those intrusive thoughts (that he wont tell me as he’s ashamed of them) Surprised and confused – as before he could only really ‘get off’ if he let those thoughts take over and any ‘normal’ (according to him) thoughts were pushed aside- he explained that the more we have been doing it like this…kissing etc he’s been thinking more and more about us rather than the other stuff.
THAT was amazing to hear, he had offered up that fact without me asking for it, he told me because HE felt good about it…proud i suppose as until this point for him those thought have been all he’s ever had so for him to be able to push past that was a breakthrough for him…and sharing it with me was a breakthrough for US too. It reminded me that while I cant always see – or don’t always realise- the baby steps we are making…HE is making his own and when he is ready he will tell me.
Eyes Wide Open (Gotye song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For a while after that we were feeling positive, our confidence grew and I even ventured back to our original ways without feeling sick about it. One of the things that had kept putting me off was the lack of eye contact so I had almost trained myself to not make eye contact with him during ‘his turn’ – to avoid seeing him squeeze his eyes shut so tightly I suppose 
But like I’ve said before we all close our eyes when we are in the moment, we all have random/irrelevant thoughts coming in and out of our heads sometimes…the difference being that we don’t always SHARE them and most of us don’t have thoughts that overrule everything else.
Well…recently he’s been keeping his eyes open 🙂 and he can still manage to climax lol. Again, he made a point of telling me (in case I hadn’t noticed) because HE felt good about it and because HE was making progress with his own demons. Of course its not nice to have felt like this before and making eye contact with your wife…or just being able to LOOK at your wife whilst being intimate shouldn’t be a big deal…but for us it is and ultimately its not about the way I look, it’s not ME putting him off. This is a big step for him towards letting go of the things that hold him back, towards letting ME in to his world…
xBx
Comfortably Numb 