Thinking About My Relationship Never Feels Good
Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2022 9:54 am
Hello friends! It's been a while. I hope you are all doing well. I was wondering whether you might have some advice for me about a constant hurt I don't want to have anymore.
To be brief, through my close relationship with my partner of 1.5 years, I've become increasingly aware of various feelings of unbalance. The biggest arena where this would regularly upset me is physical affection. I don't want to resort to "giver" and "reciever" roles when talking about things like oral and manual sex, since both people are enjoying the experience and so on, but in the big picture, 95% of our intimate touch has always been centered on his pleasure, with me mostly in a so-called "giving" role with sex or affection. I'd always enjoy the individual experiences, but after a month or two of no physical interactions centering me, I'd start feeling really sad and resentful and I'd calmly bring it up in a hard conversation, he would listen and apologize and say he will do better, and then... we'd do the exact same thing a month or two later. Over and over again. (I do also bring it up outside of serious conversations, little comments like "maybe next time we can do *something focused on me*" and he agrees enthusiastically, and then it never happens.)
I know physical affection isn't the only way people express love, but anywhere I look I struggle to find things that balance out, other methods or love languages (though I don't love that framework) that come more naturally to him. In fact, in the beginning he did plenty of male ego bragging about how much he loves sexually pleasing a woman, how it is a way he wants to demonstrate love and care to me, and the way those things never panned out makes it easy to feel like I must be too gross for that to apply, or else that that was something deliberately manipulative to get me to sleep with him, though I know neither is true. He is good at listening and apologizing and says he will do better and thanks me for telling him, but then things don't happen.
The physical is the biggest part of it that hurts, but there are similar things in other arenas. I am the one putting in lots of emotional labor listening to him wallowing or going in circles, having the same conversations over and over and not going anywhere, having him argue with me whenever I try to help, getting shut down when I suggest therapy. I have put in so, so much work to better myself and explore and improve the things that are really, really difficult for me over the last years. I am the one going to events I don't really like, constantly actively working on sex and sexuality, finally going to therapy and trying medication, always reading self help books and journaling and reflecting and making time to make myself better and vigilantly keep an eye on how I could be a better partner. He doesn't. I've asked him at the very least to try going to therapy over and over again and he hasn't. I just have no general sense of his competence and ability to take care of and improve himself, let alone remember to care for me sometimes.
(I'm a big advocate that therapy isn't the only way, since it wasn't accessible to me for a long time, and so most of my own work I have always done on my own, reading and reflecting and having conversations and building skills and exposing myself to hard things on my own, such that both of my therapists swiftly dumped me saying that I have the tools I need, they don't feel ethical taking my money, to call them and make an appointment as needed in the future. But it's evident he doesn't have the self-awareness and direction to do that alone right now, which is fine. I know he has access to healthcare, to an EAP, to free on-campus options.)
The most recent one was a few weeks ago. I was feeling really hurt about the whole cycle and really desperately wanted this to end this time. He admitted that he forgets about this between times I sit down to seriously talk about it, which I don't quite understand. Personally I could never imagine forgetting something important like this thst my partner has voiced repeatedly, but we are all different. Maybe someone can help me empathize with that way of thinking: no matter how busy and exhausted I get, my partner's repeated wants and needs aren't something that could just leave my mind. It's been a couple of weeks and I hoped things would improve, but they haven't really.
In fairness, a big part of that feeling things haven't improved is that we hardly see each other. We are both very, very busy and exhausted people, and the last few months in particular we've maybe seen each other once a week, briefly for a rushed lunch or to sit silently and do work next to each other. We get so little quality time (and when we do I find it feels entirely focused on him). Last night we were planning on spending a couple of hours together and then he unexpectedly got roped to a meeting for a project he isn't involved in at all (not a necessary work or class thing, a student project of some sort he has nothing to do with). So we didn't end up seeing each other, and probably won't for a couple more days, and haven't since Sunday, and before that it was the Sunday before that, and so on. So it probably isn't entirely fair to be pessimistic as there just hasn't been a lot of time together for change to be demonstrated, but the scarce time that has been there has been spent in the default mode.
And the default when we are both exhausted and busy is for each of us to do what is easiest and more comfortable for us. For me (people pleaser, socialized as a woman, parent stuff I am begrudgingly starting to admit is trauma, etc) that is the giving role of doing things for others with every moment as if to pay rent for existing. And for him, that's simply receiving.
Simply put, I'm realizing every time I think and feel about my relationship I can feel nothing but sad and heavy and hopeless and itchy worried feelings, and I can't remember what it feels like for it to be mostly positive or if it ever was (though it's always hard to feel like the way you're feeling now isn't the way you have felt or will feel forever, so I'm taking that inability to imagine ever feeling net good with a grain of salt). I feel tired looking at it going forward. I don't feel a belief in my body that things are okay and secure. This definitely isn't sustainable as it is now, and as much as I can cerebrally say I believe things will get better, the truth in my body is that the tightness, the hollowness, the fear, are all still here. It doesn't trust or believe things can be better. It is just tired. I am not someone who typically does this or is avoidant, but I have been finding myself thinking trying to find ways to emotionally distance myself and make myself less invested so this hurts less. (And on a meta-emotion level I find this all really disturbing and sad and guilt-inducing.) Thinking about the relationship is mostly just a constant hurt channel and I am tired and I don't want it to hurt anymore. He is genuine, apologetic, listens... but I know my body is going to keep feeling sad and scared and I am tired of it. I want to feel good. I don't want the best moments to be the ones I think about it and succeed in feeling not much of anything. I want to feel something good thinking about this relationship, gratitude or fondness or excitement or hope. And I know my feelings are my own responsibility and not his and I'm not entitled to those things.
We're coming up on summer break in just over a week, which this year probably means not seeing each other at all for four months straight. Last summer, and every time there is a break and we don't see each other for a bit, any amount of space to slow down and think and feel leaves me with nothing but drowning in hard negative feelings about my relationship and related topics. Last summer it was the miserable feeling every day related to figuring out sex and sexuality, and that's still a dark cloud that drifts through often, though I've put a lot of work in and things are better. I just really, really don't want to spend the next four months feeling so bad all the time. I am so tired.
I have been doing a lot of reading on learning to feel and sit with your feelings, to separate thoughts and the ego from the physical sensations and just notice them and be present with them, just sit and be present with the hollowness in your chest, the tight scratching in your throat, the faraway feeling, and so on. But I'm scared that this is an infinite well that will just keep feeling bad no matter how much I try to sit with it, since I think it's reasonable to say I don't think I will feel better, physically, in my body, until I have seen that things have changed consistently for a while, that I haven't been forgotten, that we get to see each other and have quality time more and that I get to recieve attention and affection sometimes too. And those aren't things that we can meaningfully work on much for the next four months.
So, what do I do? Do I just surrender to feeling it day in and day out? Is it healthy to try to avoid it and distract myself? I am just tired and I don't want this to hurt anymore the way it has, the way dark clouds related to the relationship, sex and sexuality have floated regularly over me the last year and a half. I just want to be rid of this heartbroken feeling and the attached meta-guilt and maybe replace it with hope or excitement or something. Any ideas? Things I can work on? Do I need to just stop thinking so much? How?
Thank you <3
To be brief, through my close relationship with my partner of 1.5 years, I've become increasingly aware of various feelings of unbalance. The biggest arena where this would regularly upset me is physical affection. I don't want to resort to "giver" and "reciever" roles when talking about things like oral and manual sex, since both people are enjoying the experience and so on, but in the big picture, 95% of our intimate touch has always been centered on his pleasure, with me mostly in a so-called "giving" role with sex or affection. I'd always enjoy the individual experiences, but after a month or two of no physical interactions centering me, I'd start feeling really sad and resentful and I'd calmly bring it up in a hard conversation, he would listen and apologize and say he will do better, and then... we'd do the exact same thing a month or two later. Over and over again. (I do also bring it up outside of serious conversations, little comments like "maybe next time we can do *something focused on me*" and he agrees enthusiastically, and then it never happens.)
I know physical affection isn't the only way people express love, but anywhere I look I struggle to find things that balance out, other methods or love languages (though I don't love that framework) that come more naturally to him. In fact, in the beginning he did plenty of male ego bragging about how much he loves sexually pleasing a woman, how it is a way he wants to demonstrate love and care to me, and the way those things never panned out makes it easy to feel like I must be too gross for that to apply, or else that that was something deliberately manipulative to get me to sleep with him, though I know neither is true. He is good at listening and apologizing and says he will do better and thanks me for telling him, but then things don't happen.
The physical is the biggest part of it that hurts, but there are similar things in other arenas. I am the one putting in lots of emotional labor listening to him wallowing or going in circles, having the same conversations over and over and not going anywhere, having him argue with me whenever I try to help, getting shut down when I suggest therapy. I have put in so, so much work to better myself and explore and improve the things that are really, really difficult for me over the last years. I am the one going to events I don't really like, constantly actively working on sex and sexuality, finally going to therapy and trying medication, always reading self help books and journaling and reflecting and making time to make myself better and vigilantly keep an eye on how I could be a better partner. He doesn't. I've asked him at the very least to try going to therapy over and over again and he hasn't. I just have no general sense of his competence and ability to take care of and improve himself, let alone remember to care for me sometimes.
(I'm a big advocate that therapy isn't the only way, since it wasn't accessible to me for a long time, and so most of my own work I have always done on my own, reading and reflecting and having conversations and building skills and exposing myself to hard things on my own, such that both of my therapists swiftly dumped me saying that I have the tools I need, they don't feel ethical taking my money, to call them and make an appointment as needed in the future. But it's evident he doesn't have the self-awareness and direction to do that alone right now, which is fine. I know he has access to healthcare, to an EAP, to free on-campus options.)
The most recent one was a few weeks ago. I was feeling really hurt about the whole cycle and really desperately wanted this to end this time. He admitted that he forgets about this between times I sit down to seriously talk about it, which I don't quite understand. Personally I could never imagine forgetting something important like this thst my partner has voiced repeatedly, but we are all different. Maybe someone can help me empathize with that way of thinking: no matter how busy and exhausted I get, my partner's repeated wants and needs aren't something that could just leave my mind. It's been a couple of weeks and I hoped things would improve, but they haven't really.
In fairness, a big part of that feeling things haven't improved is that we hardly see each other. We are both very, very busy and exhausted people, and the last few months in particular we've maybe seen each other once a week, briefly for a rushed lunch or to sit silently and do work next to each other. We get so little quality time (and when we do I find it feels entirely focused on him). Last night we were planning on spending a couple of hours together and then he unexpectedly got roped to a meeting for a project he isn't involved in at all (not a necessary work or class thing, a student project of some sort he has nothing to do with). So we didn't end up seeing each other, and probably won't for a couple more days, and haven't since Sunday, and before that it was the Sunday before that, and so on. So it probably isn't entirely fair to be pessimistic as there just hasn't been a lot of time together for change to be demonstrated, but the scarce time that has been there has been spent in the default mode.
And the default when we are both exhausted and busy is for each of us to do what is easiest and more comfortable for us. For me (people pleaser, socialized as a woman, parent stuff I am begrudgingly starting to admit is trauma, etc) that is the giving role of doing things for others with every moment as if to pay rent for existing. And for him, that's simply receiving.
Simply put, I'm realizing every time I think and feel about my relationship I can feel nothing but sad and heavy and hopeless and itchy worried feelings, and I can't remember what it feels like for it to be mostly positive or if it ever was (though it's always hard to feel like the way you're feeling now isn't the way you have felt or will feel forever, so I'm taking that inability to imagine ever feeling net good with a grain of salt). I feel tired looking at it going forward. I don't feel a belief in my body that things are okay and secure. This definitely isn't sustainable as it is now, and as much as I can cerebrally say I believe things will get better, the truth in my body is that the tightness, the hollowness, the fear, are all still here. It doesn't trust or believe things can be better. It is just tired. I am not someone who typically does this or is avoidant, but I have been finding myself thinking trying to find ways to emotionally distance myself and make myself less invested so this hurts less. (And on a meta-emotion level I find this all really disturbing and sad and guilt-inducing.) Thinking about the relationship is mostly just a constant hurt channel and I am tired and I don't want it to hurt anymore. He is genuine, apologetic, listens... but I know my body is going to keep feeling sad and scared and I am tired of it. I want to feel good. I don't want the best moments to be the ones I think about it and succeed in feeling not much of anything. I want to feel something good thinking about this relationship, gratitude or fondness or excitement or hope. And I know my feelings are my own responsibility and not his and I'm not entitled to those things.
We're coming up on summer break in just over a week, which this year probably means not seeing each other at all for four months straight. Last summer, and every time there is a break and we don't see each other for a bit, any amount of space to slow down and think and feel leaves me with nothing but drowning in hard negative feelings about my relationship and related topics. Last summer it was the miserable feeling every day related to figuring out sex and sexuality, and that's still a dark cloud that drifts through often, though I've put a lot of work in and things are better. I just really, really don't want to spend the next four months feeling so bad all the time. I am so tired.
I have been doing a lot of reading on learning to feel and sit with your feelings, to separate thoughts and the ego from the physical sensations and just notice them and be present with them, just sit and be present with the hollowness in your chest, the tight scratching in your throat, the faraway feeling, and so on. But I'm scared that this is an infinite well that will just keep feeling bad no matter how much I try to sit with it, since I think it's reasonable to say I don't think I will feel better, physically, in my body, until I have seen that things have changed consistently for a while, that I haven't been forgotten, that we get to see each other and have quality time more and that I get to recieve attention and affection sometimes too. And those aren't things that we can meaningfully work on much for the next four months.
So, what do I do? Do I just surrender to feeling it day in and day out? Is it healthy to try to avoid it and distract myself? I am just tired and I don't want this to hurt anymore the way it has, the way dark clouds related to the relationship, sex and sexuality have floated regularly over me the last year and a half. I just want to be rid of this heartbroken feeling and the attached meta-guilt and maybe replace it with hope or excitement or something. Any ideas? Things I can work on? Do I need to just stop thinking so much? How?
Thank you <3