Emotional Baggage: How Do I Tell Her?

[APurpleScarf]

Hi! So extremely clueless lesbian here.

My girlfriend of one year is the sweetest girl imaginable, and I love her with all of my heart. We are in a very committed and serious relationship, and we are making plans to spend the rest of our lives together if we can. She is, however, not the best at picking up cues.

So. I'll come out with it and say, I am a survivor of (non penetrative) sexual assault from someone close to me, and while I haven't fully recovered, I am no longer extremely uncomfortable when sex is brought up in conversation. The issue is that she doesn't know that any of it happened at all.

A little while ago, we were messing around with each other when suddenly we found ourselves in a rather compromising position, where I was pinned under her and she was making vaguely sexual remarks. I played along, but I sort of felt off. Someone ended up knocking at the door so we weren't there for very long, but that night I ended up feeling so disgusting and dirty for some reason, and didn't realize that it was my trauma processing until a few days later. She has expressed interest in possibly being intimate, and while I think (?????) I'm more or less asexual, I am willing to partake in it for her. However, I do worry that my emotional baggage may end up causing a problem if we try. I am also a total dummie when it comes to lesbian/AFAB on AFAB sex, and the only article I found in my brief little while of looking was speaking on having multiple partners and/or one night stands.

BASICALLY what I'm asking is A. How the ever loving hell do I explain to my gf that I'm interested in sexual stuff if she's interested but have a history of feeling depressed and stuff about it because of a horrible traumatic event that I had to go through and B. Does anyone have any pointers for possibly getting started on lesbian sex? As a note, we're both virgins. We're both each other's first ever serious partner, so neither of us really know what we're doing.

This was really hard to type out given the subject matter, so please be gentle in the replies.

[Jacob]

Hi APupleScarf!

It's nice to hear you've been happy in your relationship so far, and I'm sorry these recent things have made it more difficult.

It makes total sense to have felt the way you did when you were pinned down by your girlfriend, and afterwards. It takes a while sometimes to realise where a trauma response is coming from. Someone can imagine a bit of 'messing around' will turn sexual and remain playful, without any idea that the other person is not experiencing that way, but that is her responsibility so I wish she had asked you about it at the time.

It sounds like you have a lot to talk to your partner about, and it can be difficult to know where to start, but I think maybe this event would actually be the first topic to tackle.

I would hope she'd appologise and be open to why you felt that way so that you can begin talking about everything else. If she doesn't take it seriously then we'd have to talk about whether she's actually a good person to explore sex with, but if she is engaged and listening then you can get into everything else. I don't think you have to talk about past trauma to justify not feeling good in that moment, but it may be something you want to share, or would feel good to share, it is completely up to you.

It is really good to hear that you are more comfortable talking about sex than you once were, continuing to work on that on your own and with your partner would mean that you can maybe rely a lot less on eachother being able to 'read cues'.

Talking/communicating about sex is also central to having enjoyable sex, so working on this will also address the other thing you've asked about. There's no guaranteed secret technique when it comes to 'lesbian sex' but it is worth knowing some general things about communication, anatomy and pleasure. Everything else is only discovereably through communication i.e. asking about, listening to, and expressing our feelings around the kinds of touch we're experiencing, and this conversatoin about 'messing around' sounds like it could be the beginning of being able to do all that.