My biggest relationship mistake

[Sunshine]

I've been thinking all day about a big mistake I made during the beginning of my first and so far only relationship and I've decided to write about it here, both to help my brain let go of the topic for the night so I can maybe sleep and also because I'm hoping that maybe someone will read it and avoid doing the same thing.
I don't possess the talent of expressing myself in a few words, so I am afraid this will be a rather long and rambly story.

When I met my partner, I was incredibly insecure and thought of myself as completely unlovable. (I did love myself, I was just convinced, based on my experiences with other people my age, that hardly anybody else could and certainly nobody found me attractive). I couldn't believe he was with me because of me, I thought there must be some other reason, the most likely being sex. Also I thought this was my one and only chance at happiness. I was terrified to loose it and willing to do nearly anything to keep this guy in my life, at the same time expecting him to up and leave any second.

I had been sexual with myself for a while, but never with another person. While I was basically interested in that, I was also very afraid of feeling pain, of embarrassment, of unwanted pregnancy, lots of things. Also, I only feel and only felt like having sex sometimes while quite often, I didn't and don't want it at all, at least not with someone else. My partner on the other hand has quite a strong sex drive and also a few issues with sexuality that make it harder for him than it is for me to take care of himself that way. There were a lot of situations where he wanted to do things I didn't want to do yet or not at that moment, and later, when we started having intercourse, where he wanted to sleep with me when I didn't at that particular time want to sleep with him.

Because I was so scared to loose him, though, and thought I had so little else to offer, I very often did not say no. Or I said no at first but then said yes and pretended I had changed my mind. When I couldn't make my body cooperate, I zoned out and tried to ignore the discomfort I was feeling until we were done. I justified this to myself by calling it "being unselfish".

This kind of sex was awful. Even though I was doing it out of my own free will, I felt used and hurt. I started feeling resentment and anger towards the person I actually loved and began to show some pretty nasty, passive-aggressive behavior. Finally, it became clear to me that the situation was a mess and something had to change. So I gathered all my courage and told him the truth. He was pretty shocked. And it became clear to me that I had:

- Effectively made him abuse me
- Not trusted him
- Made assumptions about him that, if they were true, would make him a massive jerk
- Lied to him and shaken his trust in me
- Made him feel even more guilt and shame in relation to sex once he found out what had been going on than he was already saddled with

Unselfish? Nope. Giving him a good reason to stay with me? Big nope. Actually, we have never been closer to a breakup. But because, as it turned out, he really was interested in being with me because of me, in spite of me being pretty messed up at that time, and I really wanted to be with him, we decided to give us another chance. We agreed on some rules and kind of started over. I've changed a lot and he's changed too and we still have some problems that need to be worked out, but in all, we're doing surprisingly fine.

Now, I still think his desire is just as valid and important as my occasional disinclination to have sex. And I still believe that if you want a long-term, committed relationship (which, btw, I do not believe is the only kind of relationship people should have or even the best possible kind, it's just the best possible kind for me personally!), you will need to make a lot of compromises. But saying yes when I mean no just isn't a viable solution. That's not the kind of sex he wants anyway. It's not a compromise, it's not a gift or a sacrifice or a favor, it's just harmful - to both of us.

I guess what I'm trying to say with all this is that in my experience, agreeing to sex your body doesn't really want is not a good way to stabilize a relationship and it's also a pretty big insult to the person you are having sex with.

I still don't quite know what my part is in reconciling our different needs, how I can accommodate his without violating my body. I wish I had a good solution. But for now, we're actually better off if I just accept that in this particular area, I have to be selfish.

There. Just really needed to get that out.

[Heather]

Hope you're feeling good about that, that seemed like a pretty big deal.

One bit of feedback I can share with you -- and anyone else -- is that I find that people either forget, or don't realize, that in any sexual relationship that goes on for a while (and by that I mean years or decades, not weeks or months), everyone involved is going to have times when they do or don't want sex or particular kinds of sex, both times that are just day-to-day shifts or times that are longer, like during certain life phases.

And it's really common for partnerships to start out with one or both people feeling a lot of desire frequently, then for one (if one didn't already) to be less hot to trot, or feel things slow way down for them, and then, years later, have the tables turn, for any number of reasons. It's also very common specifically in relationships between men and women, for that to have a common pattern of dude-all-over-it/chick-not-so-much that then flips the other way around (there are a lot of reasons why that probably is, and they're all likely about gender and sexual social norms and enforced roles).

So, the compromise with this, when someone wants sex (there's never a "need" for sex with another person, just a want) and the other doesn't, is rarely going to be one-way, and can always just be that the person who doesn't want it is the one who gets what they want, and the person who does, doesn't. It's not like not getting sex with someone we want is that hard to deal with, whereas, as you know, having sex we don't want is pretty hideous for everyone involved. And it's also not like, should the relationship go long-term, each person will be taking turns with that, rather than this idea that there's the person who doesn't want sex and the person who does, and those roles are never reversed.

(That make sense?)

And, of course, it's not selfish to opt out of sex with someone when you don't want it, because, as you know now, sex with someone who doesn't want it doesn't give the other person anything good, either. So, really, anyone saying no to sex when no is what they want to say isn't just taking care of themselves and sparing themselves from anything from real trauma to just plain yuck, they're also doing that for their partner.

[Sunshine]

Thank you Heather!

So you think that maybe when we are in our fifties, I'll be the one going "yeah, lets have sex" and he'll go "nahhh... not today..." ? I must say I'm kind of looking forward to that now...

The sex I had when I didn't really want to was definitely in the "just plain yuck" category. I don't think I was traumatized or anything. It's just that recently, I've heard a lot of women, mostly young women and girls, say things about sex and their relationships that sounded dangerously like what I did and use the "but it's for my partner and I really love him" argument or say "but if I don't he'll leave me." And I just want to scream "noooo!!!!! Not you too!" But of course it's not my place, so I don't. I just think all day.

It's so sad that the same destructive things seem to happen over and over again. When my grandmothers were young, "do it for the man" was standard relationship advice. They were also told that if their husbands cheated, it was probably their fault for denying them sex. From today's perspective, that is so messed up, yet deep down inside we still partly believe in it, I think. At least some of us do.

What kind of idea is this about men, anyway? Assuming they wouldn't care whether they are making their wives / girlfriends / lovers feel like shit just as long as they can get off? That they'd actually want this kind of "sacrifice"?

It's very reassuring to hear you say that not getting sex with someone isn't that hard to deal with. I guess I've always assumed it must be about on the same level as having sex when you don't really want to. I wouldn't know, I've never been there. But from what you said in the beginning of your post, it's probably one of those things I'll understand when I'm older.

[Heather]

I really love your insights here.

Peer your last statement, think about it like this: how challenging is NOT getting a kind of dinner you want, but still getting dinner? Pretty easy, right? Everyone who can have sex with a partner can masturbate, so not getting sex we want from a partner isn't not getting sex, unless we also choose not to masturbate (in which case, that's 100% our choice). And it's really just one kind of dinner versus another, not getting dinner versus no dinner for you! No one is suffering terribly or not getting something that is an actual need, and nobody has to go without sex altogether when a partner doesn't want it unless they choose to.

You might also try this one on: How hard is it to be forced out of your home (really freaking hard), versus not being able to move into exactly the kind of home you want at a given time (a bummer, but life goes on and, as the Rolling Stones knew so well, you can't always get what you want)? I'd say sex when you don't really want it versus not getting sex you want is about like that.

P.S. Probably waaaaaay before you're both 50. We've got a lot of statistics on this, and in men-women long-term couples, about as many have infrequent sex as those who have more frequent sex, and more times than not, it's men in those couples who are putting the brakes on, or just not feeling, sex for any number of reasons. And that's not usually something men only start doing -- not always having interest in or wanting sex -- later on in life, but something that happens as frequently for many throughout all of life as it can for women.