Bearish
Fapstronaut
Peace, y'all--
I've been lurking for a few days, and I find the stories and advice comforting. My story is long and complex, but I'm working to solve a lifetime struggle with DE.
I'm nearly 51, gay, and deeply and contentedly married for 20 years. I was catastrophically injured at the age of seven, and between the ages of 8 and 16, I was bullied relentlessly by other, older kids. I began M at 12, of course, like so many others. I had no access to P, but I DID have access to one of the most dangerous books ever published, certainly for gay men, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex, * But Were Afraid to Ask".
That book was my introduction to what it was to be a sexual being, and to be gay. It presents graphic and dark stories about bathroom sex, dangerous and criminal encounters, unstable and short-lived relationships between men, fetishes, explicit how-to's, and more. As an intellectual, introverted gay boy, I absorbed it all, and that was the basis for my fantasy life.
So that was the soup: deep emotional pain about my body, terror on the school bus, fascination with a new universe, and no one to talk to about it.
I came out in college, and within two weeks, I fell for another freshman. For a month or so, we spent long afternoons cuddled up in hugs and sharing secrets. He was a fundamentalist Christian, to boot, so he denied being gay. It was confusing, but he loved me, and I was starved for that kind of attention. To this point, the physical contact did not involve getting undressed or contact with genitalia or even kissing. And that was fine with me: I dreaded what he would think of me naked, and I wasn't ready for that, anyway. Yet one day, he said he wanted to go further. I said I didn't want to be undressed. He said that his mother always said that one could do anything in pants that had zippers. I finally said that considering all this, I didn't see how he could say he wasn't gay. And everything changed, like a bomb blast. God saved him in that moment, he said, and I fell apart.
It was THEN that the relationship became sexual. In a desperate attempt to keep him from leaving me, we had a one sided sex life. He only touched me once, and only briefly in a lame effort to jack me off. The rest of my romantic life has been shaped by that experience.
So to leap across the decades, I've never had trouble finding men who would love me, and none ever cared a fig about my body's scars, but I have never had a "normal" sexual relationship. I can't cum like other lovers. I have been more or less able to O infrequently and then almost always under my own hand...
...unless it was connected with the fantasies built on the book. So M in public places, strangers on the beach, phone and cyber, and eventually, P.
I met my husband in a sex chat room once, and it's really a beautiful story, but my addictions to dangerous behaviors continued well into the marriage. Finally, with the help of therapy, diagnosis of depression, and Zoloft (which put a huge damper on my sex drives and made it almost impossible to O) all of the outward expressions basically subsided. But With the medication, I continued to rely on P (just for a half hour or so, say) to help me get off. But I cut myself off completely from sex with my husband, which had been rare to begin with.
So we have never had a sex life. Deeply loving, fun, fulfilling in all sorts of ways, and even emotionally intimate, but no sex at all.
Until now. A year ago, shortly before my 50th, I realized that I didn't want to live the rest of my life without sex with my husband. I found a therapist who worked with me for months, and then with both of us for more months, and then last week something miraculous happened. Without telling the story about how it happened, the walls that had been isolating me from him collapsed in an instant, and suddenly, we were having sex, loving and fun, powerful in every way...except that I can't reach O, not even alone. And I've lost all of my connection with how it all used to work: I told him all my secrets, which dismantled all my coping strategies.
My head feels very strange: I have no pull toward P or M by myself, and everything feels wonderful. It's just not building to a climax. The blue balls are painful, but so far, I'm not descending into angry frustration like I used to, once upon a time.
So that's why I'm here. How do I recover the last stage of normal and healthy sex with my husband, something I've never experienced? (Rhetorical) If any of you have suggestions about this, I'd appreciate them. I want to be able to cum--or not--to have that experience of being carried over the top. I'll be patient, but I'm eager.
But I'm also telling you this story because something I never believed would be possible--that my whole brain and its relationship to sex COULD be rewired--indeed HAS happened. I offer it as a sign. The last week and a half has been wild and strange. I feel like I have a brand new boyfriend, but without any of the uncertainty about whether it will last. My body hungers for him, but it's different--whole body, but not frantic and not centered in my groin. I can go from not being particularly “in the mood” to fully engaged without any more stimulation than a kiss.
Anyway, thanks for reading. I don't have anyone else to tell about it, because our no-sex marriage has been our own secret. I can't tell anyone why our time in the cabin was quite so wonderful.
Stay strong. Keep faith. Wholesale reworking the brain is possible with enough support and hard work.
I've been lurking for a few days, and I find the stories and advice comforting. My story is long and complex, but I'm working to solve a lifetime struggle with DE.
I'm nearly 51, gay, and deeply and contentedly married for 20 years. I was catastrophically injured at the age of seven, and between the ages of 8 and 16, I was bullied relentlessly by other, older kids. I began M at 12, of course, like so many others. I had no access to P, but I DID have access to one of the most dangerous books ever published, certainly for gay men, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex, * But Were Afraid to Ask".
That book was my introduction to what it was to be a sexual being, and to be gay. It presents graphic and dark stories about bathroom sex, dangerous and criminal encounters, unstable and short-lived relationships between men, fetishes, explicit how-to's, and more. As an intellectual, introverted gay boy, I absorbed it all, and that was the basis for my fantasy life.
So that was the soup: deep emotional pain about my body, terror on the school bus, fascination with a new universe, and no one to talk to about it.
I came out in college, and within two weeks, I fell for another freshman. For a month or so, we spent long afternoons cuddled up in hugs and sharing secrets. He was a fundamentalist Christian, to boot, so he denied being gay. It was confusing, but he loved me, and I was starved for that kind of attention. To this point, the physical contact did not involve getting undressed or contact with genitalia or even kissing. And that was fine with me: I dreaded what he would think of me naked, and I wasn't ready for that, anyway. Yet one day, he said he wanted to go further. I said I didn't want to be undressed. He said that his mother always said that one could do anything in pants that had zippers. I finally said that considering all this, I didn't see how he could say he wasn't gay. And everything changed, like a bomb blast. God saved him in that moment, he said, and I fell apart.
It was THEN that the relationship became sexual. In a desperate attempt to keep him from leaving me, we had a one sided sex life. He only touched me once, and only briefly in a lame effort to jack me off. The rest of my romantic life has been shaped by that experience.
So to leap across the decades, I've never had trouble finding men who would love me, and none ever cared a fig about my body's scars, but I have never had a "normal" sexual relationship. I can't cum like other lovers. I have been more or less able to O infrequently and then almost always under my own hand...
...unless it was connected with the fantasies built on the book. So M in public places, strangers on the beach, phone and cyber, and eventually, P.
I met my husband in a sex chat room once, and it's really a beautiful story, but my addictions to dangerous behaviors continued well into the marriage. Finally, with the help of therapy, diagnosis of depression, and Zoloft (which put a huge damper on my sex drives and made it almost impossible to O) all of the outward expressions basically subsided. But With the medication, I continued to rely on P (just for a half hour or so, say) to help me get off. But I cut myself off completely from sex with my husband, which had been rare to begin with.
So we have never had a sex life. Deeply loving, fun, fulfilling in all sorts of ways, and even emotionally intimate, but no sex at all.
Until now. A year ago, shortly before my 50th, I realized that I didn't want to live the rest of my life without sex with my husband. I found a therapist who worked with me for months, and then with both of us for more months, and then last week something miraculous happened. Without telling the story about how it happened, the walls that had been isolating me from him collapsed in an instant, and suddenly, we were having sex, loving and fun, powerful in every way...except that I can't reach O, not even alone. And I've lost all of my connection with how it all used to work: I told him all my secrets, which dismantled all my coping strategies.
My head feels very strange: I have no pull toward P or M by myself, and everything feels wonderful. It's just not building to a climax. The blue balls are painful, but so far, I'm not descending into angry frustration like I used to, once upon a time.
So that's why I'm here. How do I recover the last stage of normal and healthy sex with my husband, something I've never experienced? (Rhetorical) If any of you have suggestions about this, I'd appreciate them. I want to be able to cum--or not--to have that experience of being carried over the top. I'll be patient, but I'm eager.
But I'm also telling you this story because something I never believed would be possible--that my whole brain and its relationship to sex COULD be rewired--indeed HAS happened. I offer it as a sign. The last week and a half has been wild and strange. I feel like I have a brand new boyfriend, but without any of the uncertainty about whether it will last. My body hungers for him, but it's different--whole body, but not frantic and not centered in my groin. I can go from not being particularly “in the mood” to fully engaged without any more stimulation than a kiss.
Anyway, thanks for reading. I don't have anyone else to tell about it, because our no-sex marriage has been our own secret. I can't tell anyone why our time in the cabin was quite so wonderful.
Stay strong. Keep faith. Wholesale reworking the brain is possible with enough support and hard work.
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