Not sure anymore what to do

Hi there everyone.... I am going to come off awful and selfish in this thread. But if I want candid honest responses, I have to bring the honesty myself...


A lot of you are familiar with my back story, but I’ll give it in brief.


Closeted whole life, married, had a kid.

Then at 36 I came out, took a lot of time to consider what I should do, then husband and I separated but very slowly made changes to our living situation. In the meantime I met a woman and fell in love, she was also coming out, married had 2 kids. At 38, last July I finally moved out from family home and my girlfriend and I started living together. 3 months later, her kids’ dad took his own life. And for nearly the last year we’ve just been dealing with this train wreck of circumstances.


I consider myself lucky, my partner is incredible, wonderful, I want to spend my life with her. But she’s grieving, and that impacts everything.


Ok her goes the asshole in me.


I’m nearly 40. I came out 3 1/2 years ago, and I only just started to feel joy in my identity, have sex that felt natural, feel desired by a woman, express desire to a woman when everything suddenly changed.


Her grief, it has impacted that experience drastically.


Before the gasps of shock horror, please let me say, I am dedicated and I am loving and patient and I have been giving and still want to give so much to this relationship. This woman is so wonderful, and I love her so much.


But I feel a bit.....so many words come to mind... conflicted, repressed, horny (sorry for the tmi).


I can’t stop my sexual life, I can’t end this journey here. This is not the way I want to live the rest of my life....


We have sex still, but based on our conversations, the way things are week to week, her mood and mine, my understanding of my sexual future with her ranges from very optimistic like, it will gradually come back to what it was or something equally beautiful, to something in the middle like maybe it will never be the same but it will get better, maybe it will take 5 years? And all the way to very bleak, like right, we will never have real sexual joy ever again.


It goes up and down currently, someone’s it’s almost like it used to be, sometimes there’s nothing for stretches of time.



Now, here’s the next level of asshole in me... I have a solution in mind, and thinking about it makes me feel extraordinarily selfish. I’ve been thinking lately, what if I could talk to her about having a little openness to our relationship? Not full on sex, but very heavy making out and grinding on girls in clubs? I mean well that’s how I visualise it on my head, approaching a girl in a club and making out for hours.


I have also considered what we can do within our relationship to meet both of our sets of needs, and those talks with her have been super positive, but the reality is ....she’s so sad and I just don’t think she has it in her to do the things we discussed on a consistent basis... we talked about her pleasuring me a few times a week, or giving me a hand when I do it for myself, when here are stretches of time where we don’t have sex.


I honestly have this on my mind the entire day and night every waking moment. It is not very different from the feelings I had when I first came out and found myself in an impossible situation with my (now ex) husband.


I feel stuck and selfish and I worry for my wellbeing in this relationship, which is supposed to be a lifelong monogamous relationship, at least that’s what we’ve been saying for some time now.


Ok, I’m ready for whatever you want to say, I feel pretty shit for these feelings but the truth is I just need to regain control of my journey in my sexuality... and I just feel a bit stuck right now.

 

Hi Nick, i feel like you understand pretty well what I’m feeling. The fact that this is where my journey just kind of stops, given that i have finally found a small glimpse of fulfilment is pretty difficult to bear. And as you understand this is about much more than sex, it’s about my identity, about finally coming to a place where I give myself what I need, where I am able to be true to this part of me.

I’ve read most of your posts, so I know you’ve opened up your marriage, but if you don’t mind me asking, what are the things you’re able to do with guys? How intimate can you be?

My partner would likely think this is awful and not be even slightly ok with it. I just feel like it’s getting to a point where I choose my sexuality or I choose my partner. I’m not sure I can have both. Considering I completely changed my life to be able to live openly and embrace my sexuality, it’s left me feeling pretty conflicted.

I love her so much, but I also feel that if I don’t consider these needs, I will not be ok at all... I don’t know how to move forward, honestly.

 

I actually don’t think I’d need to go further than what I described, but I think that would be too much for her.

Here’s the thing though...I think she wouldn’t mind having a break from worrying about my sexual needs, so theoretically, it would be the best thing for both of us, but she won’t be happy about it, so I’m just not sure what my options are. I want to find a way for us to both be ok.

 

I was expecting that someone who’s never read any of my posts would see this post as a horrendous horrible thing, and I’m ok with it because - well I know precisely how selfless, patient, loving and giving I am. I also know that the feelings I have about sex and my sexuality are valid, I have only just started to be able to express who I am sexually and by being in this life with her, I’m contemplating giving it up entirely for the rest of my life.

To answer each of your points/questions:

This happened July a year ago.

Everything you say about how deep and painful this is for my partner, I’m totally aware and in touch with that. My heart aches all the time at the pain she’s in. I feel it deeply and I show that through my constant dedication to our life as a family, it’s stressfful, exhausting and painful but I only show her love, patience and care, constantly. I have only started thinking about my needs roughly 3 weeks ago... as a human I finally cracked and started to consider the valid real feelings I also have.

In terms of helping her overcome her grief, i spend every night checking in with whet she needs, every day doing whatever I can to be a constant support for her. If you asked her she would tell you I am a rock and a total source of support for her. I never ask for my needs to be considered, until recently when we talked about the sexual side of things that I mentioned here, just a few days ago.

As proof if that, she asked me why she’s never known this all the time that she’s been grieving. And I said why would I bring up these needs all this time?

I put like100% of my energy into making her grief more bearable, that is pretty much what I do all day long. No matter how hurtful, difficult or painful, that’s what I do.

I totally put myself in her shoes all the time and I get all those feelings you mentioned, none of this is news to me, it’s something I’m aware of all the time. I don’t really struggle with being a shitty partner, I struggle with caring for myself. I haven’t mentioned in this post all the stress and pain I’m going through in terms of my own life stuff...I also have needs and feelings but I pretty much put most of them aside because I know how difficult all of this has been for her, so in answer to the part about putting myself in her shoes, yup, check, I do that.

For s the last parts, I don’t really need to be guilted into thinking that my sexual needs are shallow, this is about a very real, very valid set if needs that I’m struggling to deal with precisely because I do care so much about my partner that I sacrifice my needs for her, and this is a time in my life where this is particularly painful for me to sacrifice these particular needs. This hits a pretty deep painful part of my core, having the history I have of being closeted and not having ever been able to be myself in this way.

As you say her sexuality may never return... that’s scary to me, I want to be with her for life, but I also want to be myself in my life and for all of my future.

 

She was seeing a therapist, but now she’s not. She is planning to get on a waiting list though to go again, but I’m pretty sure it will be a long time before she gets into the system.

 

Well yes they are my own feelings to deal with, but plenty of people consider a variety of ways to deal with their sexual needs in a relationship, it doesn’t have to be as black and white as stay together without sexuality or break up. I don’t want to break up, but I do need to be sexual. If I could be sexual with her I’d rather do that of course. I never pressured her to do anything sexually, I brought up my feelings with her for the first time finally, and said if she feels able to, these are the things that would help. She said I’m so glad you told me exactly what you need, this is something I can do. And that’s what I mean when I say our talks have been super positive, because she gets that I would never pressure her, she gets that I care so much about her needs, I also know she cares deeply about mine. And she wants to maintain intimacy and romance and sex with me. So she felt what I suggested was a good thing to help us maintain that. But I also know, just simply from knowing her and knowing how her highs and lows go, that she may just not be able to do those things, she may just be too sad, tired or stressed. It hit home again last night because she was just so sad, I laid with her on the floor for hours holding her. It was just a reminder that the needs I have are something she can’t really connect to right now, and this is likely just going to be a case of either I put aside my needs for hers or well... I don’t know the alternative because I am not leaving her, I love her and I really don’t want to throw away our future.

We are in couples therapy. And I do think she and probably myself as well should be in counselling each on our own, we are both working on it for ourselves. We haven’t brought up sex with the couples therapist yet, we’ve only gone 3 times so far.

 

This is where I’m stuck - deciding what that means.
I’ve been feeling lately like I can’t maintain supporting her, going through the daily stresses of dealing with the children, worrying constantly about my daughter and about things with my ex, without considering myself at all.... we made so many changes once her ex passed which exacerbated all those stresses and a lot of those changes required me to give up *alot*. But I think that I can’t cope anymore unless I put some care into myself. This journey in coming out and finally being me has been so massive, I just feel like I can’t lose myself, I need to do something to be sure I don’t lose me in all of this. I wish I could just work out what I could do to make sure that doesn’t happen. I’m just stuck at this one point...

 

I do get why it *sounds* selfish, and I do get why it might *appear* shallow. But I also know that it’s not, I know that what I’m feeling is valid and that these are real needs beyond just normal need for a bit of sex.

We are in couples counselling.

 

This is why I posted here... I knew that some people would read this and think I’m a horrible selfish person but I also knew a lot of you would have read my whole journey, and would understand why this is something I’m struggling with and also know that I’m a caring giving partner.

I think the opening up idea is one that comes from desperation... I’d rather work things out with her to be in a better place together. I’m just struggling to work out how to do that with her, and particularly in how to be sensitive to her needs but not completely lose mine.