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Dying over Here

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June 24, 2003

Question

dear Dr. Love,

My boyfried and I have been together for 1 yr -- 4 mos today! We have the same fight over and over again about the lack of love making. I want it, he doesnt seem to. His ex girlfried of 3 years was a virgin and wanted to wait until she was married. He remained celibate for those three years. He kept himself from going crazy by watching porno. He works 65 hours a week and has his own business. So his stress level is very high.

I try to make things easy for him when he comes home. He will sit and watch sports until he falls asleep on the couch. We are best of friends and have a great relationship, except for in the bedroom. The amount of times we have sex is MAYBE once a week, usually on a Sunday. I hate premeditated sex, I want romance, different positions and rooms. We always go to bed on Sunday and that's where it happens.

I recently found a porno he hid from me because he knows it makes me upset when he watches it. I have a problem with giving oral pleasure because I have a bad gag reflex. Pornos makes me uncomfortable, but I am up for trying new things like watching it together. I have attempted giving him oral pleasure and I was okay. He doesn't, and hasn't orally pleased me in over a year. It bothers me when we don't have a sex life, and he's watching porno and hiding it from me.

I feel like I'm going to dry up. Or maybe I don't turn him on. He says he doesnt know what the problem is. Sometimes porn turns him on, sometimes not. He doesnt know if it's because of his stress level, or because his previous girlfriend messed him up. He told me that If I orally pleased him, that would help. I tried, like I said, nothing has changed. He says that if I didn't come home in a foul mood, then maybe he would be turned on by me. He gets home after me! All I know is I love him and want to spend the rest of my life with him, but I need a sexual relationship.

I feel like I might turn out to be one of those wives you see in the mafia movies, where the mafia wives are supposed to be pure and innocent, and the side girlfriends are the seductive and sexual ones the mafia husbands play with. What can I do? How can I fix this. I love him, I don't want to lose him over this, but I need to think of myself a little. I am dying over here.


Answer

You guys are in quite a bind. The first thing that struck me was that your guy chose to be with a woman that he knew didn't want sex. You say he tolerated the celibacy, but maybe it's more accurate to say that the situation with her met his needs and that he actually preferred solo sex with a porn video. I am all the more convinced that this is his preference since he is repeating the same behavior with you who is ready, willing, and able to give him sex.

He needs to see that he is the author of his life. He is the one who works himself to exhaustion, so he has no desire for sex. He is the one who watches porno and hides it from you. In order to resolve this problem, you need to start from the premise that no pattern exists unless it's meeting needs on both sides. He needs to study what he gets out of avoiding sex with you (through porno, hiding in front of the sports channel, and working himself to exhaustion).

Is he afraid of becoming too intimate. Does that fear conceal a deeper fear of being engulfed (did he have an overbearing parent)? Is he afraid to become close and then lose you if you were to die or leave him? He has a lot to understand about the motivations behind his behavior. He also needs to figure out how he wants you to feel about his behavior.

On an unconscious level he must want you to feel hurt, frustrated, angry, and rejected? That would be the natural reaction to his behavior and he needs to understand why he'd want you to feel so upset. I got the impression that your boyfriend is actually quite angry. He blames you for coming home in a foul mood, says that if you gave him oral pleasure he would be different and on and on.

The bottom line is his behavior is withholding and withholding behavior is fueld by anger that isn't being directly addressed. People who withhold as a way of venting anger learned this pattern during the formative years and it's not easy to break. He needs to realize that each time he withholds he is releasing his angry feelings, but not becoming aware of them.

The only way to break the pattern is for him to begin to own his feelings and stop discharging them in this way. To help him access his anger you might say,'When you withhold sex, you know that it makes me angry. The only reason why you would want me angry with you is because you are angry with me. What am I doing to piss you off?' If you can get him talkng about what's infuriating him, you are on the path to breaking the sexual withholding pattern.

- Doctor Love

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