Greg1956 wrote:It seems to me that your anxiety is the result of your wife. It sounded like you were fine and your dick worked well until her freak out episodes and then you began doubting yourself. I hope she will go to counseling with you. If you go alone and tell your therapist you have these issues, I think it may be a losing battle if you still come home to more freaking out.
Couples need to build each other up so I think you could imitate it. Maybe if she sees what you are doing for her she will feel obliged to help you, too. Ask her what she wants so you can do it rather than having her break down for things like you not paying enough attention to her boobs. Open communication is a two way street and she needs to help you feel good about yourself, too. Does she worship your dick like she wants you to do with her breasts? Talk to her about your feelings.
Wishing you all the best.
Dead on the nails correct, Greg. Exactly.
To the original poster:
You're either in this thing together - or you're not. That simple. And the "we're in this together" part isn't window dressing or a catchy turn of phrase, like the stuff people say because they know they're supposed to say it. If you're in it together, then there's reciprocity, as Greg correctly notes. You BOTH have accountability for the relationship and for sex. Both of you have the capability of making things positive and good, or making things bleak and shitty. Which do you endeavor to have? Which does she want?
Listen, no one else has said it here yet, so I'll lean out there and state, as kindly yet as bluntly as possible (not always easy for me, sorry) something I think is unaddressed and glaringly obvious from your initial post:
Your wife really...really...needs to be in counseling.
With an extremely capable therapist.
It is absolutely not normal to hit oneself.
it is absolutely not fucking normal to bite oneself.
In any context.
Maybe you need to be in front of a good therapist, too, and that can do nothing but help. So that's a good thing that you've thought this, and that you've taken the initiative for yourself. Just do not take on the accountability fully for what's going on here. Don't. Your wife is culpable and responsible here for her own actions and for her own demons and for her own initiative (or, willful lack thereof) in dealing with them in a healthy manner. You cannot fix other people. It's tempting as hell to try. But you just can't.
Just...process for a moment what we're talking about here.
Hitting and biting oneself is actually, unequivocally, not the mark of a reasonably adjusted adult. It's actually the hallmark of an ill-adjusted, selfish, angry and petulant fucking child looking to sloppily get their way. Not an adult. Not a wife. Not...an equal, loving partner who is "in it together" with you. What's she frustrated and angry and unsure about in her life? I don't know. Bet you anything it's not you. It sure sounds like it precedes you.
I'm not a shrink. I'm just a guy reflecting back to you an observation, for whatever it may be worth. Normal healthy relationships do not consist of one partner physically harming themselves (whether they actually mean it or not, this isn't the major point). Maybe she is so ill-equipped to have a healthy interaction with you that she just flails wildly and genuinely wants to hurt herself. Or, maybe she is psychologically craftier than that, and she doesn't want to really hurt herself at all, but just thinks that she will get more attention from you because of her seemingly harmful outbursts. Either way, same glaringly dysfunctional result. She's putting the spotlight egotistically brightly on herself..."LOOK at ME, LOOK AT ME!!!!!!!" and in the process is (really ironically) leaving her own shit horribly unaddressed. And make no mistake, man...she has some deep, unaddressed shit. I don't know what it is. Maybe you don't know. Possibly she doesn't know.
Until your wife deals with...like...deeply, seriously confronts and reconciles whatever her own demons in fact are...I don't reasonably understand how you can remotely hope to have consistently satisfying sex with her (much less, lovemaking). There is no trust in play here. You have a vulnerability you're manifesting, physically, in the face of the massive anxiety associated with penetrating her, and with sex more generally (because god knows what will please her) if you don't say precisely the right things about her boobs. And if it's not the boobs in that moment, she'll find something else, some other area where you...you...have not done the precise right thing to undo her broken sense of self.
If it's not boobs it'll be hair. Or her hips, ass, baby toe, it can be anything. And it'll be not specifically about that thing, of course. It will repeatedly be about what she didn't get...how she was wronged...how the world and her husband don't understand her...or are against her...or don't make her feel just pristinely nourished every waking second. It'll always be about how she's been done wrong by some outside entity, by some callous third party. Very convenient, that. It entirely removes her from the equation. It very conveniently turns the mirror away from herself and points it at others. No need to work on or correct what is so obviously (to her) the blithe disregard and inconsiderate nature of others. Always others.
So you show a vulnerability. Which is what healthy couples feel freed and able constantly to show one another. And what is her reaction? Support? Conversation? Calmly asking questions tied to the loving curiosity health couples exhibit? Trying to introspect and ask herself what is maybe her role and her part in these things? Endeavoring to find common ground with you, together? Um...not so much. Instead? Freak the fuck sideways and escalate everything to the point of melodramatic physical harm.
Not.
Good.
I'm sorry to rant here, and I'm open to some other line of thinking, and the list of shit I don't know about this world remains LONG...but honest to god, man, you could have the iron-hard, on-demand, always ready for anything robo dicks that those of us with implants have...and that would NOT remedy what you are up against. You'd be able to predictably fuck your wife. Sure. But you'd still have zero trust for your wife's mental state and for her co-equal commitment to your partnership. If you think that predictably, reliably, efficiently penetrating your wife solves her problem, I think you are going to be extremely frustrated and disappointed over the long term. She's very obviously got some deep conflicts and issues to figure out. That point cannot reasonably even be argued here, based on what you shared. Until she methodically and honestly prioritizes those things inside herself, you're both just stepping on eggshells hoping for her not to fly off the fucking handle.
You think your post was about sex.
I think it's about something entirely unrelated that your wife holds in some deep, dark abyss of her psyche. Sex? No. Sex is just a convenient, obvious, and lazy easy flashpoint for her to piss and rant.
Dude, it's something ELSE.
I encourage you to have whatever calm, but pointed, and specific conversation with her which you can find your way to having. You want her to see that there is an upside and a positive motivation to moving forward more productively. And it's entirely likely she will feel angry if you tell her she needs to go to therapy and figure her stuff out. So what? She's angry already. Let her be angry on the therapist's couch while she's getting some positive work accomplished. And yes, there's probably a couples therapy component here somewhere down the line. But until she gets her own fucking house in order, and take on ownership for her own gaps and challenges and shitty behaviors and the underlying things driving those...you're merely a spectator. A spectator worried about his dick, while meanwhile his wife is so insecure she's biting herself. WTF?
I realize there are always two sides to things.
But as you described it?
This chiefly isn't about you, man. It's just not.
Sure as hell isn't about your dick on any given day, not with this other wifely dysfunction as the canvas you're living your life on.
Get her on board with serious therapy. If you love her...really love her...do what you can to persuade that to happen. But she's got to step up and want to. She's got to want a different way forward.
