All through my life I have been in relationship after relationship where our sexual relationship started off passionate and great. Then gradually (as we got closer emotionally) my partner would be less interested until finally sex wasn’t happening anymore. Then shortly after the relationship would come to its end.
I think the first pattern I had was that I always got involved with women that were not on the same page spiritually, emotionally, or physcially. (The Big Book says the these areas need to be in place for a long lasting healthy relationship.) The second issue was that I would become sexual way too fast when the emotional and spiritual areas weren’t there yet. I always compromised my values for sex.
As I experienced for the first time, a truly healthy relationship, I met my best friend. I started to get vulnerable and so did she. Before we became sexual she knew my fifth step and I could share my darkest areas. That had never been before. We would also pray together and were aligned with the same values. She was in Al-anon for 8 years and loved recovery as I did. It wasn’t ‘wishful thinking’, it was real. Many times in my life I would meet someone that would be interested in my recovery and be very interested in the principles I live by but never own them for themselves. I would say to myself, ‘Someday they will be who I want in a relationship.’ I would wait and wait and that day never came.
So now I am in a relationship where the alignment is there and we are moving forward, however, our past sexual abuse and addictions started to play their role in our relationship. Just like past relationships she started to not want to be sexual. Fortunately, we decided early on that counseling would be the route for a successful relationship. We weren’t having problems but knew that we didn’t want to hit the same walls of our past. Thank God.
So as the sexual issues started to come up, we started dealing with them. I never knew there was a such thing as ‘sexual anorexia’. It’s a real disease. She was scared of feelings that would come up during sexual experiences so in her mind the problem was sex and so, not being sexual was the answer. Anything that could arouse me, was also stopped. Healing all of this has been a tough road. We need to stay open and together every step of the way. We have gotten through the brunt of this to date, and our sexual experience is much better but it’s taken a lot of tears, pain and heartache. I finally realized that it only makes sense that I would attract an anorexic as I am an addict. This is a beautiful experience that I would not change for the world. Our goal is to be close to each other. When we are emotionally, and spiritually connected it enables a natural, healthy sexual experience that I wouldn’t trade for the 1,000 of my best sexually addicted experiences.
Good to read of other men committed to working through this. It was easier to ignore this problem when I wasn’t sober, but now that I’m more present in our relationship, I can’t pretend like it doesn’t matter. You said “Anything that could arouse me, was also stopped.” I find this too – my wife is very threatened by me simply being aroused.