She's terrified of intimacy

[Concerned1]

I am dating a girl and we just moved in together. Generally everything is perfect. We are extremely compatible and attracted to each other physically. We have the same hobbies and we are inseparable. Her family loves me and mine her. The only negative thing is that she went through a period of promiscuity in college. She "dated" a lot of guys which basically means she was sort of being a single college girl and experimenting. She waited until she was 22 I think for her first time. She is normally a pretty conservative person. During this time she was heavier then she was before and is now. She slept with guys that were disrespectful to her. She was basically feeling down and low on self esteem so her way of coping with it was to seek the attention of men. This is not uncommon. We have talked about it, I don't judge her for it but she has acknowledged that is does affect her ability to enjoy sex. Sex has never been about pleasure for her. It was about self esteem. She has trouble believeing that I find her legitimately sexy. When we are having sex or getting intimate I'll tell her how sexy she is and she'll reply back "Oh yea? You think so?" and make a silly face and start laughing. She can't take herself seriously. She tells me that she is so in love with me because I treat her with respect. I call her out on things that annoy me or that I don't agree with. I'm not running around kissing her ass but I'm very respectful and I treat her like she deserves. The main problem is that she is a "pleaser". She has had plenty of sex but most of the time it was all about the guy. She keeps asking me what I want and how I like it. If I like to wildly thrash her doggy style and that's what I liked, she would gladly deal with the pain as long as I got off. The problem is she has no focus on her own sexuality. I had to bring her to the store to get a toy and she never uses it on her own. I give her an hour of foreplay on average to get her into the mood. Might be overkill but I'm truly in love with her and I want her to enjoy sex as much as I do. I can make her orgasm sometimes but most of the time she is very distant. She tells me how much she loves what we do. I give her massages, enless oral sessions etc. When I ask her point blank "how do you want it?" she really doesn't know. I'll make her orgasm from oral before I even think about sex. Then we'll have sex for another 30 minutes on top of the 30 minutes of oral. After 30 minutes she'll ask me if I'm done. I think she really does enjoy it in the beginning but then becasue of her lack of focus on intimacy she gets off track and her focus is on what's for dinner instead of trying to climax. I'm trying to be patient but it's frustrating. In one sentence she'll explain to me how she is sad and frustrated at how hard it is for her to orgasm sometimes and how if she thinks she isn't going to get there she just gives up. Then after the tears and the complaining she does nothing at all to explore herself or sexuality in general. She tells me all the time how she has never been with anyone like me before and how attentive I am to her body and how I am the best lover she has ever been with and how she tingles from head to toe when I kiss her. Then we'll be having sex and I have to stop and ask her to kiss me. She has trouble focusing on making eye contact and kissing which I think is one of the small yet crucial aspects of taking intimacy up to the pinnacle. She has a lot of trouble relaxing and will start worrying about when her package is coming in the mail or if she has enough gas in her car in the middle of sex. Physically I am doing everything that she could ever want. Mentally she is kind of out to lunch. She loves me and I know that, she comes flying in the door and showers me with kisses and can't get enough of me 99% of the time. But that fraction of our sex life she really withdraws mentally and it hurts her chances of really being connected with me and it hurts me to think that there is nothing that I can do to help her. I even print off articles about intimacy and love and sex and things and she reads them and agrees with them but then she still freaks out. How can I make her more comfortable? How can I stop her, a woman. from being neurotic? Is that an impossible task? (No offense women, haha I still love ya)

[carhill]

I'm going to take a wild guess that she was abused and/or neglected as a child.

 

It sounds to me like she's having sex but is not really there psychologically and emotionally. I fear (and hope I'm wrong) that she's acting, both in sex and affection, the way she thinks that she should, rather than how she feels. IOW, it's a cognitive process, not an emotional one.

 

I've seen a lot of this in my wife and it's been a big part of the difficulties in our marriage. She had a difficult childhood and appears to have no instinctive emotional awareness of intimacy. She can be intimate, but it's socialized/cognitive. Hard to explain but it just feels different. As in your experience, a cumulative result of "little things".

 

I think some psych help would benefit both of you. I know it helped me understand my wife better. It doesn't mean I'll decide to live with it long-term, but at least I can accept who she is today.

[Concerned1]

It's strange because she is an amazingly affectionate person. Everyone that she comes in contact with thinks that she is the nicest person ever. She is very loving and affectionate to her friends and me. She is enjoying it and I don't think she's really that far out there that she's completely out of touch but she is definitely suffering. She is definitely critical of herself about her past promiscuity. She loves the fact that I have been accepting of her and her past unconditionally. It's not unconditional though because I still get upset when I hear the stories. I'm not upset because I'm jealous of the guys or mad at her bad judgment but she never faces the past and acknowledges that people used her and she used them and that it caused her pain. She just wants to forget about it and move on. It's unfortunate because she is constantly stressed about little things. She uses every day burdens and small problems and stresses about them to cloud her thoughts. When we do have a serious talk she will often cry and feel extremely hurt about things and hug me and say how she feels bad. I usually do all the talking and when she does share anything it's brief and then she's so exhausted from just thinking about all this stuff that she says she's too tired and asks if we can stop talking. I think having a third party would be very beneficial. Sometimes you need to hear it from another source.

[carhill]

Research "masking personality" and see if you recognize anything...