Sex talk

Getting into the right headspace

After work, I had a couple of gummies, had a power nap, played a bit of piano, and walked the dog – all to get my mind into a space where I could have a potentially difficult conversation.

My agenda

I wanted to follow up on a few things that my husband had raised previously and that is touched on earlier in the week.

These being:

• He only went along with opening the relationship for fear of losing me.
• That I’d manipulated him into giving me the kind of sex that I wanted.

I needed to explore the nature of the manipulation and how he felt controlled. The paradox being that the kind of sex I wanted was the very opposite of being in control!

It took me a good while to understand how he felt controlled, but how it operated was both subtle and powerful.

Controlled by my own secrets

I had secrets. Secrets even I couldn’t face. I could not risk having them exposed. Therefore I avoided conversation.

I am also easily overwhelmed by data and emotions during difficult conversations.

Those are two big things controlling me.

However, by avoiding conversation, I prevented my husband from asking about behaviour from me that he found increasingly distressing. I was asking for rougher and rougher sex and he felt uncomfortable, be didn’t really know what was going on, and he felt quite inadequate. My refusal to engage in discussion about them was interpreted by him as a rejection, which he turned in in himself into his own self-harm.

I had the control because I controlled the dialogue.

The moment I lost control of the dialogue, my world (and his) begin to disintegrate.

Understanding manipulation

He felt manipulated because, when I lost control and all my truths came out, he realised that what I had shared with him about my kinks was just the tip of an iceberg.

He had felt adrift on water that was becoming more like rapids every day without any idea of what was happening.

Couple counselling

I said that maybe we could look to start couples counselling in the new year. That created a new issue about controlling communication.

He saw it as me dictating when we can talk.

I explained as best I could about my own hopes from couples counselling and why I want quite ready yet:

• In previous couples counselling, I’d felt ganged up on.
• I became horribly anxious beforehand, which meant that…
• I would shutdown frequently because the data (what was said) and emotion (how it was said) would quickly become overwhelming.
• Wherever I left counselling on the last (whether that was couples or my own), I’d almost instantly forget what was said.
• These days, I write down what I talked about, and I read it before the next session.

He was surprised by the first comment – that wasn’t something he knew.

The others made sense to him.

Missed opportunities

A couple of times over the last week or so my husband has said something about sex that caught me out and I didn’t respond to:

• He was thinking about asking whether I’d like to be edged for an hour?
• He was considering asking a couple near us whether they’d like to hook up with us sometime?

I don’t remember what the circumstances of these two things were when they were said, but I do remember feeling surprised and not knowing how to respond. Especially with the last one, since I thought that he’d ruled out an open relationship.

What I realised was that I could do the verbal equivalent of displaying an hourglass or little working spinner by saying “that’s caught me off guard, I’m just going to take a few moments to think about this”.

After he’s obviously said each of those things, I felt excited, but the conversation has moved on and I never got back to him.

Opportunities lost!

Feeling ok

Finally, I was exhausted. It wasn’t the longest conversation, but it was two hours on a Friday night!

However, I had expected it to be much more difficult than it was.

So this adds to my bank of good outcomes that enables me to build confidence.