Sex and intimacy and power and thoughts and feelings

I may have written about this previously - was thinking this morning in the shower about different meanings / drives for sex.

For Nina, my perception has become that sex for her is all about control and power - about getting what she wants or proving her value ... and once she has what she wants, has established her power, then to continue having sex is degrading to her - like she is being used ... and therefor losing her power.

For me, it is primarily about intimacy, belonging, and having a sense of value, care, closeness, commitment, and mutual respect.

While I don't have the sex drive of a rabbit, having no sex, being denied it, or having it because someone feels sorry for me or obliged to offer it all add to my feelings of failure and worthlessness (which has effectively been the case for the last 9 years of our 14 year relationship / 12 year marriage ... and possibly more).

When I look back on my relationship with Nina, it feels to me like she stopped wanting sex once she'd hooked me - that it was a tool that had served its purpose ... for me, once I was hooked and committed to her was when I started wanting it more.

Of course maybe this is because I've never been able to offer her satisfying sex - a feeling of failure that I've written about before.

Sometimes Nina has said that when she was getting to know me, that she was scared for me - worried that some females would take advantage of my naivety / innocence to hook me in and just use me. When she says this, I sometimes wonder, given my perceptions about lack of intimacy in our relationship, if in her rush to "protect" me, she has done the same.

Of course, Nina defines intimacy differently - for her it is about being able to share thoughts, concerns, ideas and the like. By hiding mine here on this blog (which she knows about, but has probably forgotten about), I am failing to show intimacy and commitment in the language she understands ... but whenever I try to share or think about sharing my thoughts in spoken words, I feel like she's going to either go on the attack, go on the defense, or that it is going to add to her own sense of worthlessness ... in other words, it will achieve nothing positive, and may be toxic or harmful ... and as speaking them out loud is difficult for me anyway, I choose the safer and easier course.

Clickbait

Looking through the paper online the other day, the following click bait story caught my eye:
My husband and I had sex every day for a year

It's a story by a woman who had sex every day for a year and wrote about it, and the way that it made her feel better about her body and about herself.

Ov course, like most guys this caught my interest, and of course when I found an opportunity to mention it to her, she just grumped and rolled her eyes.

It's been 83 months now … nearly 7 years … and even sadder is that it was less than seven years from the first to last time we shared that sort of intimacy (and she is the only one), and also that the last time was after a couple of year drought.

I have no evidence, but it seems like an unmistakable conclusion is that I am a failure in the sack. More so since Nina was adamant in telling me that women enjoy sex … and not too long later stopped wanting to have it with me.

Sometimes I am left wondering if she was just leading me on.