Marriage

When two people are recovering from very different types of sexual trauma, what kind of life can they build together? Once I have emotional intimacy, particularly when sharing a home, I can no longer have sex with that person without horrible emotional and physical results. Joe (how I will refer to my husband) can’t see that I have real romantic and soul mate type adoration for him; he says we are “friends” only. Last night he said “I can’t do this anymore.”

He has just quit smoking and has horrific insomnia and what seems to be something on the bipolar spectrum, with bouts of extreme energy and motivation alternating with severe depression. I know ptsd can mimic this, with energetic being his “normal” self and the depression being when he is triggered by something or suffers insomnia. I understand this but it doesn’t make it easier.

When we try to have sex, which for us is only a sad facsimile in order to satisfy what of course are very natural, normal and healthy feelings on his part, the black snake in the pit of my stomach returns, just like the one I described in my first entry. It makes me want to curl into myself to protect that little girl inside me; makes me want to die. DIE. Since DJT was elected (very triggering for anyone who has been abused) and I told Joe my deepest darkest secret regarding my father (not physical abuse, still) I have been unable to do even that and any discussion of it or the one or two times we’ve tried I’ve suffered a migraine – oh yeah, I have chronic migraine disease which has been much relieved by a new drug for which I’m in a clinical trial – that has been so severe as to knock me off my feet for days.

Last night he said “I can’t do this anymore.” I know I’m repeating myself.

I can’t understand why he thinks that just because I’m unable to have sex I don’t really love him in a romantic way. All of a sudden, without the sex, there is no marriage. I get that it is a huge problem. We are finally going to get couples therapy, starting soon. But why in the world, knowing everything about my past, would he think that since I can’t have sex I DON’T LOVE HIM ‘THAT WAY’???  He wants to pull away even more. He wants to label our relationship, now, as a friendship. I know I’m repeating myself.

I know he has his own trauma, physical, for him. Incest. Abandonment. Horrible emotional abuse by a stepfather that made him hate the fact, as if he didn’t already, that he is a man. He has insomnia like nothing I have ever seen, and restless leg syndrome which affects his whole body and seems like seizures, and no drugs help. He just quit smoking. A recent EKG was a mess.  I know I’m repeating myself.

But to me, none of those things are an excuse for how he talked to me last night, how he talks to me – it’s all via texts – every time he slides into a downward spiral that comes with the insomnia.

He said he can’t do it anymore, but for the first time, I feel like I can’t do it anymore.

*Update: Joe and I are communicating and doing fine. We broke through some more layers of the abuse I suffered and my reactions to it I still have as an adult. He will always go through these phases of insomnia that are problematic, and I will always pull away to protect myself, but we will get through it together. Our first therapy session is Tuesday.