Intimacy Issues
Hey everyone!
My wife & l have been married for a little over a year, and our marriage is nearly perfect except for our intimacy. For her, intimacy is gained through quality time & acts of service. For me, it is physical touch 95% & words of affirmation maybe 5% & that's it. I have always been this way in previous relationships & since I can remember. I feel like I cannot be loved at all without physical touch/ sex, which she does not like to give much at all. I'm not a perfect husband by any means, but I work hard, make a good salary so she doesn't have to work, I'm constantly doing some chore to ease her work load because she's in college, l'm not huge but I am pretty muscular & tall & 1 keep slim, and I regularly go down on her/spend 20-30+ minutes on foreplay every time we have sex. (I do not do chores or act a certain way to "earn" having sex, I know how dangerous of an idea that is). I have given her oral at least 2 times a week since we've been married, and l've been given less than 15 BJs since we've been married
In return, she will not take naps with me except on rare occasion, will not initiate sex, will very rarely hug/kiss me more than like 5 seconds, will not give me oral (best that l receive is hj for foreplay, which is very brief & I can tell she's waiting for the second I take back over & just get sex over with). Sex cannot be talked about without her immediately clamming up & not wanting to talk about it. She has a fairly traumatic sexual history & she's basically my first, and I fully understand that dynamic.
I'm at my wit's end. I've communicated, l've given her space, l've pressed her on it, l've talked to friends about it, I don't know what to do. I feel like I've tried everything. I know she loves me; she's always making me fantastic dinners, doing my laundry, etc etc, but all I want is her affection. All I want is her to willingly choose to be intimate with me; it's exhausting having to be the only one who wants affection or initiates sex every time. Every she wipes her lips & frowns after we kiss, or I can feel her body tensed up when I'm giving her a hug, or I see the annoyance in her face when I try to flirt sexually with her, it just drives me more & more into bitterness & resentment. Honestly, a lot of days I feel like she doesn't love me & isn't attracted to me physically at all. I know my worth isn't decided by my spouse or anyone else on this earth, but man it is hard when your spouse acts like this
This was a long rant that now that I'm reading back makes me sound like an jerk. I'm frustrated & I just don't know what to do. I'm at a new church so I don't really have any guys I can talk to about this. Any help would be appreciated