We had another long and serious talk last night. I brought up a lot of the things discussed here, and when all was said and done I think we’re both feeling pretty good about the whole situation.
In no particular order:
I asked him about the nature of his masturbation, and talked about the desexualization of the act–according to him, it depends on the situation. Most of the time, it’s a pleasure thing, with fantasies and a pleasurable orgasm, for self-gratification. Some of the time it’s just a compulsive act, with a release but not as much of a sexual act. This is what was happening a few nights ago when he masturbated when I was in the other room. As it turns out, he was working on his presentation-which I can attest to-and the masturbation that happened then was for stress relief. I’m okay with that.
He says that it’s become much less compulsive than when we were apart. Before we lived together, it was more often just a compulsive act, his masturbation for pleasure has stayed about at the same frequency, but the masturbation for stress relief/boredom/killing time/whatever has dropped by about 80%. This makes a lot of sense to me, as before he’d masturbate three or four times a day. Since we’ve been together and, you know, in the same state and all, the frequency has dropped to about once a day, during the couple months we were having problems (more on that later), and since we had the talk a few weeks ago, he’s masturbating a couple times a week. A quick check of his Mozilla history shows this to be true. Is it sneaky/dishonest/whatever of me to check?
I asked him how he felt about this–is he happy with that frequency? Does he feel like he’s struggling to avoid it and like he’s working to control his masturbation, and so on? He said no, that he feels pretty good about it, since it also means we’ve been having sex about five times more often, heh. Also that he’s much happier in the last few weeks because I’ve been much happier, so that while the frequency itself doesn’t make much difference to him one way or the other, it’s making him feel much better because our relationship is good again. As far as the masturbation goes, at this point, it doesn’t feel like something he’s working to control, or something that’s always on his mind (I don’t know if I’m articulating this well, at all). I wanted to make sure he didn’t feel as though he was working to control a behavior and then feeling stressed or resentful or something for doing so. He says he does not, that controlling the behavior is something he’s conscious of, but not something that he feels he’s struggling to overcome, or that’s consuming his thoughts the way you’d imagine a drug addiction to be, or whatever. I’m sure none of that paragraph made much sense. The point is, he’s pretty happy with the frequency of masturbation as it is now, and it’s at a point where it’s not interfering with our mutual sex life.
For a couple of months, things started to get pretty bad–I started to feel as though we were living in the same house but that was about the extent of it. We hardly ever talked to each other, rarely had sex, it was mostly go about our own business and get into bed together at the end of the day, then promptly fall asleep. He agrees with this. We had that first big talk and things improved almost instantly. We have normal, everyday conversations again! And we play with each other and touch each other again, as in everyday kisses and hugs and back scritches and all of that good stuff.
I told him that sometimes, during the dry spell, I felt as though I was constantly asking for sex, and that it might have been a self-reinforcing behavior. I ask for sex constantly, he constantly turns me down because he’s too tired or whatever, which breeds resentment in both of us, leading to less sex. Then I’d feel like I couldn’t stop asking, because then things would die out entirely. He said he’s never felt pressured for sex, only sometimes that he feels bad that he can’t keep up with my libido. Things have drastically improved here, as I said above I’d learned to deal with that a while ago, and things are pretty equal in the instigation department as of the last couple weeks.
On the subject of my (lack of) orgasms, I asked him how he felt about that, and does it bother him? He said he thinks about it sometimes, that he wants to pleasure me and such, but it’s not something that makes him feel inadequate, or performance anxiety or something. And I gotta say, he’s very, very good at being attentive and responsive to what makes me, er, tick. He’s always been very conscious of finding out what works for me in bed, and doing All The Right Things.
I think things are going to be very good. I was feeling pretty good about things before, but then the other night when I thought he’d been completely lying about working on his presentation and was instead jacking off to porn for an hour and a half I felt hugely betrayed and as though he wasn’t trying to stop at all, that he’d just been telling me what I wanted to hear, or whatever. As it turns out, none of that is the case and, as always, I should have just talked to him about it the next day, instead of waiting a week. I really did feel bad about blindsiding him with it that night. At the time I felt like the spouse of a recovering alcoholic, who’s found a bottle of liquor stashed in her husband’s tool box, or something. Had I just brought it up and discussed it with him, he could have talked to me about it right then and there. Instead I smacked him across the face with an accusation, and slept on the couch, which rightfully made him shut down towards me.
Anyway I’m feeling pretty warm and fuzzy about things. I do greatly appreciate all the advice here, thank you.