You seem to have a very strong understanding of how he feels now. But it's going to take him time, and his feelings of strangeness when you make love are nothing but conditioning--you've conditioned yourselves by simple repetion over time to understand that making love is very unusual for you and you aren't in a sexual relationship. Of course it's going to feel abnormal and weird when you make love--at this point, it IS abnormal and odd, in the purest sense of those words (with no negative connotation implied.)
For him, having sex with you IS weird. It's not normal. It breaks his pattern--no matter how much he hated that pattern--established over the last ten years of his life. In a very real sense, he's trained for rejection, not for making love to his wife. You probably feel it too, don't you? You've been trained in the same way, except that maybe you didn't agonize about "rejection" or think things like "why do I disgust him so much?" I would bet that he did, and so was more aware of the pattern the two of you had established, thus more heavily imprinted and his behavior modified to a greater degree.
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And on my side, I don't understand how I spent so many years in denial, and avoiding the situation. This would have been so much easier when we were younger, without the years of hurt layered on it. Why wasn't I able to stand up for us? Why did I choose to hide myself rather than fight with my spouse?
Dancequeen will think I fell on my head, but: Why didn't HE fight for you both? Why didn't HE stand up and say something you couldn't ignore, something like "Either this changes or I leave"? Your reasons are probably similar.
You didn't do this all by yourself. I'm not sitting in judgment of your husband, mind you, but I've been more or less in his shoes, and I'm asking myself these questions, too. If he's not, he will someday.
Silly? You seem to be going through exactly what I put my husband through....I could really use your help in trying to figure this all out. Are you willing?
