Card29 VII

[Card29]

One bit of info from the chaos of the last few days that I wasn't able to respond to was my WAW's comment that in our early days, she felt like she needed to perform with me (frequency, variety, etc) in order for me to want to stay with her. I had no idea she felt that pressure, and it was not necessary from my perspective. I loved her because we just clicked. The time I spent hanging out and talking with her were my favorite times of anything else in my life at that time, and I was generally happy to begin with. From the start, she understood me better than anyone I'd ever known, even my own parents and siblings. I was swept up with that.

The sex actually was almost a negative for me at first. I was a virgin and intended to wait until marriage, and I was perfectly content with that. I actually felt pressure from her to have sex...I didn't feel abused or anything, and as we started doing more and more things with each other, I became more open to premarital sex. But I was never super comfortable with it. Our sex life started to decline before we were even married, but I was okay with the lack of sex because I figured the less we did before marriage, the better. So I never even wondered why we were struggling. The distance had already begun...by then we were in our apartment together, and I was looking at porn at night in the living room, then sleeping on the couch out of shame.

Reading through some of the emotional needs books, I definitely think I have a higher preference than most men to affection. Obviously most of us need it to some degree, but instead of my primary needs being Sexual Fulfillment and Recreational Companionship, I think my top two are Affection and Recreational Companionship, with Sexual Fulfillment a close third. Until this week I wasn't able to understand how WAW and I could have the same top EN (Affection), but not fulfill each other. I won't pretend to fully understand already, but I believe some of it can be attributed to distance/lack of communication due to shame & clouded perception of intimacy due to porn use on my part, and (I believe) lack of self-esteem, quick self-judgment due to depression on her part.

Thoughts? And how should this communication look in a convo with her? With everything we talked about the previous 2-1/2 days, I want to give her plenty of time before furthering the discussion, unless she initiates.