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****Possible triggers… Control, physical control, sexual issues… ***
I have always felt bothered by the rare occasions that my partner used his physical strength to control a situation. They were few and far between and can all be explained away by just silly immature behaviour, being generally inconsiderate, not realising what he was doing. There are only 2 things that ever happened that bugged me for a long time afterwards and made me anxious One was an incident of a complete lack of consideration and care for my feelings and experience when I was particularly ill and weak after a fairly long illness. He was meant to be assisting me but was very angry with me at the time and I think that came across in his inconsiderate treatment of me which left me anxious and uncomfortable. He blamed me for not ever considering how the whole illness situation was affecting him and for not appreciating him. When I said how upset the incident made me he denied it, saying I was too ill to remember correctly.
The second thing I’m rely not sure what to make of. He had anxiety about sex and his sexual dysfunction for years on and off. During a time when we were working on this, I tried to initiate some intimate time (although I knew he might not feel like trying and prepared myself for rejection). He actually pinned my arms down so that I couldn’t continue to touch him and when I asked what he was doing he kept saying he loved me so much he just needed to cuddle as tight as he could. Being so much bigger than me, it was easy for him to trap me completely so I was very uncomfortable and unable to move. He did stop when eventually I said it was squashing me and he ha never repeated that. I often felt it wasn’t right for him to use his size ans strength to control me in that way, but then I always get I’d caused it by trying to initiate at a time when he was struggling with sex. Actually, the other strange thing that really upset me at around that time was him using a particular household object that he used as a comfort item and insisting he hold it between us during sex as it helped calm him. It doesn’t sound so bad but it prevented us getting particularly close and he would snuggle his face up to this object so as not to look at me during sex. Apparently I stressed him out and made him nervous (being an actual woman and not porn, I guess). Anyway, all that used to leave me feeling rubbish and I guess I’ve never really completely got past that.
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Those incident you describe were deliberately done to make you feel rubbish and to reinforce his power and control physically. It worked because you still remember those events. Don’t make excuses for him, he knew exactly what he was doing and when you spoke to him about it he lied and gaslighted you. Abuse often gets worse when we are sick and vulnerable like after the birth of a child. Abusers exploit what they see as a weakness. Using physical strength to control a situation is not silly immature behaviour. It’s part of the pattern of abuse and is not acceptable. Read Living with the Dominator by Pat Craven. Your partner sounds extremely abusive. Absolutely nothing sexual should happen without your full consent and that means without fear of consequences or being bullied and manipulated into doing something you don’t want to do. Using sexual dysfunction is no excuse. My ex made up all sorts of things to manipulate sex. It’s not acceptable and is sexual abuse. As victims we minimise their behaviour as a coping mechanism. Read back your post as if it was written by your mother / friend / sister. It really is abusive behaviour.
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What your partner is doing is most definitely abuse. The fact that he tried to make you feel like you didn’t understand him when you were ill, and saying that you didn’t consider his feelings, that is n**********c and a way to feed on your neurosis nature. He can see that by manipulating you, he will get a lot of significance out of it. I have had a very similar experience in the past.
Neurotic people will usually attract character disordered people, neurosis is not a bad thing, I am neurotic. But we do seem to attract those that will play and use our neurosis against us. Usually with character disorder does come n********m, a way to tell is that they will never accept responsibility for their behaviour, they will either blame the other person or the situation itself, they will never see themselves as the perpetrator.
As for sex, it is another way of making you feel less than, a way to control you and make it feel like you again, are to blame.
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I can relate to both of these. With the first, it was actually when my partner was yelling at me and trying to force me to go to a doctor during a pain attack that I realized that maybe he really is the source of our problems (as I had literally done nothing to deserve it). Yeah, one person’s physical pain impacts those around them–I get it–but it does NOT inconvenience them as much as the person who is actually suffering it. You are not a burden, and you are not responsible for his emotions about your illness. Your health or sickness is not a matter of his convenience. And nobody suffers your pain but you.
As for the other thing … my partner also is sexually inaccessible, and I too have broken self-esteem as a result. Nobody owes us sexual closeness or activity of any kind, and for what it is worth, it isn’t you (worth keeping in mind with respect to rejection). But likewise, you don’t owe him any particular form of physical contact either. You have a right to set your own boundaries as he sets his, so the pinning/forced cuddling thing sounds like an assault to me.
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Hey Myvoice,
“Neurotic people will usually attract character disordered people, neurosis is not a bad thing, I am neurotic. But we do seem to attract those that will play and use our neurosis against us.”
Wow, I can so relate to that. I’ve spent years desperately trying to behave less neurotically or find a different way to manage my neuroses, and then simultaneously feeling angry and lonely at being found so intolerable by my partner (who has reminded me over and over about how I should not be proud or defensive of my neuroses because they are not me).
It’s true that I’m not my OCD, but my OCD is a warped mirror of things that are important to me. ASD comes with a fair amount of neuroticism as well for me, but mostly because I don’t have a supportive environment (and I like being autistic, so that is a part of me, since I like it). Either way, I’ve only found that the neuroticism is a problem with certain people. With others, it is sometimes a point of connection, sympathy, and even laughter while dealing with the craziness of life.
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