[TW : Boundaries being overstepped, Guilt tripping, cohesion, SA, sexual topics]

throwaway because I am deathly afraid of my own online presence and the way people perceive me.


I've always struggled with anxiety and panic attacks, but this topic has been bothering me a lot lately and I'd like some advice as to how to maybe better handle it. I'm in therapy since 1½ year and my therapist said that my connection to my body is skewed - also, English isn't my first language and the current US abortion ban does not affect my fears as I live in a European country in which abortions are still legal.


for context where a lot of the fear probably stems from.
[TW all of the above]


Roughly a year ago I (F) left an almost a year long relation ship in which I was constantly pressured into sexual activities by my then boyfriend. He made me belive I should be glad he even stayed that long with me because many people would've just left if they had to wait more than a few months to get into sexual territory. I was struggling to try anything sexual as I hadn't even tried things on my own and didn't feel comfortable being naked, neither with him nor alone. Ontop of that the general topic always felt weird for me because I never managed to ease my way into it.

He would use many ways to pressure me into either letting him do things to me or making me do things for him, a few times even to a point where I would be crying and he would complain about me making it difficult to stay hard for him. These type of things would keep happening, where he'd treat it like a problem we would have to fix, while guilting me by saying if he were in my position he would have just pushed through that anxiety for me. He often times would say how he does not know how long he can do this and once even broke up, which I later realised was only a method to make me go to more desperate measures to keep him around. 

Often times he would berate me if I told him any form of no or not today, telling me I always say no, or how he feels physically disgusting because I don't lust and thrist over him the way he did about me.

After almost a year of this I managed to leave, we did not have sex but tried it once, to which I stopped him, because I was having a panic attack. He had made me feel utterly disgusting throughout the entire year, made me struggle with always feeling egotistical. After the breakup he tried to contact me through any means he got to berate me and make me feel even worse.

The relationship overall was toxic to the brim and made me lose credibility in myself.




[TW Sexual topics]


After managing to break up I started hanging around one his ( at the time ) best friends ( Call him R ) a lot and quickly developed a crush. First I was unsure if that crush was just an attempt to cling onto someone for security, but after a while I figured out I had developed feelings. 

Although it was a stressful road and my now ex made it very difficult and started berating R at the time too, we started to bond a lot more and I am currently dating R since 11 month. 

Before we started dating I slowly managed to open up about the things that happened to both R and my best friend, which is the only reason I realised how terrible all these things were. This also resulted in R dropping my ex as a friend and made me feel bad because I at the time felt like I was a bad person speaking up, or even making the entire thing up because "it wasn't really *that* bad".

It's been going very well with R, he is incredibly loving and I love him so much, we did manage to have sex but lately anytime we try anything in that direction I start getting very anxious and zoning out into this just wait and it will be over type of state. The few times we managed to have sex didn't feel good physically ( because I wasn't experienced in anything penetrative ), but were nice on an emotional level.
I feel incredibly secure with him, he makes sure to go at my pace and I learned that he picks up any subtle sign of discomfort and reassures me it is OK if I want to stop, he doesn't push me to do anything and doesn't get upset if I tell him to stop, but rather just drops the topic and cuddles me.



Now the only issue is I can't manage to get myself aroused as of late, I don't consider myself asexual as the thought previously seemed very appealing and on some times I do manage to get aroused by it, but more often than not it gets shot down or converted into anxiety before I even bring it up to him. 

I have suggested that something might have triggered some past trauma to which he was very supportive and stepped back to make sure to cross no border, be it physical or emotional, but it bothers me a lot. I'm not scared he will cheat or leave for someone else, as I know that his last relationship was also not very active in that regard and he doesn't value sex all too high, yet I would like to bond more, including through things like that.