Relationships End and Other Fears

Everything I know about relationships means that Dominus’ and mine will never last. At some point we will find that we no longer fit together like we once did. Is it logic or fear that is telling me that? Sometimes I’m not sure. I don’t completely believe it, but I don’t not believe it.

Part of me can’t imagine a reason for ever needing to leave, and that in and of itself scares me. We are both solidly committed to the growth of the other, of bettering the life of the other, and we are both poly, so I can’t see myself ever needing to leave him for someone else as there are other wonderful poly people out there and I’m sure some or many of them are compatible with me/us.

I read about people who have been together for long periods of time and I wonder how they do it. Maybe it is because all of my immediate examples of relationships just tell me that things don’t always work out the way they should. I’ve grown up with the idea that people fall apart and love isn’t always enough replaying over and over in the relationships I’ve witnessed. My experience of relationships is such that I question commitment.

I know this is typical, I do have a degree in Psychology after all and I’ve read about attachment theories and imprinting of relationship patterns and all of that. I can point out the way that this is both logical (for my brain) and fear-driven but it wouldn’t necessarily be logical for anyone else, because it’s the way my brain works. I also continually compare my relationship with Stian to my sister’s first big relationship, because in some ways they are eerily similar and even though in other ways they’re worlds apart it’s easier for me to see the similarities… that is a bit of a side-note though.

I feel like I’ve been running hot and cold lately, and I’m not sure what to do about it. There are some days when I can’t imagine my life without him and there are others that I can’t imagine being with him forever or even for long. My sex drive has been rather diminished lately, and I’m not quite sure of the cause. I’ve been playing with toys for reviewing, and we’ve had sex just not a lot recently, and not as much as I have been before.

It all comes back to my preset ideas about relationships as well as my general unhappiness with my bodily health and living in SLC. I’m working to change the two big things I’m unhappy with, but for an instant-gratification junkie like me it is difficult to have the two big things making me depressed both not being able to be fixed quickly. In order to change my unhappiness with my bodily health I’m having to change the way I think about everything regarding what I put in and do with my body, but the big changes will take a lot of time. In order to move out of SLC we have to wait until we have the money to do it.

As for my preset ideas about relationships… well, we’ve been living together for two years, we’ve been together for over three, and I’ve been thinking about that a lot, since we just had two of our anniversaries within the last month or so. My relationship fearing brain tells me that we have been together for a long time and that means our time must be running out. I worry that because we’re not having sex that means he no longer desires me, which means he’s growing tired of me, which means he may reject me, which means my fears about relationships ending are somehow validated. When in reality I know he is tired from working so much and that if I initiated sex we would have it, I’m usually the one who initiates and I haven’t been lately first because I haven’t been feeling very sexy, and now because I don’t feel very desired.

The catch, of course, is that because I feel he doesn’t desire me as much I’ve been pulling away from him. I’ve been not initiating sex even when I want it, I’ve been waiting to see if he will take the initiative while at the same time knowing that he’s tired from working his butt off most of the week and that he’s feeling me pull away which makes it less likely he will initiate anything, and my pulling away means that he pulls away because I’m pulling away… basically it’s a cycle that is never-ending until we talk about it and it’s hard to talk about when we’re in the middle of it.

That’s what this post is for, though. This is my way of processing the situation and getting to a place where I understand it enough to bring it up and talk about it. This is the first step towards change: realizing the problem on my side so that we can talk about it and come to a resolution. We talked a little the other night about things that have been bothering us, but we didn’t get to the heart of the issue. Most of our problems come down to the same things: we both have a huge fear of rejection and we both have highly developed defense systems. Put those two together and we get into these cycles which will go on until one of us brings it up. One of us meaning me.

Basically what I’m saying is: I need to go ask him to come into the bedroom on our new red satin sheets (which we have yet to fuck on) and play, touch, tease, flog, and fuck our brains out.