Love and sabotage

Fucking hell. Not sure where to start...

Cord and I had our first fight today. Although "fight" isn't really the wrong word, we just left off having hurt each other and both feeling hopeless, I think. When I left, he was sobbing. As I learned back in 2011 already, I need to take care of people. I need to make sure they're ok. Being shut out and having to leave felt terrible. However, I couldn't really see any other options. He said that if I stayed, he'd either feel forced to fake being ok, or I wouldn't be able to leave at all. Finding some sort of common understanding or patch on the issues, didn't seem like it was on the table at all. 

And I did need to leave eventually.. It was a 40 minutes drive, it was well past 9pm and I needed some sleep before taking over responsibility for the kids at 4am. I could easily have stayed for a couple of more hours, or planned to stay part of the night there or SOMETHING. But he didn't really give me that choice. We didn't talk about any such options. I was just told that I should leave. There was no hug, no common desire to work things out, not feeling of togetherness... I was just told to leave.

So I left. Didn't feel like I had much choice. Still feel terrible about it, though. Being made to leave him, when he was in that state, may have hurt our relationship more than anything else that has happened recently.

Why did we "fight" though? I'm not sure.. Several issues cropped up, and once we started digging at one we kept finding more. Lets see if I can list them all (and before I continue. Remember that all couples have issues. Issues in themselves are not a reason for relationships not to work. the question is what is done to try to work on those issues): 

0. Baseline: We're both fundamentally mentally injured, fucked up people. We have our histories, our troubles, and that makes it difficult for us to interact with other people. Difficult to trust other people. Including each other.

1. I feel fundamentally unable to "read" (perceive / intuit) his emotional state, his thoughts, his wants. This has been an issue from the start, but I thought it would get better over time as I got to know him more. That he'd open up more around me, be more relaxed, and that I'd get to know his reactions and patterns better... And it's gotten sliiiightly easier, but I still feel like I have no clue what goes on in his head most of the time. It makes me feel uncertain and worried.

2. He's demisexual, I'm closer to hypersexual. So our sex drives, while both present, work in reverse of one another. I get turned on first, then attempt to get sex going. He doesn't get turned on until well after intimate contact has begun. To me, that feels almost like a violation, like I'm making him do something that he initially doesn't want to do. And I really, really, really don't want to be abusive or manipulative.

On the other hand, if I wait for him to show clear signs of sexual desire before initiating anything, there won't be much sex at all. Oh, and he doesn't initiate sex, so that part is all on me. And if we just weren't to have sex, I could try to live with that... But instead, I keep hoping for it, looking for signs sex could be on the table, and never really seeing any such signs. That's.. Exhausting. 

3. He makes these little laughs whenever I do something that could be interpreted as going from non-sexual to sexual(ish) touch. So if I try and kiss him properly, or touch his body in a semi-sexual way or whatever.. He laughs. He says it isn't on purpose, but it's still hurtful. It feels as though I'm being mocked or laughed at. It makes me feel silly, and not in a good way. I've been sexually rejected by people I love enough times in my life, I don't want to willingly put myself in situations where I feel rejected and mocked again and again. And obviously, this laugh does not make it easier for me to initiate sexual contact with him. 

4. I don't really know how to turn him on. I know how to get him really riled up, when he's already turned on.. But I don't know how to get him going. Taken together with 2 and 3 here, I feel VERY uncertain when having sex with him. He says he doesn't really know either. I'm able to take pleasure for my own sake, to some degree, but it feels fundamentally unequal/selfish/borderline abusive, and that bothers me a lot. If people don't really want to have sex with me, I shouldn't be having sex with them. Full stop. 

5. On one hand he says he's almost always depressed and full of anxiety, almost always tired, and has a tendency to "space out" in social situations. He often has days when all he does is sleep. He's been suicidal several times before. He regularly talks about how he feels he shouldn't be taking up space in the world, how it's incomprehensible that someone would want to like him and spend time with him etc. He admits to needing more therapy. Whether he will be able to work full time, in the long run, is very much up in the air. 

On the other hand, he gets all hurt and upset when I say that I want to be considerate of his mental health, not put too much pressure on him, and that I perceive his current health as fragile. I'm also very, very hesitant to ask directly for sex when he's at his most tired and spaced out. Because I don't trust that he's actually present enough mentally to be able to give enthusiastic consent, he'll just go along because he wants to please me. He got hurt by my hesitancy, as he claims to always be able to consent. Which is excellent! It's just that I can't read him, so I don't feel confident that's true at any given time... And I already feel like half of an abuser, some of the time. Pushing him into having sex with me when I know he's mentally completely fucked is NOT what I want to do. I'd rather be safe than sorry in this regard. 

I've been very clear that I can't "carry" another person's mental health, I don't have the capacity. I want to be supportive and considerate, though, but it seems I don't know how. Because I just seem to hurt him. But NOT taking the precautions I'm taking, isn't an option for me as of now.

6. He told me he feels hurt and excluded when he sees me posting pictures or other stuff on Discord, but don't talk directly to him about it or send the pics to him. I tried to explain that first of all, I want to be considerate of his mental health. So I post it somewhere I know he can see it if he wants to, thereby leaving him the option of engaging if he's up for it, without the social obligation to do so. Forcing him to engage, when he's not mentally up for it, feels very rude and inconsiderate to me. Especially when it's something fairly mundane, and not very important. 

Secondly, I sometimes want/enjoy input from several different people, so posting it somewhere there are lots of people seems like a good idea. Copying it to our private chat is possible, but it would mean a few extra steps for me.. And it will mean I'll have to translate it to Norwegian (I think Norwegian people speaking English to each other in daily conversations is super silly). It seems unnecessary to go through those extra steps, when he can see it whenever he wants on Discord. Searching for posts written by a specific author is very easy to do, so he wouldn't need to read everything everyone has said. 

He didn't agree with any of my reasoning, and seemed upset that I was trying to be considerate (see 5, above). But on the other hand, he doesn't want me to feel obligated to share stuff either. So we were left at at impas, of him feeling hurt without me being able to fix it. If I start sharing that random stuff directly with him now, he'll be convinced that I'm doing it just because he asked me to. And then it'll have little-to-no real value. Also, he'd be right. I don't understand why he wants me to share things in two locations, when he's got full access to both. So double-posting would 100% be because he asked me to do so. However, since I love him I'm happy to do that for him.. But apparently that isn't enough. 

7. Another thing we didn't talk about tonight, but which in my mind belongs together with 2, 3 and 4, is that he doesn't perform oral sex on me. He said he was really interested in it, really into it, in the first few weeks we were together.. But because I was bleeding, we couldn't really do it. And then he backed out when I actually asked about it. It seems it grosses him out, but he didn't actually tell me this until he was on his way down between my legs. That made me feel betrayed and really hurt. He hasn't taken any initiative to try again, nor shown any interest in working on his issues regarding this... But that might just be related to how he doesn't initiate sex in general. Anyway, it's just another way we're sexually very different. And again, if I knew that it wasn't on the table, I think it would be easier for me to handle. But waiting for him to want to try again... It makes me uncomfortable. 

8. Another thing we didn't talk about today, but we'll have to talk about at some point very soon: Kink. Now, he'd told me before we got together that he was kinky. He'd told me that he had some experiencing being the dominant and top in a BDSM-dynamic. He also seemed willing to switch, just like he's verse when it comes to more vanilla sexual activities. At least that's what I understood. So I'd been really looking forward to exploring kink with him, seeing if he was someone I'd feel comfortable switching with and such.. I wanted to go with him to kink events, to play and enjoy ourselves. 

And yet... On one hand he hasn't shown ANY interest in any sort of BDSM-related activity with me at all (which frankly makes me question whether he's really that kinky). Nor has he tried to talk to me about it when we're not in a sexual setting. However, I don't think I can really play intensely with someone that I can't "read". So that's probably a moot point anyway... But it's just yet another way that our relationship isn't developing into what I was hoping it could become. Either I've fundamentally misunderstood his interest in- and experience with BDSM.. Or something else is up. I'm confused.

8. He seems to be sort of sabotaging this relationship. In written communication he oscillates wildly between on one side telling me about his mental health issues and how tired he is..and on the other side saying things like "I shouldn't be telling you this, you must really hate how I'm always whining, I shouldn't be taking up your time" etc. Like he's looking for Problems, and when we didn't have big Problems he started making them up. He keeps repeating and repeating that his entire existence is a problem and that he doesn't deserve happiness. I haven't agreed with any such nonsense, I love him and have told him that every step of the way... 

But those conversations make me wonder if that was what was happening tonight too.. Since I didn't "rise to the bait" on messanges, was this entire evening an attempt from him to sabotage our relationship? To somehow "prove" that he wasn't "worthy" of love? To make me leave?

Conclusion:
Looking at this list, the main "problem" is that I love him. If I hadn't loved him, we probably wouldn't last. However, I want to make this work. Because I love him. What I think we need is a LONG (probably several long) and very direct chat(s) about all the issues and differences we're facing. The big ones and the small. I'm sure there are more things I haven't listed here. Most of these are about him, after all, and I'm sure I have my share of issues too. 

I think we need to talk about- and try to work through all those things, and/or attempt to find solutions/fixes/patches to them.. (And hopefully without him staring off in the distance and no longer responding, which is what kept happening when we were talking today... I could never know if he'd heard me, or if he'd just zoomed out.) I love him. I WANT to put in the time, I WANT to make this work. I want to be with him, not just for a couple of months, but for many years. I just don't know how to get there.

And being thrown out tonight, when we'd started talking about all this and COULD have tried to work on it and reach some sort of common understanding, some sort of middle ground, some sort of solution or patch or fix... Being thrown out made things even more difficult, in my mind. I want him. I just don't know what I need to do to have him. 

And I'm not at all convinced that he actually wants to have a relationship with me, or if he's (on purpose or subconsciously) really trying to sabotage it. I'm not sure he knows either.