I (18f) had intimacy with my (19m) boyfriend a week ago that I fear might’ve ruined us forever. I knew he wanted it and I didn’t particularly want to, but it didn’t bother me so I just let it start. We were both drunk. About two minutes in, I started crying silent tears. When we switched to missionary he saw, got freaked out and immediately stopped, and I became a mess. I started heavily crying and it escalated into a panic attack where I couldn’t breathe and just kept repeating “please don’t go”.
Now, a week later, we’re starting to do better. We talked about it in depth and understand why it happened, and we’ve done other intimate stuff since then (just not sex). Yesterday we decided to try again, and I was feeling great during foreplay, but then sex started and I didn’t like it. I just let it finish and managed not to cry, but afterwards I went to the bathroom and silently cried there. I then dried my face and didn’t tell him. We spoke afterwards about the fact I didn’t really like it, and he was very understanding. He said we wouldn’t try it until I figure out what’s going on and feel ready, no matter how long that takes.
Does anyone know why sex would all of a sudden be bothering me like this? My boyfriend and I have done this many times before, no problems. I haven’t had any trauma happen related to intimacy, and my partner and I are in a great place. Any thoughts would be helpful.
Comments
Give yourself time and consider seeing a professional maybe to unpack some of this.
It’s totally normal and if this is your first anxiety/panic attack, it’s normal that you don’t know how to handle it. Just take it as is – a single instance and bad moment, you can get over it.
Go to a psychologist and not a bunch of redditors this early in the morning for advice
Abandonment issues?
Well, the first thing is that you’ve talked to your partner about it, and he seems by your words, supportive and understanding. If you’ve expressed and reassured that he wasn’t the cause, then the next step is maybe consult a therapist. You didn’t say that it was so much…physical discomfort but the emotional freak out. Now this is my opinion, but if you’ve a past or..something traumatic happened..then it’s possible that your subconscious kicked into a fight or flight mode that you just got to unpack..slowly. and if you’re boyfriend is understanding and willing to work with you through it..you just dial back the intimacy to what you can handle until you’re confident and willing to try again. Good luck op
Number one, as soon as you feel that you dont want it, STOP doing it. Your boyfriend seems really nice and like he wants to make you feel comfortable. Continuing to perform isnt doing anyone a favor. You’re traumatizing yourself worse by trying to be “good” and sit through it, and youre going to make him afraid as well
Go to a psychologist please
So I would approach this in two separate ways.
As others have suggested, counselling is a great way to understand what is happening and why. There is no shame in it and you may just be suppressing something very mild that is manifesting into a physical reaction.
Your post comes across very positively about wanting to have that physical relationship with your partner and that foreplay feels great. This by any standards is very healthy and add to the fact you have great communication with your boyfriend you shouldn’t worry too much. Something that worked in my relationship was my wife took total control of all intimacy for a while. The feeling of having no control was a real emotional trigger for her and her reaction was much the same as yours but by her having full control for a while she got to pace herself, relax and set the narrative. We would discuss sex openly and her real trigger was that sex involves giving yourself to somebody completely and can expose all your flaws. That’s not always an easy thing to do and takes time.
I will add one final thing about point 2. It takes time to learn to take control and may not always seem natural for a woman as my wife and I discovered. Laugh about it all you can and if you have any worries that your partner won’t like it… I promise you he will. There is no greater feeling as a man than seeing your partner enjoying sex with you. It tops any weird and wonderful karma sutra positions you may be able to do or any individual physical act.
Good luck
Have you been assaulted?
It’s probably something simple like you’ve worked yourself up into worrying about having a panic attack, so obviously you’re not gonna enjoy it Obviously you have to be relaxed and want to do it I would just stick with the foreplay and not the actual main event
You can say stop at any time hun.
For some women it’s a huge thing to have a man inside- it will stir you; but with wee baby steps (of PIV) IM sure you’ll be fine. Especially once you start cuming 😍
> I had a panic attack during intimacy and can’t go back
Here’s a 2 minute test you can take. It let’s you know roughly where you rank in severity (if it comes back relatively low, it might be social anxiety, for example).
Here are a few things that you can do to help you with anxiety. It comes down to meditation, breathing exercises and using apps to reduce your anxiety.
You can double check if it is indeed anxiety here: 11 Signs and Symptoms of Anxiety Disorders
If you feel anxious right now, open this image in a new tab and start breathing in and out in the rhythm of the image. More about box breathing.
If you currently consume a lot of caffeine (in coffee or soft drinks), stop that. Caffeine is known to cause anxiety
The best and quickest way to deal with anxiety, is to face your fear if possible.
If you always avoid situations that scare you, you might stop doing things you want or need to do. You won’t be able to test out whether the situation is always as bad as you expect, so you miss the chance to work out how to manage your fears and reduce your anxiety. Anxiety problems tend to increase if you get into this pattern. Exposing yourself to your fears can be an effective way of overcoming this anxiety.
The experience of anxiety involves nervous system arousal. If your nervous system is not aroused, you cannot experience anxiety. Understandably, but unfortunately, most people attempt to cope with feelings of anxiety by avoiding situations or objects that cause the feelings. Avoidance, however, prevents your nervous system from getting used to it. So avoidance guarantees that the feared object or situation will remain new, and hence arousing, and hence anxiety provoking. Even worse, avoidance will generalize over time. If you avoid the elevator at work, you will soon begin to avoid all elevators, and then all buildings that house elevators. Soon enough, you’ll be living in a prison of avoidance.
If your anxiety is situational and not too extreme, you can try to address it through exposure therapy. You slowly expose yourself to situations that you know gives you fear. Here are two easy to follow guides on that. The one regarding spiders, is a blue print, you can replace spider with anything, fear of driving, fear of using a phone, anything.
Overthinking:
For the below advice, use technology to your advantage. Take your phone and set repeating alarms, with labels of what to do. Train yourself to either snooze or reschedule the reminders if you can’t take action right away, but never to ignore them. The intention is to condition yourself, to build habits, so you will start healing yourself without having to think about it.
When you have days where you don’t have to do anything, don’t oversleep, set an alarm clock. You really don’t need more than 7 hours at most per night (a little more if you are under 18). If you can’t fall sleep, try taking melatonin one hour before going to bed. It’s cheap, OTC and is scientifically proven to help regulate your sleep pattern. Also, rule out sleep apnea. Up to 6% of people have this, but not everyone knows. If you find yourself often awake at night, start counting. Don’t grab your phone, don’t look at the clock, don’t do anything interesting. We’re trying to bore you to sleep, not keep you entertained – sometimes it might feel like you’ve done it for hours and hours, but often it’s really not all that long. Anytime your mind wanders away from the numbers and starts thinking, start over at 1. count at the speed of either your heartbeat or your breathing, whatever you prefer. Then both Alexa and Google Home can also play a range of sleep sounds if you ask them (rain or other white noise) and there are also free apps for both Android and Apple devices.
Your attention is like a muscle. The more you train it, the better the control you have over it. Mindfulness training will help you gain better control over your mind. It doesn’t take much effort, just 15 to 20 minutes a day of doing nothing but focus your attention is enough and is scientifically proven to work. As you become better at focusing your attention, it will become easier to force yourself to stop having negative thoughts, which will break the negative reinforcement cycle. Go here if you have specific questions: /r/Meditation
If you have access to a gym, then start lifting weights. If you don’t have access to a gym (or you don’t like lifting), start running. If you can’t run, then start walking. Just start small. 10 minutes three times a week is fine. You don’t have to run fast, just run and then slowly build it up over time. Exercising does several things: It releases endorphins, it takes your mind of your negative thoughts and it will improve your overall health.
Highest rated books for anxiety self help:
Be aware that anxiety can be addictive:
>I’ve seen that many people are addicted to the adrenaline rush of anxiety, known as “the fight or flight response” and don’t know how to diffuse it.
Frequent consumpton of news can increase anxiety.
Best phone apps:
Instructions on when and how to get professional help: /r/Anxiety/wiki/gettinghelp
Anxiety self help by the Australian Health Service. Worry and Rumination Workbook
Best Videos:
Free support options:
Subreddits: /r/Anxiety and /r/Anxietyhelp
He sounds like a really good dude but please dont power through it you should have told him and stopped the second time it sounds like your having trauma from something or being drunk triggered something in your mind I would speak to someone professionally if possible and please talk to your partner about it you sound like you have someone who wants to give you support so let him support you
Release your boyfriend and see a psychiatrist
I struggled with this when I first started to be with men, For me I was ashamed of who I was with because I know they didn’t care about me, I was insecure, I would hate myself after. Come to find out I’m a lesbian 😂
First off: Stop forcing yourself. Listen to your body. If it’s saying “Hey stop”; Stop. Reddit shouldn’t have to tell you this.