TL;DR – Fiance and I have been struggling with closeness, and intimacy, and being able to communicate effectively. I am afraid this will ruin our relationship.
Trigger warning
My fiance (24f) and I (25M) have been together for about 4-5 years, and got engaged last year, to be married in fall of 2026(had to push the wedding due to venues being booked). We have had a very happy relationship, with the occasional fight/argument that usually we are able to navigate and come to a positive conclusion/compromise. However there has been some issues recently with intimacy and communication. Mainly just a lack of both…
Some context
So I come from a rather healthy family, and despite the positive environment have been in counseling/therapy multiple times for my own reasons, and my own mistakes, and have worked very hard to get to the place I am at today. I have been through many relationships, a number of sexual partners, and have learned a lot about who I am, and what I am looking for in a relationship. As well as how to function as half of a whole, working toward collective goals, as well as singular personal goals, while supporting myself and the person I am, and being there for your partner.
My partner on the other hand comes from a slightly more fractured family. Born to single adopted mother, moved around the state as a child, and saw many male figures come in and out of her and her mother’s life, many of them being bad men. She has had few relationships, prior to me no sexual partners, and has never been in any sort of therapy to work through any sort of trauma/emotions that are still hanging around from her childhood. Still living with her mother, and new step father and 2 siblings from that marriage.
The issue I seem to be confronted with is that I don’t know if she is as well off as she has told me for the last few years. Early on I said for this relationship to work she needed to start the healing process, and she agreed with me on that. Carrying your shit Into relationships is a great way to ruin relationships so I made a point to continue to work on mine if I was going to ask her to work on hers. I said therapy would be advisable, and I am the only one who has done any of that since then.
I don’t know how else to say this so I’ll just put it in the best words I can. She is a terrible communicator, she hardly speaks, at all, and I mean in any conversation not just difficult ones. Often when I say things I know will push her her face says all the things she doesn’t, but when I ask her to help me understand she shuts down. Gets very defensive and swears she has no opinion on the subject at hand. Leaving me to play a guessing game of how she is feeling and what her desired outcome is. Intimacy is more than just between the sheets, it’s a hard hike you both conquer together, or a fun night out on the town making memories snatching the promo posters from the bathroom. 8/10 times when I bring up a plan to go out with friends she wants nothing to do with it, so we stay home staring at a screen saying nothing. So I try for physical intimacy, and those attempts are always met with resistance, and when it does happen, I carry the responsibility of making it all happen(think pillow princess).
I have been feeling very very lonely in life recently and it’s something I haven’t really felt in this relationship, not because these problems haven’t been around, but because I thought she would have begun the process of healing/growing by now and hasn’t really done any of that. I don’t try for physical intimacy anymore because I’m burnt out trying to help her explore likes/dislikes, I don’t try and plan nights out anymore because whenever I would she always turned me down, I don’t initiate conversation anymore because I am tired of talking to a brick wall who’s response only goes as deep as “yeah” or “I guess so”.
All in all I’m lost, I love her, I truly do, but it’s becoming very hard to tell if she wants this relationship, or if I’m just a safe space to “feel” like she’s better off. I fear the relationship has always been this one sided, and I’ve just taken a long time to notice it.