Hi friends! I (24f) and my partner (26ftm he/him) are having one of our first actual disagreements in which I feel that our communication is truly not helping. We've been together for about six months, and in that time, we've taken the physical aspect of our relationship very, very slowly. He was honest with me that he's only ever had two experiences that could even be considered sexual although neither meets his personal definition of sex. Candidly, that has not been my experience. I've had a considerable amount of sexual partners with whom I've done a variety of vanilla, kink, and super niche things. While I don't feel strongly about a specific label, I usually tell people I'm bisexual or queer when asked to describe my orientation, so that history has included cid men and cis women. I was also very honest with him about this when we started seeing each other.
Having said that, I've also had several partners who were considerably less experienced than me, and I've always been able to navigate that without making anyone feel self conscious about their lack of knowledge about specific positions or acts. We all have to start somewhere, right? But here's the tough part, my boyfriend is both trans and neurodivergent (I promise this is relevant), and both of those factors are contributing to neither of us fully knowing how to navigate sex with each other.
Let's start with his gender identity. His last partner was a cis woman who identifies as a lesbian…and she felt that it was a great idea to date an out and proud trans man…Obviously, that's created some additional insecurity on top of his general discomfort with his body. She also quickly became extremely uncomfortable with any physical contact from him very quickly into their relationship. Based on the stories he's told me, it seems like she was willing to overlook everything about his presentation because, at the end of the day, he has some of the anatomy she was looking for.
Now, let's address his neurodivergence. He's autistic, and while he has fairly low support needs, sometimes, he struggles with nuance and communication. He also struggles with reading his body's physical and emotional signals, and he has trouble self-starting in some contexts. He's expressed repeatedly that he wishes there were "rules" to sex or relationships because he doesn't know where to start and how. There was also one night when we were doing something sexual, and he just fully shut down. This incident resulted in him being physically unable to speak for probably close to an hour while I held him and told him it was going to be okay. This was the first time anything even remotely close to that has ever happened for either of us, and I was honestly terrified. That has led him to speculate that there's some sort of sexual trauma that he's unable to recall from either his childhood or young adulthood, but that's been the only indication that there's a history of trauma in that sense.
Truthfully, I've felt scared to initiate or push to try anything new since the shutdown incident. He's told me that he still doesn't know whether that was related to his body, his identity, or some buried trauma. He's seeing a therapist, which is amazing, and so am I, but when I try to discuss whether he's shared any of this with his therapist, he just tells me he has and that's it. I don't need or even want to be involved in his therapy sessions, but I'm grasping at straws here trying to figure out what I can do to support him and am getting little to no directive communication in return. I know that he struggles with clear communication sometimes, but I feel emotionally exhausted trying to gently prompt him to tell me what he needs and getting literally nothing at all in return.
Last night, he confronted me about our sex life being terrible for the mast couple months (he worded it much, much more nicely), and I broke down. He wants direction and ideas, and normally, I'm able to do that for my partners. But I've never been with someone where both of these factors are so heavily weighing on those interactions. I've tried sharing this honestly with him, but it's difficult for me to fully express my concerns because I also don't want to push him too far to the point that we're having another shutdown. I agreed that we needed to work on our sex life together and that I admittedly haven't been the most directive in the bedroom. I tried reiterating that I'm not sure where to start either at this point in terms of getting us back on track too, but I think that sentiment got lost in the flow of our conversation. I'm petrified to push too hard or ask for anything outside of what I know he's comfortable with at this point. I'm afraid to suggest anything that might cause distress or dysphoria for him. I don't know what to do. I'm a mental health professional for god's sake. I feel like both of these factors should be something that I'm able to help navigate as the more experienced partner, but I just don't know how. I feel like what I've tried hasn't been helpful. It seems like I'm pushing too far or not far enough in every interaction, and it's something I'm really, really struggling with.
I told him we need to have another conversation about this so that I can think about it today, and I've spoken about it with a couple friends to get some insight, but I'm bringing this to you, Reddit. Does anyone have any advice at all on 1) how to get our sex life back on track and 2) how to express what I'm feeling in a way that is clear and understandable for him tonight? I love this man so, so much, and in every other way, we've had excellent communication and collaboration on addressing issues that have popped up together. I'm so lost with this though. Thank you SO much in advance!
TL;DR: Our sex life just isn't working, and I don't know how to balance being directive and accommodating his gender and mental health concerns. We need to talk about it, but where do I start?