I’m a woman in my early 30s, and after dating my male partner for seven months I’ve become frustrated by his vanilla and mundane sexual preferences. This makes me feel bad about myself, because he is perfect in all other ways. Not only are we intellectually compatible and share many interests, but he is also kind, caring and romantic. He makes sure I never leave for work without a healthy packed lunch and is full of fun ideas for our outings. He makes me feel safe and secure. I had an unstable childhood and am not on speaking terms with my father. With my boyfriend, I am able to open up about this.
In the past, I dated difficult and unreliable men with whom I could nonetheless indulge in kinky sex, role-playing and other experimentation – and I always loved that part of the relationship. When I try to initiate this with him, he rejects it; he once said he finds it degrading to women. Sometimes I fantasise about having sex with more adventurous partners, but I can’t stand the thought of losing such a wonderful partner with whom I can build a future.
Endowing a partner with fatherly attributes is a fairly certain way to dampen eroticism. This process is often an unconscious one – as it undoubtedly is in your case – but when a relationship feels familial at some level, whether mother-child, brotherly, sisterly or fatherly, the deep-seated incest taboo renders sexual contact distasteful. Many relationships fall into such patterns, and this is particularly understandable when adults have emerged from unresolved traumatic childhood patterns such as longing for an unavailable parent, or being a survivor of familial abuse.
The task of developing a relationship into a healthy, fully adult union is rarely easy, because people tend to gravitate towards what the “child” part of them needs. Think carefully about the father-daughter dynamic within your relationship and, if you want to desire him, experiment with identifying and changing overly familial aspects that remind you of unrequited childhood needs. Make your own lunch.
Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.
If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.
