Why am I scared to have sex?

[arlingtonguy]

I am 35 and for the past 7 years I have been unable to have any kind of sex oral or anal with another person. The few times I have tried I get scared, feel like I cannot breathe, feel dizzy, feel guilty if I cum, cannot relax and sometimes will have a panic attack. Maybe once or twice I have been able to meet someone to masturbate with but no more than that.
I have a partner of 11years and have an open relationship. I am HIV + and he is not. We do not have sex together because of this at his request. The people I am trying to meet are from the internet and I worry about safety and people using illegal drugs. Due to my HIV status I wonder if I just need to accept a sexual life of masturbation only? I long to be with a person sexually again but Im afriad I may not be able to overcome these issues.

[LittleLoveCoach]

Hey,
You gotta a lot of stuff going on here, so I'd say, let's sort them out, one by one. You should know that you said so much in such a tiny space, but the answers in real life will be much, much longer than anything I could say here. Keep exploring, asking, reading, writing and seeking answers. You will succeed if you keep working at it!

#1) Relationship issues & HIV

Regardless of your HIV status, relationships are all about compromise and boundaries. It seems like you two have sorted that out quite well (given the circumstances), because you've opened up the relationship. Although that makes it tougher to sort out issues, it also gives you some room to sort out your fears of intimacy. PS. A fear of sex is usually a fear of intimacy. This might be easily proven if you can more easily have sex with a stranger than your partner.

Although, I do disagree with avoiding sex because of HIV. First of all, HIV is only transmitted through sexual fluids, so condoms solve that problem completely. There's no evidence (that I've seen) that oral sex can lead to HIV transmission, especially if you avoid "finishing" orally. That said - to be honest, the real issue isn't the HIV. Its the fear of sex. So I'd focus there.

#2) Sex with Strangers

My opinion is: As long as mitigate the risk, you don't have to avoid the risk altogether. That's actually a big distinction. Example of avoiding risk: abstinence to avoid HIV. Example of mitigating risk: using the condom. The difference is that one allows you to still have 99% of the experience you are seeking.

With strangers, you have to mitigate that risk, so you don't end up with losers, drug users or dangerous people, by using a couple of strategies. Mainly, those strategies include: asking your friends if they think this or that is normal; asking up front if they do any drugs; googling them and looking for comments or reviews that might imply their true nature; and perfecting the art of reading people accurately. Just like the way in which you know someone is a spammer (and not really offering you millions of dollars in Nigerian inheritance), you must figure out cues to who is good and who is not.

#3) Fear of Sex

I have dealt with a fear of sex myself, have known several men and women affected by this, and coaching clients in getting over a fear of sex. So you are not alone. This is really, really common!

I believe it comes from history's common (but evil) behavior of women being abused and/or raped in human history. This creates a fear of sex itself, because before we had laws protecting women in place, women could very likely die from these brutal attacks. And if not murdered, it would leave a horrible mark on their minds.

Your own fear probably stems back to events that happened in your family history, either through alcoholism or various other modes of people being dangerous during sex. And what I believe happens is that the fear of sex is communicated from parents to children, subconsciously. I've known siblings who both suffered a subconscious fear of sex, but never knew it till years later. This is the kind of evidence that tells me that a fear of sex is almost "genetic" in nature.

Like any inherited disposition, you have to work really hard to overcome and break that cycle. It requires patience and diligence, like any irrational fear, but it *is* possible to end.

Continued luck, and big hugs!!
Coach Mark