Scared of Marriage...cold Feet Normal?

View Quoted Comment Oh Honey no!! That’s not immature at all!! You have every right not to want to deal with that and that is completely OKAY!! You don’t have to see past that! It doesn’t make him or you a bad person if you just aren’t meant to be together. Sometimes we get with people when we’re really young and we grow apart and change. Your feelings are valid! Please don’t ignore them. Your instinct is speaking to you for a reason listen.

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Thank you so much for your long, thoughtful response, it means a lot to me. I didn’t think about that maybe we could have grown apart. In some ways we have, but we share a lot of the same values when it comes to kids, moral values, politics values, and household dynamics. The only real problem is sex (and money, somewhat...basically I am bringing 20k in savings and he is bringing nothing b/c he’s paying off school) A book I read talked about how couples fall out of love and we get annoyed at their traits we once thought attractive for various reasons. That being said, deep in my heart I am feeling extremely out of love. I just feel nothing between us anymore but he feels exactly the same. Yet I still love him and want to work it out. It feels hopeless.

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I guess my question would be, how does he know that regular sex doesn't interest him if he has never had it?? I am confused as to how that fetish relates to sex as well, since he is supposedly still a virgin? Those are some things that I would want the answer to if I was in that relationship.

I have a lot of respect for you and your choices. It is not something that most people have the stamina to endure. I do implore you to really think about what you want out of a relationship and please do not settle for anything less. Think about the fact that you really want this to be your forever partner. I am really worried that you are going to wake up one day, 10-20 years from now and be miserable. Stuck in a marriage that is not satisfying to you or to him.

Marriage can be very difficult, even with the right person. I was married once before, to my high school sweetheart. We were 16 and 17 when we started dating, 25 and 26 when we finally got married. Did I love him? I must have in some way. We got married because that is what you do at that age, when you have been together forever, right? We had lived together. Our sex life was ok, I guess. He was my first and only, so I didn't have anything to compare it to. I should have paid attention to the signs then, but I ignored them. The thought of starting over with someone new scared me. I was comfortable with him. 3 kids later and years down the road, I was miserable. On the outside, I was great. I had kids involved in everything, we went to church every Sunday, I was the president of the parents club at our kids Catholic school. But I was MISERABLE. My husband and I had grown apart and I could not stand him. I resented the fact that I was the breadwinner and still had to be supermom. I resented him for not growing along side me. If I really would have stopped and looked at our relationship before we got married, I could have predicted all of this. I expected him to change and he was not capable of it. He tried. He begged. He pleaded. But who was I to make him change who he was as a person? He couldn't do it, as much as he may have wanted to. I realized I had made a mistake all those years ago and for my sanity, I had to get out. I met my now husband and let me tell you, chemistry is REAL. We are so attracted to each other. We just click. He is my best friend. I would move heaven and earth for that man, and he would do the same for me. We are a great team. We have what everyone dreams about. I didn't think it existed. I am sad that I settled before and missed out on this kind of love for so many years.

If you are not 100% in on this relationship now, it is ok for you to put things on hold and try to figure it out. It may be right for you, it may not. But what I will tell you is that problems that exist before the marriage usually do not go away afterward. They only fester and get worse.

It sounds like you have a lot of hard choices to make. Take all the time you need to think and pray. I wish you nothing but the best.

View Quoted Comment The problem is that it disgusts me, and I too, have extreme fear of sex for some reason. I have no sexual drive whatsoever, and I am afraid if anyone tries to touch me “down there.” I feel happy when I kiss him and when we embrace, though. But part of the problem is that I just don’t know anything about sex or what excites me at all. I am very sheltered and don’t anything about it . I’ve never orgasmed either out of fear. I know I love men, but for some reason the idea of it grosses me out.

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Basically he has a fetish where he fantizes about getting eaten by other people- like he wants me to pretend I’ve eaten him, or he shows me pictures of live people in stomachs. Not cannilbilsm, but sort of. We both have never tried sex though. And the other problem is I am so afraid of sex, I won’t even let him touch me “there.” We only hug and kiss. Over the years we’ve done this “foreplay” of the fetish, only for me to finally put my foot down and say no now. My mistake is that I shouldn’t have enabled it.

You know what you said about just “clicking?” I felt exactly that way, a few years ago. I felt like we were partners, and we could do anything. But now I’m feeling different....I feel nothing when he touches me or says I love you. I don’t know If this kind of love can be recreated, and I could fall in love again. People say its possible. I was raised to be practical, so this is why I am having so many doubts.

View Quoted Comment I’ve heard of many fetishes but this is a new one for me! (Not gonna lie I thought it was going to be some variant of a foot fetish since that seems to be so common!) I totally think it’s possible you guys have grown apart and putting the brakes on wedding planning might help clear the fog a little. If you believe in no divorce then my personal advice is to not get married yet. It also sounds like finances are something you’re thinking about in addition to physical aspects of your relationship and everything else, all of which are important things to sort out before getting married. There’s nothing wrong with waiting and figuring everything out!

If you feel nothing when he says he loves you, then you should probably put the breaks on the wedding and possibly the relationship.

Also, you might want to seek out a sex therapist individually to deal with your fear of sex.

Best of luck.

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I think that beyond the sex problems we need to talk about how you just said that you feel nothing between you and that you feel out of love with him. Loving someone is not the same as being IN love with them and while you of course love him, if you feel that you have fallen out of love then that along is reason enough to put the brakes on the idea of marriage right now, if at all.

I can be so easy to get caught up in the idea of marriage. When you've been together for a long time people tend to expect it and put pressure on you to get married. Sometimes you need to listen to your heart instead of what society says you should be doing at a certain point in your life.

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I understand, and it's a tough decision. But I don't think it is bad to break up just because of sex. Only you can decide whether to do so.

The issue, though, is that this is likely to be a bigger, not a smaller, problem as time goes on. In your teens and early twenties, the sex hormones are at their peak. Plus, when you first have sex, you tend to want to have it all the time. So he may well be able to have sex without indulging those fetishes right now. But over the long term, that becomes more and more difficult. With a fetish that is this important to him, you may well find yourself down the road with the choice between no sex at all, contending with a fetish that is traumatic for you, or having sex with someone other than him. And he may find himself with a choice between no sex at all, and having sex with someone other than you. None of those is exactly a great option.

I'm not prudish about fetishes (even a vore fetish, which is what this is called). And in some instances, people will find that they are able to indulge fetishes that at first shocked them. (I've definitely heard from women who decided that they could live with their husbands wanting to wear women's undergarments, for example.) But I think that a marriage between someone with a strong fetish, and someone who is traumatized by that same fetish, is going to have a very rough time, no matter how satisfying it may be otherwise.

Edit: (Having read the comments.) If you are no longer in love with him, that's reason enough to break up, regardless of the sexual issues. And if you have extreme fear of sex, are grossed out by it, and can't bear to be touched "there," that's reason enough to get sex therapy, even if he is not the one you ultimately want to have sex with.

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I'm sorry this is a dumb question, but how do I know I'm "in" love with someone, versus just loving someone? We've been together so long and when he first proposed I was sure I was ready to take the next step. But because of my therapist/parents telling me no, because of my fiancé's depression, because of my own, because of the stress of the planning...Im so overwhelmed and now I don't know. I've been thinking hard about it, and if he just walked up to me and told me "I want to break up," I would be so, so, sad...and I would feel like desperately I wouldn't want him to go. As a young person, I am trying to discover if this means "I truly love you and want to fix things" or "I love the idea of you." Deep down, I really want it to work.

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What is the difference between love and in love? That is so hard to say. When I talk about love, I talk about times in my life. I truly loved my college boyfriend. At 21 and 22 he was everything, and I do still get sad and whistful when I think of those times with him, because 21/22 year old me loved with everything I had and that person will always love him. But I'm not 21/22 anymore, I've grown through many types of experiences to a very different 30 year old. I have many of the same values, but how I look at life is very very different than when I was 22 and even 25. I love my FH and the life we have built together and I'm so ready to spend my life with him, but that doesn't change what I felt at 22. My 22 year old self probably wouldn't be in love with my FH.

So you will always be 'in love' with your FH in some way, even if you decide to walk away right now. And that's okay. You had some amazing times together and those don't just disappear, they just shape who you will become. I would recommend taking at least a weekend or even a week and taking space. Decide for that week in your mind, you have left him, that there is no going back. How do you function throughout the week? Do you feel relieved? When you go back at the end of the week, are you happier? If you aren't sure on those answers, then I would say maybe it is something you should be walking away from.

And while I know this isn't what you want to hear, your therapist isn't wrong about living together. If it isn't in your faith, I do understand, but I knew my FH was it for me long before we moved in together. I think it took him until we had been living together for about 6 months when he just started to look at me differently. It was a moment, when we were cooking dinner in his kitchen and being weird and talking like normal, and he just stopped and was like 'We could be this way for a long time, you know?' He may have reached that moment if we didn't live together, but us being together all the time really brought us so much closer.

In the end of the novel of a comment I'm writing, I'll just say, no matter what you do, put yourself first.

Honestly we will be on 14th anniversary before we say I do

at 25 you’re super young

i would not call anything off but I would delay until you’re 100% confortavle, happy, and READY

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I don't think you're gonna want to hear this, but unfortunately I think all this right here is the issue, not his fetish.
Like, overall from what you described, the extent of what he wants from you doesn't sound that bad, honestly. If he just wants you to pile pillows on him and tell him that he's in your belly, then I don't think that's asking too much, considering there's WAY way weirder stuff people ask to do in bed.

I don't mean any of this in offense, but it seems like you have a lot of stuff to work out yourself as well, considering that you seem to have a very negative outlook on sex in general. As other people said, there's absolutely no way to swear off a fetish or go cold-turkey on it. Even if he promises to never bring it up again, it's something that will perpetually live on in his fantasies, which could cause some issues down the line.

Like Meghan suggested, your best bet is probably to see a sex therapist together. It seems like neither of your really know what to expect from it and are psyching yourselves out over it (you being downright afraid of it, and him being convinced that he 100% needs to involve kinks to enjoy it).
There's a lot of easier solutions you could look into which would solve this issue a lot better than any marriage counselor (stuff involving intimacy), but it seems you're really dead-set on not exploring anything even remotely sexual, so that kinda makes it difficult to recommend anything in your specific situation.

View Quoted Comment Thank you, I do not take offense at This. If you don’t mind me asking, What “easier solutions” do you suggest? Like playing around and self exploration? We both are seeing a sex therapist right now.

View Quoted Comment Well, there's other sexual interactions which can help you guys get more accustomed with one another intimately, which aren't full sexual intercourse. (I.e. mutual masturbation, aggressive petting, grinding, etc... I don't want to go into anything too graphic lol)
But it really depends on what you guys are most comfortable with, so the sex therapist will probably be more helpful than anyone here regarding it.

I think one thing you should DEF keep in mind though is the kind of porn he's into really shouldn't reflect on what you think of him as a person. Even if that porn is gross, I'm assuming it's mostly cartoons or anime characters or something? Whatever you've seen of it is ultimately just a silly fantasy and not something he can ever actually achieve. Who knows, he might just be satisfied with you doing some roleplaying with him, which is pretty common for most couples.


If you guys are still as happy together as you say, you shouldn't let the fetish thing scare you too much. I'll go out and say as an outside observer, stuff like the pillows thing really shouldn't be a dealbreaker, but we also can't tell you to feel comfortable about stuff. So if roleplaying like that really is too uncomfortable for you, then you guys may just be sexually incompatible, which means you'd either need to agree to be a celibate couple, or unfortunately just break up.

I'm a Christian and my fiancé is agnostic. I've known him since we were in middle school. I think cohabitation before marriage is incredibly important. You learn all their quirks and habits and you'll be able to decide whether you can really handle it. Note, I never said I was a good Christian. I also think sex helps our relationship. Scientifically it's good for your body, your health, and your mentality. It seems like you and your partner are going through a difficult time but it's hard to say if it can be fixed. That's really up to both of you. I think you both need to sit down and evaluate your relationships standing. It's normal to have cold feet because marriage is a huge decision that will impact the rest of your life. Do your best to fix what you can but don't hurt yourself in the process. You'll know what you really want in the end.