Sexually incompatible due to bad previous experience – how to handle the moral dilemma? Am I overthinking? /u/not_my_throwaway_lol Sex

My gf (F24) and I (26M) have been dating for over eight months now, and we both agree that everything has been fantastic except for our sex life, which for me was less than satisfying, and my frustration boiled over a couple of weeks ago, leading to a relationship crisis. We have since talked a lot about our sex life, and I have just found out that the main reason she’s not willing to give me certain things that are a dealbreaker for me are related to a bad experience that she had in the past. I had heard a few things about this experience in her past, but to me it sounded like a typical “shitty sex, bad situation” kind of story, the type of things that unfortunately happen but that I experienced myself the other way around and just assumed to be part of life, so I didn’t make much of it – it didn’t really sound like sexual assault to me, more like the lack of a safe space, and she didn’t seem very affected by it.

Now that we had a serious talk about the relationship and our needs, and both of us have put everything on the table, she told me that she’s struggling to get over that bad experience. In that encounter, she felt pressured to do certain things. She says that she has been working on that internally for the last months and that even though I haven’t noticed, she’s been making progress. She says that she didn’t think it would be so hard for her to work through it, and that I should be patient with her. She says that the small steps she’s been taking so far, she’s enjoyed, that she just needs to move at her pace, but that she could move a bit faster if it’s so important to me.

Now I feel bad that I kept asking for those things, and yet I still feel that I need them, which makes me feel even worse. In my defence, I told her about my dealbreakers in bed pretty much right away when we started dating. She told me then that she wasn’t ready for some of those things yet, but that she was very open and willing to get into it later on in the relationship. As it never happened, I tried to confront her a couple of times about it, but never really got any meaningful answer until now, which had led me to believe that she just didn’t give much importance to how I feel about them, which is what irritated me.

I want to be a safe space for her, and the last thing I want to do is to force/coerce/pressure the person I love to do certain things – but now she now knows that the things she’s struggling with might lead to us breaking up down the line if they don’t get better. Now, if she works on it, it’s probably mainly due to the pressure in the back of her head, telling her that she’ll loose me otherwise, so I’m the opposite of a safe space in that regard.

Now I wonder if this can be fixed. If we keep going, I’m afraid she’s feeling forced to do it, if I don’t get it, I’m sexually frustrated in the long run, if I break up, I’m taking the decision from her to work on it, which would be patronising, and would mean that I’d loose a very special person in my life. So it feels like every option is a dead end, in a way.

I told her about how I feel (pretty much literally this text) and she told me it’s fine, that I should not overthink it, that as long as I give her space, she’ll work though it and that she thinks that she’ll end up enjoying it down the line, but I still don’t feel good about all of it. Any thoughts?

My gf (F24) and I (26M) have been dating for over eight months now, and we both agree that everything has been fantastic except for our sex life, which for me was less than satisfying, and my frustration boiled over a couple of weeks ago, leading to a relationship crisis. We have since talked a lot about our sex life, and I have just found out that the main reason she’s not willing to give me certain things that are a dealbreaker for me are related to a bad experience that she had in the past. I had heard a few things about this experience in her past, but to me it sounded like a typical “shitty sex, bad situation” kind of story, the type of things that unfortunately happen but that I experienced myself the other way around and just assumed to be part of life, so I didn’t make much of it – it didn’t really sound like sexual assault to me, more like the lack of a safe space, and she didn’t seem very affected by it.

Now that we had a serious talk about the relationship and our needs, and both of us have put everything on the table, she told me that she’s struggling to get over that bad experience. In that encounter, she felt pressured to do certain things. She says that she has been working on that internally for the last months and that even though I haven’t noticed, she’s been making progress. She says that she didn’t think it would be so hard for her to work through it, and that I should be patient with her. She says that the small steps she’s been taking so far, she’s enjoyed, that she just needs to move at her pace, but that she could move a bit faster if it’s so important to me.

Now I feel bad that I kept asking for those things, and yet I still feel that I need them, which makes me feel even worse. In my defence, I told her about my dealbreakers in bed pretty much right away when we started dating. She told me then that she wasn’t ready for some of those things yet, but that she was very open and willing to get into it later on in the relationship. As it never happened, I tried to confront her a couple of times about it, but never really got any meaningful answer until now, which had led me to believe that she just didn’t give much importance to how I feel about them, which is what irritated me.

I want to be a safe space for her, and the last thing I want to do is to force/coerce/pressure the person I love to do certain things – but now she now knows that the things she’s struggling with might lead to us breaking up down the line if they don’t get better. Now, if she works on it, it’s probably mainly due to the pressure in the back of her head, telling her that she’ll loose me otherwise, so I’m the opposite of a safe space in that regard.

Now I wonder if this can be fixed. If we keep going, I’m afraid she’s feeling forced to do it, if I don’t get it, I’m sexually frustrated in the long run, if I break up, I’m taking the decision from her to work on it, which would be patronising, and would mean that I’d loose a very special person in my life. So it feels like every option is a dead end, in a way.

I told her about how I feel (pretty much literally this text) and she told me it’s fine, that I should not overthink it, that as long as I give her space, she’ll work though it and that she thinks that she’ll end up enjoying it down the line, but I still don’t feel good about all of it. Any thoughts?