DearLilly:

When he said to you (repeatedly?) something like: ““Well Lilly, I have shame and I have issues. Tell me how to love you, tell me how to do it, give me clues, no one ever taught me this.” Is it absolutely the truth within him? Because if it is, my heart goes out to him because I can so relate to it. I am a woman and I feel so inadequate at times, so much shame that I absolutely can not, will not, CAN not initiate anything intimate with my husband, no way I can do it- I am so scared that I freeze. I dissociate, i go numb and I feel nothing. I can respond some, maybe, but not initiate anything, just way too scary, too scary to be rejected or … corrected or … I get frozen in the belief that I am inadequate.

My mother was a narc, like you call it for short, she was also histrionic and borderline, a mix of what is listed for these personality disorders and I learned to … do nothing, initiate nothing, too scared of that voice within me that took after her.

Like you wrote I know nothing more than what I project into your post above. But once in a while my projections may be accurate, it happens. If he freezes too, if he is full of shame that he dissociate or has to dissociate so not to fully feel that crushing feeling, conviction, unfortunately of inadequacy, then have mercy on him and do show him what to do- tell him, spell it out for him. Please do.

I hope you don’t take advil or the psychiatric drugs out there- I am afraid they will take away from the clarity with which you do see things right now.

Of course it will be silly for me to tell you what to do, so I will only second what he told you: “Tell me how to love you, tell me how to do it, give me clues.”

anita