u/Ghost-Salad

I've been learning about CPTSD and talking to a therapist for a few years about it, but my main experience day-to-day is that I'm just and empty shell - nothing is funny, exciting, interesting, curious. Just totally blank and hollow every single day. Hardly any internal monologue, and if some random thought like looking at the moon does ever happen to pique my interest, the "curiosity" is sliced off and evaporates just as fast as it arrived, and back to blank. I can't hold on to any thoughts, everything is fleeting and whisping away all the time. No train of thought, despite being able to perform in my job and daily responsibilities just fine.

I can feel angry or sad, but I never feel joy or excitement.

I feel like a good analogy is from Men in Black 1, where they open that human's head in the morgue, and it turns out there's just a little alien running the show inside the brain. That's my life. Living as a disconnected, "head" all the time. The body feels things, but it's all disconnected.

I cannot feel my heart. There have been fewer than 10 times in my 35 years here where I've been able to "open my heart" for a matter of 2 seconds, feeling a sort of butterfly / warmth / tingling / arousal in my chest, and it gets snapped closed immediately for another 5 years or so. I have no idea how to open it again, or more, how to even find the door to that location again.

I'm just wondering if anyone else feels this way?

Been trying the MDG training and on phase 5, and no matter what, none of the training is carrying over to when I'm with my wife.

By myself, it takes several minutes now to get to PONR, and I'm able to stay, back off, start again, for the whole 20 minute session. Breathe, get as close as possible, observe my arousal.

Then with my wife, I went inside and on the same pull out stroke, sensation overload - cum. Less than 5 seconds inside.

I just don't get it. Breathing doesn't help, position doesn't help, being aware of my arousal with her doesn't help. It's just... go inside, 1-3 pumps, then extract but die on the way out.

So sick and tired of this, it's just so embarrassing. We had a good laugh about it since she knows my condition, about the training, etc. But I just want to be able to have sex normally... for more than 5 seconds...