u/ThoseArentCarrots

My wife and I took our first placement (17F) about 6 months ago. Shes a great kid overall, but we’ve run into an issue that is severely affecting our marriage.

My foster daughter has a long history of being sexually abused by both her biological parents and her peers. She identifies as asexual, and is extremely put off by any show or mention of sexuality (even things like kissing in movies).

She is also extremely attached to my wife and I, and doesn’t have many friends locally. We’re bringing her to a lot of social activities with the hope of helping her branch out, but she very rarely leaves the house to do anything without us (even though she has permission to do so as long as she tells us where she’s going).

My wife and I have always enjoyed a healthy, sexual relationship. At first, we had planned to only have sex when our foster daughter wasn’t home. But since accepting the placement in December, she’s only been out of the house without us long enough for us to have sex two times.

This is killing my marriage. My own therapist is telling me we should be having sex regularly (regardless of whether she is in the house) in order to model a healthy relationship, but when we’ve even mentioned anything related to us wanting to have an intimate moment, FD has a panic attack and throws herself down the front stairs. I think she knows that if she hurts herself badly enough we’ll forget about having sex all together (which is true). I also talked to FD’s therapist about this, but her therapist just said she had trauma and gave us no suggestions on how to compromise.

Last night I told FD that we were going to try something new over the weekend. We are going to give her a set time (~2 hours) in the middle of the daytime where we are going to have an intimate moment. We are going to give her lunch money, and if she would like she can walk to one of the nearby restaurants and have a nice bite to eat. Alternately she can stay in the house, but knowing that’s what we’re doing so don’t come in our room.

Again, when I told her this, she had a panic attack and threw herself down the stairs. I’m not sure what to do at this point- I am worried that if this keeps happening my marriage is going to end.

EDIT: someone suggested I include this in the main post. She comes into our room regularly in the middle of the night even when we have asked her not to. Last night, we went to bed with the door closed and her in another room. This morning when we woke up she was under our bed. The only reason we found out is because her phone went off.

EDIT 2 additional context: Having sex after she goes to sleep isn’t an option since she has insomnia and stays up to 3 or 4 am every night. She goes to school from home right now (safety incident at the school), so while she is at school isn’t an option. We had to take the locks off all our doors because she was locking herself in rooms to SH. I’m worried about a lock with a key in case there is a fire or something (I don’t want to be rooting around for a key). We also paid over $200 for a fancy alcohol lockbox with great reviews and she got into it the first night by unscrewing the door and taking it off its hinges. She generally has boundaries issues, and does things like sit outside the bathroom door when I am peeing or tries to come into the bedroom while I am changing, even though I have told her that makes me uncomfortable. I have tried lying and saying we have to go somewhere, but she insists on coming too.

I (31F) have always struggled with my body image. If I could be anyone, I’d be a 5’10” clean cut finance bro type, walking around in a quarter zip (I know, I know). I don’t mind being a woman per se, but only in the sense of having the option to switch back and forth at will, and fully pass as both genders.

Here’s the problem: I’m 5’0”, romantic kibbe body type, big doe eyes, tiny hands- feminine everything. I have 2 main sources of dysphoria: my height and my hips… neither of which I can reasonably do anything about. I do not have pronoun dysphoria, name dysphoria, hair dysphoria, chest dysphoria, bottom dysphoria, or any other type of dysphoria with a medical treatment available.

I’ve did drag for quite a while and even dressed in all masc clothes full time for about a year (with a men’s haircut) to try and make myself feel better. Doing those things made me feel MORE dysphoric, because every time I looked in the mirror I was constantly reminded that I can never look how I want to. Not to mention, I constantly got short jokes, which just compounded the issue.

I also looked at trans subreddits to find some advice for trans masc people in my position, but the only things I got were LOTR dwarf styling (which is NOT at all how I want to look), fairy prince styling (which feels weird and performative when I just want to be a bland corporate dude), or ‘affirmations’ with lists of famous short cis men… most of whom were 4”+ taller than me, and again made me dysphoric.

I eventually switched back to femme presenting because I am not constantly reminded about my dysphoria, even though it’s not really how I want to look. I’m ok with it most days, but there are other days where I am extremely depressed and feel disgusted by my body.

Here’s the other complication: I’m in a household with 2 other trans people, both of whom 100% pass with minimal medical intervention . I can’t help but feel jealous that I can never have what they have. I know it’s not their fault, but it’s so demoralizing that they’ve been able to pass with minimal work, and I never can. I even looked into leg lengthening procedures- but they only add 2”-4” height- I’d still be under the women’s average.

Do you have any advice for someone in my position? I’ve been in therapy for 10+ years, and am already on anti-depressants, and if anything the feeling has only gotten worse.

Thx for reading ❤️