26M looking for advice on navigating sexual side of relationship with my 23F gf who has past SA trauma.

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The original was posted on /r/sex by /u/UsernamesRhard on 2023-06-27 16:40:26+00:00.

I (26M) have been dating my gf (23F) for a year now. We are distance, about 90 minutes away and see eachother pretty much every weekend. We have a very loving and understanding relationship with good communication. She attends medical school and has very little time during the semester but still finds a way to make time for me which I appreciate very much and I let her know it.

Early into the relationship we had a sex life nothing out of the ordinary, she would initiate, I would initiate and it was great. Weeks after we started dating she revealed to me her past with SA and it seemed very hard for her to bring up so I didn’t press her for any more information. Because of this I try to be vigilant that I constantly ask for consent, over communicate if XYZ is okay and so on.

Then med school started and naturally our sex life took a big hit, which I completely understand, my sex drive goes through the floor when I’m stressed so I didn’t have a problem with it as I would never want to add another stressor. That being said the majority of sex we would have during the semester were weekends after football games when we’d been drinking and have drunk sex. She told me her stress goes away when she drinks and makes it easier for her to be in the mood. Which I didn’t mind at the time, but there definitely times in her intoxicated state I would see glimpses of her trauma come out (no need to go into detail on how that presented). So there are surely some triggers. She told me about 7 months ago the ways I would initiate made her uncomfortable at times so I have since stopped initiating out of fear I would trigger her.

Fast forward to this summer, and we still have just drunk sex even with her being out of school and I have stopped initiating because I feel it might be a trigger. I brought this up with her recently and she told me she just has anxiety, she doesn’t like the loss of control, and that being drunk helps her relax. And I communicated that it makes me feel like she’s not attracted to me and it seems alcohol is a required catalyst now.

She has assured me it has nothing to do with me and primarily her own anxiety. But my concern is alcohol tends to have a negative affect on me sexually and I don’t enjoy drunk sex as much and would prefer more sober sex as I’m beginning to feel a disconnect in the physical side of our relationship. As we’ve had sober sex just 3 times since January. And it wasn’t like this early on either.

Now I plan to have another conversation with her, but she really struggles to talk about sex which I assume has to do with her past trauma, as she is very receptive in all our other talks.

So I’m looking for advice on how to go about this conversation without triggering her trauma and make her as comfortable as possible to discuss this. I want to discuss ways I can initiate that won’t make her uncomfortable and how we can work on having sex sober more often vs drunk sex.