Your perspectives

[Edward]

Thanks Rumina. I’m thinking seriously about exploring professional help, as one as-yet unexplored avenue. After ten years though, I fear we may have exhausted most other options. I’m also thinking of exploring professional help to see if I can rid myself of this need.

[Brian]

Ultimately you have to decide what you want your life to look like. Yes considering the needs of others and how your actions will affect them is important, however I don’t think it should take priority over your happiness. In other words you shouldn’t have to suffer in silence so everybody else can live a decent life. I also don’t think that seeking professional help to repress the need to nurse is a good idea either. In my experience repressed needs can manifest in other ways. IMO you need to have an open discussion with your partner laying everything on the table. Hopefully a solution can be found that the both of you can live with and doesn’t involve you giving up something that is core to who you are. If she is unwilling, then you know where things stand.

[Edward]

Thanks Brian for your thoughtful response. I am really unhappy. And my partner has already made it clear that an ABF will never happen. So the question for me is can I live without it. I don’t feel like I can.

[Rumina]

Hi, i did not mean to say that professional help should be aimed at getting rid of your needs. I think thats impossible and also unhealthy: because uts who you are. Hekp can support you in getting clariry on what to do and shich option is best in your situation. It helps feeling support and not being on your own in this

[Korsto]

Hi Edward! You have little puzze there. If i may give my experience about in same kind thing.

Long, long time my late wife did bring me to ANR, she did understand my desire better than i did. Eaven before her, i did always know that something was missing, but due living in cold north where ANR is still one last taboos, i didnt have chance to know more. After her death, i did try to be in “normal” relations, they all fail. I couldnt help my self and forget my desires, eaven how hard i did try.
It just made me and partner miserable and i just know that it is wrong for both of us. Every time i did try to explane and eaven reason my desires, but no, it made every time things going to down hill fast.

With last try i decide when she wasnt in ANR that its wrong to me and her too, to try block my way to happynes and hers too. So i did end my last relations and i have been single since that, and its long time.
I dont mind it, in happy if man can be happy with out nipple on mouth, but in same time i dont make others life miserable.

I dont know do this help at all, or just cofuse things more. I just wanted to tell how i did things. Still, keep on smiling, life is much better then!

[Edward]

Wow that’s quite a story, thank you very much for sharing. That must have been a very difficult decision for you to have had to have made. I think one of my takeaways from what you have said (as well as from others and my own experience) is the damage I can potentially do to other people by remaining in a miserable, unfulfilled situation.

[Edward]

Yes I see what you are saying, Rumina and it makes sense to me. Here’s the thing though: I don’t really understand ABF; specifically where my need to BF actually comes from. Does anyone here have any idea, I wonder? I worry, for instance, that (in my specific case) perhaps it’s the result of past trauma rather than a natural part of who I am. Just a theory I have but one that I struggle with nonetheless.

Anyway, I have my doubts as to whether my needs could ever be ‘cured’ so I think I will explore professional help of the sort that you refer to in terms of obtaining clarity and support.

[Rumina]

Could be. I dont know. 2 ( rethorical) questions to think about:
1. What would you gain by knowing exa tly where it came from?
2. What do you need to be able to allow yourself to enjoy those feelings and needs? Or at least to accept that you have them?

[Edward]

1. I think this is a good question. Perhaps I would gain nothing from knowing? I’m not entirely sure. I guess the doubtful part of me assumes that if it was trauma based then maybe it could be ‘fixed’. But I suspect that’s more desperate wishful thinking. I don’t really truly believe my need to breastfeed, which has been with me for decades, will ever leave me. Again, my doubts are more desperation based then actually well-founded.

2. Another interesting and thought-provoking question. I think the answer is I need a partner to accept that part of me and I also need to be able to separate it in my own head from any association with trauma.

One takeaway I’m having from joining this community here at ABJH is that I’m much more conflicted then most seem to be.

[Author]

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