oh. so now you desire me?

This is a very triggering topic about body image and being desired by a recovering PA/SA. Please read on with caution, or if you are understandably struggling with this topic like I am, stop here. Please.

I just edited alot out of this because immediately after posting, I felt it may be too triggering to read everything I had written out, for alot people. Moreso than the below content.

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Here I am flummoxed.

Why? Because what I desperately wanted for decades, to feel desired by him, I now reject.

My brain has switched gears, and I now find it insulting that after stopping his PA/SA acting out, he finds me more desirable. It is not a compliment to me that after losing access to his buffet of perfect women, real or unreal, I am now found to be more attractive and even craved.

Am I wrong? Am I alone in this?

I've tried grappling with this for months. I have tried explaining this to him as well. It doesn't matter how realistic or not the bodies were in P, instagram, tik tok, movies, google images [insert any other nefarious sexualized imagery, here]. He and his brain didn't know if they weren't real, and he taught himself to prefer them over me. While he sought out their often edited perfection, I naturally wasn't good enough. Figuratively and literally, I didn't stack up.

Even when he seems sincere, even when he says he now realizes they aren't/weren't all "real?" Nope. It doesn't give me the warm fuzzies.

Even when he has moments of breaking down and telling me how "blind" he was to my "radiant beauty all these years," it doesn't make me feel any better. At all. Why? Because when his brain did think they were all real? When he sought them out for his own sexual pleasures? He preferred them to me and thought I wasn't enough. It is only now after he hasn't looked at them for a long period of time, that I am becoming desirable to him, again.

This is not a compliment to me. It is insulting and feels humiliating on a different level, somehow deeper than before. He doesn't understand why I feel this way. At all. To be fair I myself go in and out of understanding it.

Does anyone else struggle with this? Or did I just open a can of worms...

I'm sorry this is a choppy read. I will also add that I don't know what will come of my relationship with him. There is alot to sort out. Lots of strong albeit broken and torn feelings. One day at a time, I try to loosen a knot in my stomach. I try to walk thru the storm...

Edited to fix two typos