I [23 F] am falling in love with my boyfriend [26 M] of 6 months, but lately I have been feeling disgusted after displays of intimacy. How do I stop putting walls up?

I have been dating Will for 6 months, but we have been friends for 5 years. I don't have much experience in terms of relationships: I have only had one boyfriend (Nick) previously, and we broke up over three years ago. Nick and I did not have a great relationship; I was not very attracted to him and never wanted to be intimate with him, physically or otherwise. He would often force me into displays of intimacy that I was not comfortable with (nothing sexual, just things like begging me to talk about my feelings or hold his hand when I didn't want to). After we broke up, I realized that I was essentially disgusted by him throughout our relationship and had spent most of the time trying to pretend otherwise.

When I started dating Will, I was initially very worried about things turning out like they did with Nick, so I was very aware of the level of intimacy in our relationship and how I felt about being vulnerable with him. Things have been great; we have sex multiple times a day and I have truly enjoyed being open and honest with him about my feelings for the first time in my life. I am so attracted to him and genuinely just want to share my life with him. Everything has been perfect up until the past few weeks.

A couple weeks ago, I realized that I am falling in love with Will. I told him that I'm beginning to fall in love with him and he reciprocated. Since then, he has been especially intimate and passionate with me. He often tells me just how strongly he feels about me and our sex has become extremely intense (in the best way). While these things are happening, I love them and I love the thought of sharing this with him, but afterwards, I often feel icky and anxious. I'm not sure how to describe the feeling exactly; it's not disgust in the sense that Will disgusts me, it's almost more like I'm grossed out at myself for engaging in that behavior?

However, I really like Will and I really want to be with him and enjoy it without worrying. I think this is happening partly because I am preoccupied by the worry that things are going to end up how they did with Nick, so it's becoming a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that my subconscious is always worrying about it. I also think I am scared to be so vulnerable with someone and am unintentionally putting up walls, which is manifesting in this way.

My question is, how can I learn to embrace this intimacy and how do I feel with these feeling of "disgust" when I know that is not actually how I feel?

TLDR: being afraid of intimacy leads me to sometimes feel disgusted by displays of passion, how do I stop putting these walls up and enjoy all the things I'm feeling?

Submitted October 29, 2019 at 10:01AM by CorrectLengthiness https://ift.tt/345GCXU