I'd like some help sorting out my feelings on my marriage. I'm a 29-year-old woman married to another woman. We met online about 5 years ago, and spent a lot of time talking--we were roleplaying (as male characters, to complicate things further) and chatting about a television show we both liked and about life in general--before meeting in person. She's from another country (I'm from the U.S.), so we met up in the U.S. to go on a road trip; the thought of being a couple wasn't voiced when we were planning the trip, but I think it was in the back of our minds. We hit it off really well, and she invited me over for Christmas, at the family's, where we decided to try being a couple. She was my first sexual experience and my first same-sex experience (before that, I'd only had crushes on men). We met every 2-3 months after that, for about 2-3 weeks at a time, had a really great time together (but didn't have sex often, maybe 1 or 2 times each time we met up) until she asked if I wanted to get married. We got married, and I totally collapsed on her. I spent the honeymoon crying and, where I hadn't frozen up too hard before, I started panicking whenever the subject of sex came up. I stopped spending money to visit her--she still lives overseas, and the plan was for me to join her after the marriage, but I've stayed in the U.S. I haven't seen her now for 10 months. We still talk every day online. I feel like a stupid flake for a) thinking I would be okay with moving overseas (I've always had a hard time with big change), b) not being able to go through with the change (the other country seems great, but I don't know the language or have in-demand job skills), and c) how I'm treating her and feeling about our marriage. I self-identify as bi now, but I feel like I'm either trying to hide from standard gender roles by being with her (my parents have a cold marriage, and I've always been shy and uncertain when trying to flirt with men, never had a significant m/f relationship, and never had sex with a man--so I don't exactly have a good track record for having faith in m/f relationships and my ability to have and sustain one) or like I'm trying to hide from being gay by not letting her near me. I've wrestled with this for a year plus now and gotten nowhere except hurting her and feeling awful myself. Part of me wants to just go well, I was clearly never a *real* bisexual, I was just a shut-in introvert het geek who thought maybe it would all be better and easier with a woman. Another part knows that I care for her very much, more than I have for anyone else, and that I should--force myself to let her have sex with me. (If my thoughts on sex sound confusing--yeah, they are. I've always 'topped' in sex with her, and never let her really touch me in a sexually dominant way. Read: No penetrative sex, even though I think I might *like* penetrative sex.) I feel like to be fair to the relationship, I need to let her have the sort of sex I think I might like with me--or need to let me accept someone having that sort of sex with me. And to realize that physically the gender of the partner makes not that big a difference in sex. I know this all sounds--rather naive and stupid. It does to me, too, no matter how often I play it through my head, but it doesn't make it less hurtful to me or to her, or less confusing. I hate feeling like I'm a straight lady who's been trying to find some way out of ever being in a sexually submissive position while still having a relationship--or a gay lady who's trying to desperately hang on to straight privilege by never having 'real sex' on my part (I know, untrue--all sex is real sex) with my wife. Basically, I hurt, she hurts, and I feel like I've fucked everything up. Just--looking for some thoughts that aren't mine. I've heard mine already far too many times. (I hope I haven't been too explicit. I'm not sure what the rules are in terms of that!)
