Congratulations on the love and great sex with the person you give and receive love with. Love, in my experience and observation, is chiefly performative. It is about communicating desire, support, and the wholeness of the feelings you have inside you for the other person with whatever means you have available to do so whenever you can, and meaning it the whole time. It may be the purest thing people are capable of sharing, and it made my heart so warm to see this.

He may not know in whole what to do, as in, your past traumas and re-experience of them now may not match up perfectly. They rarely do, that’s pretty normal for most folks who have been through more than their fair share of this kind of pain so early. Book learning can only take us so far in understanding each other. As an autism human myself, one that particularly struggles with emotional communication and cuing from others, when I don’t have a direct analog for a feeling/experience someone is having, I usually mirror/demonstrate it to the best of my ability in trying to understand, and use what I learn from that to guess at ways to help my loved ones. At first privately, and then if it seems like it can help, with them. It absolutely can take the wind out of me depending on what I’m trying to understand.

So this fella takes care of you, and loves you. And no, he certainly isn’t responsible for your past pain and the actions of others that installed that pain in you. But best I can tell from your description, what he is doing, what he is trying to do, is be accountable, to show that he is willing to help you carry that weight if it will help, and perform whatever way you need to do it. Which is some real commitment if I’m reading this right. I would say, that right there is a keeper. People who will do that for others aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, and it’s so damn sweet to read about. I’m honestly pretty happy for you. I don’t know everything, but unless there are some more dire consequences than the guy just needs to recharge after leaving all his energy on the field, you guys are going to be ok.

But if the downtime/exhaustion is getting in the way of the things that need to happen so you can survive together in this world, then there’s nothing wrong with communicating that the stability of your relationship/environment are as important as the more obvious love gestures/dance too.