Need advice, weird oral sex situation

Im the male part of a middle aged hetero couple. I’m in my early 50s, my partner is 10 years younger. We have been together 6 years & have lived together for 1. Us living together consisted of her moving in with me in my single family home. I lived alone & neither of us had or wanted kids.

Backstory:

1.5 years ago we had no plan to live together/get married. Things were going well, why mess with it? My feeling was/is living together is a type of familiarity that rarely makes a stable relationship better. It opens up a whole world of possible resentments rooted in the banality of sharing everyday life. Rarely she brought up future/ cohabitation or marriage at the time.

A year ago something unpredictable happened that caused her to loose her living arrangement. She had to find a new place to live fast. She has pets & this made finding a new place next to impossible. She’s the type where pets are like children & giving them up was never an option. She’d rather be homeless with her pets instead of giving them up for a new place. I was very cautious about living together & didn’t want pets. Her previous living arrangement was with a roommate that loved pets & had no problem caring for them If she was gone overnight or for a week.

Options became exhausted & we decided to live together in my owned home. I became exited about living together, all but pets. I was used to living alone for years. Storing & incorporating a whole other persons stuff & pets kinda gave me anxiety. Sometimes things were rocky. I kinda feel/felt like she doesn’t let past disagreements go & can blow minor stuff out of proportion. I started to feel like she was always annoyed at me for something & discussions started to lead to arguments more & more. During arguments she tends to throw in a bunch of past issues & I get kinda flustered, because suddenly I’m defending 20 things at once. I feel/felt like this was a bit of a tactic to “win” an argument.

I’ve told her I feel like bringing up negatives from the past isn’t beneficial & it makes me feel really bad about myself. Suddenly 20 “bad” things that happened pour out of her & it makes me feel like she has nothing but disdain & resentment towards me. When we argue she lays out so much general negativity about the relationship - it feels like she’s expressing “why would anyone want to be in the awful relationship with me”? I tend to apologize / cave in an attempt to end the argument. She doesn’t seem to let stuff go easily & even when it’s “over” - it’s like she still is stewing in it a lot of times I feel. In past relationships I’ve been in, once we “made up”, how we interacted with each other tended to go back to normal pretty quick. A lot of times I feel like everything I’ve done wrong is a drop in a bucket of resentments & water only goes in the bucket - never leaves

I started drinking daily & she felt ignored. We had some pretty bad arguments & considered ending the relationship. These were not violent or screaming arguments, but often times after drinking it was easy to put out the vibe I didn’t care & just wanted to go to sleep. I was drinking daily after work til bed time & it was easy to feel indifference. I found out she was purging after eating. She became depressed & withdrew. Resentments built up. She was on her phone non stop. “On her phone” consists of playing games, Instagram, etc.. we have open phone policy, there was no suspect of cheating or similar.

We both have been in dead bedroom relationships before. Early on we decided sex is extremely important. Sex was frequent in our relationship, with both of us having high libidos. I’m more open & into kink; she’s fairly vanilla. Sex became a little “routine”, but consistantly remained fulfilling & frequent. I’m kinda go with the flow sexually, of course I have my own kinks, but can get turned on by a lot of different things. She seems to prefer mostly vanilla.

Sex usually consists of kissing, mutual oral , me rimming her briefly, missionary, & doggy style. A vibrator is often involved. She cums 2 ways only: with a vibrator or getting pounded. I can cum pretty much any way. She has a preference for fucking - of course that’s really good for me, but I really like mutual masturbation, hand jobs, & blow jobs. I really like giving her oral & rimming her, it was kinda important to me. She always seemed to enjoy it, but I knew early on she never came from it. She said I was the first guy who ever showed any interest in rimming her. She knows it’s like the ultimate turn on for me. She never asked for it, I tried not to focus on it because part of me always wondered how much she liked it.

Months ago I noticed she seemed like she just wasn’t into getting oral. Once or twice, she turned it down. I figured it was just from her not feeling clean or whatever. Then, in the heat of an argument she tells me she wants me to stop going down on her. She says it’s because she doesn’t cum from it & it makes her feel vulnerable & recently when she’s been vulnerable with me it’s been a mistake because of how I acted. She says something like she never really loved receiving it & mostly went along with it because I was really into it.

She says “it’s temporary” & can be fixed. What I’m hearing is she just tolerated me giving her head & was staring at the ceiling waiting for it to end. This hits hard & I feel awful. This is huge for me. For whatever reason it’s something that is very primal & just part of normal hot sex to me. I immediately stop giving or trying to give her oral. I bring it up a few times.

I don’t want to push it. She knows it’s major for me. Sex gets weird & less frequent, a lot of times I can’t cum.

A month ago things are bad & we realize this can’t go on. I completely stop drinking & get a therapist. She gets a therapist. I become more present & we start communicating much better. She’s concerned this is a temporary fix with us & things will go back to how they were. This seems to be an issue, she always expects / assumes the worse for us. Things improve, but aren’t perfect.

I’ve never been in a relationship with a women who stated they didn’t like receiving oral. I understand they are out there, but for years she acted like she liked it. I’ve always been enthusiastic & expressing how much I love the look / smell / taste of her everywhere. There’s no miscommunication about that. Very early on in the relationship after sex, I remember saying something like I don’t know if I could be in a relationship with a women who didn’t like receiving oral or getting rimmed. I can’t remember the way I said it, or if it was one, the other, or both. She may not remember it, but she usually remembers everything. Early on, I remember her trying to relax so she could cum from oral because she knew I would really like it. I didn’t bring it up or pressure her to try & make it happen & it only happened a few times which is totally fine.

She still gives me oral mostly as part of foreplay. It’s intense for me & makes me feel really connected to her. Early in the relationship she gave me a few random blow jobs to completion without reciprocation & it meant the world to me. I tried to make it clear how much I like it & how good at it she is. I don’t ask for them because I feel like if she wanted to do it, she knows I want it.

A few days ago our last sex session consisted of touching, intense kissing, me massaging her, her giving me oral for a few mins, and then us fucking until she came. It was late at night - I was tired after working 12 hours and wasn’t in the right headspace to cum. I masturbated earlier that day (alone) & usually I’m good for 1 orgasm every day or 2 - but 2 in one day ussually isn’t happening for me. It’s not uncommon for us to have sex after a long day & her have an orgasm & me not to. It’s not because she doesn’t care or try - she does. She’ll kinda do the “what can I do to make you cum” thing. Usually by that point, I’m done for the night & fall asleep horny. When this happens, she usually makes herself available for something sexual when we wake up. Next morning it’s a hand job, blow job, followed by doggy style until I came. She offered for me to cum in her mouth. I usually prefer this because it’s rare. However, this time it wasn’t happening for me for some odd reason, but doggy style did it.

I’m looking for some perspective on our the oral sex situation in my relationship from both men, women who like oral, & women who don’t but have engaged in it in the past to please their partner. It feels sorta weird that it’s now off the table. I’m trying to figure out if this is me being manipulated or controlled by her removing something she knows is a major loss for me. She doesn’t talk much about sex in past relationships, but she never said anything to make me think it was off the table in the last with anyone else. I don’t really understand how if she never liked it how it could be fixed (her words). But that is what she said the few times I brought it up. I don’t bring it up, because I feel like it’s putting pressure on her & that just isn’t going to work, period. I don’t know if I should be angry because part of me feels lied to. I feel stupid about being so into giving oral to someone who was just tolerating it & playing along. In my mind she was staring at the ceiling grossed out waiting for it to end. Sex was always go with the flow, I wish we talked about it now & I asked her if she lined specific acts or not.

Also, she knows me rimming her was always the end all be all of turn ons for me. It was in maybe 50% of our encounters. I could never really get a handle on if or how much she liked it. She said nobody had tried to do that to her before - I was the first guy to ever eat her ass. I tried not to focus on it. Maybe just do it a min or 2 looking back I wish I just asked her if she liked it or not. I think it started with me eating her out while she was on all fours & my tongue just slowly drifting there. It wasn’t discussed prior. It’s randomly came up many times & the tone is that it was just a weird kinky thing I liked, but it never occurred to me to just come out & say: well, do you like it? She never asked for it and now looking back I just feel like an asshole licking freak, as my guess is that there aren’t a lot of women out there who don’t like their vag licked, but like their ass eaten.

It’s only been a month… Sex between us is getting a little better each time, but still feels a little odd. I’m waiting for her to ask me to eat her pussy or push my head down there. It seems weird if this is just how it’s going to be from now on. I’m not attempting to put my face anywhere down there unless invited. I know in the scheme of things I’m lucky - a lot of people are in dead bedrooms, etc…Most of the time she initiates sex, but she’s never turned me down if I do. The “me not cumming all the time” is kinda just how I’m wired. When that happens she sets like a mental book mark for next morning or later in the day to try to make it happen and at that point it usually does.