“Naked honesty” helped me and my wife hash out old ideas and finally got together where my desires didn’t seem like attacks, and her concerns and touchy subjects due to “past life” damaging events, didn’t seem like rejections. It took us years to get to the point we could really discuss even our frustrations about each other, without further pushing each other apart but with real, loving attempts at understanding and empathizing. And it has paid off Big Time. Once we know not only what causes our anxious feelings but why, that gives us power to problem-solve to where we can find ways to help each other without further threat to our own sensitive areas of thought.
Worry more about each other, than what God thinks of your behavior, at least until you understand each other. Than you can work together to find a solution that works for all and is mutually pleasing to God. That may sound backwards, but it’s like practicing our violin parts for a symphony with each other, before getting on stage and performing it for the maestro. According to St. Paul, you each have dominion over your own bodies as well as each other so you ultimately might as well be honest about what the collective “body” wants and how it may at least be internally at peace.
Within a marriage, you are already in a triangle with God at the top, and you and your spouse on either end of the base. The closer you become to each other, the more you can really talk about what you like and don’t like and why without feeling embarrassed or offended, you come closer to God.
Once you are on the “same page” with honesty, even if not with what you like and don’t like, you can work together with two minds, two hearts, and one mission to please God and each other, and have a truly blessed and chaste marriage.
What you are going through now sounds like you’re “boot camp training” as to why just “doing the minimum” is not the ideal of marriage you are called to become! You are lucky that you can see that, and that your faith sees how it can become even better than now.
I hope you find a way to each others’ hearts and become the marriage that convinces you why God chose to make them “man and woman” in the first place.
MS
Edit: check out 1 Cor 7
1 Now in regard to the matters about which you wrote: “It is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman,” 2 but because of cases of immorality every man should have his own wife, and every woman her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his duty toward his wife, and likewise the wife toward her husband. 4
A wife does not have authority over her own body, but rather her husband, and similarly a husband does not have authority over his own body, but rather his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual consent for a time, to be free for prayer, but then return to one another, so that Satan may not tempt you through your lack of self-control. 6 This I say by way of concession, however, not as a command. 7 Indeed, I wish everyone to be as I am, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.
8 Now to the unmarried and to widows I say: it is a good thing for them to remain as they are, as I do, 9 but if they cannot exercise self-control they should marry, for it is better to marry than to be on fire. 10 To the married, however, I give this instruction (not I, but the Lord): A wife should not separate from her husband 11 —and if she does separate she must either remain single or become reconciled to her husband—and a husband should not divorce his wife.
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So you’re young ,healthy and all your hormones are still working as intended.
