I have been dating my girlfriend for about 6 months now and I am hitting a huge hurdle in communication. She was sexually abused by her stepfather as a child for roughly 10 years. Her family knows, but nothing was ever done about it and she has never been to counseling or treatment of any kind. We are sexually active, however she has obviously not dealt with some of the issues she faces. She refuses to talk (or communicate in any way, really) about sex, at all. I understood her not wanting to talk about the past, but I am now concerned by the fact that she simply will not respond to even the most simple questions about sex. She won't talk about what feels good and what doesn't, what she does or does not like, she doesn't make any noise during sex (for the record, I'm not saying I expect her to sound like she's making a porno, but the occasional "that feels good" would at least let me know she likes it.) She has a very strict set of boundaries that she WILL NOT even remotely think about crossing, i.e missionary position it is, no oral sex, no anything else. She literally refuses to talk about it, or even talk about why she wont talk about it. I have, on about three occasions, tried VERY gently to get her to talk to me, not about her past or anything specific, but just things like, "I feel like communication about sex is very important, and I hope that you talk about it with me sometime." and the result is always the same; she shuts down COMPLETELY. She will literally say (we don't live together so we Skype every night) "I will never talk about sex. I don't want to Skype. Goodnight." and then will not respond to anything I say.
So my question(s) -
I think she needs to seek therapy for this, but I won't even make it far enough into the conversation to bring it up before she shuts down, and I'm not sure what to do about that. How can I approach that?
There are actually a lot of things that make her shut down on a smaller scale and do things (I think without even realizing) like talking and acting towards me that make me feel very detached. How can I bring this up/work on this with her without making it worse? I am getting to the point where I avoid things that I know will trigger this but ultimately I think this is making it worse because nothing is really being dealt with.
Lastly, I feel like I am on an emotional roller coaster with her sometimes. I love her with everything in me, and more often than not she makes me incredibly happy, but I also find the lows fairly intense. This is not entirely her fault to be clear, I have some abandonment issues and her shutting down definitely triggers some emotional abandonment alarms in me. I will take any advice I can on working through some of those issues myself.
Basically what it comes down to is, how do I encourage (I hesitate to say "make/force") her to work on this before it disintegrates our relationship? Obviously she needs to make the decision to want help before she can get it, but at the moment she still has the blinders on that make her think that ignoring problems is the same as dealing with them.
Thanks in advance.