Title pretty much explains it!
I (30, m) and my gf (26, f) have been together for almost 5 years now and been living together for four of those. It’s the happiest relationship (admittedly also the only serious one) I’ve ever been with and I’m pretty sure we’re endgame. We get along on so many levels, we’re each other’s best friends and romantic partners and I’ve never met anyone who understands me so well and shares so many of my values.
The only thing I miss in this relationship is a more exciting and fulfilling sex life. We’ve both never had the highest libido, in the beginnging of our relationship we’d have sex like once or twice per week. We both have pretty busy schedules and don’t have the highest self-esteem, so I guess there are quite a few sexual brakes in place. However, the last couple years it’s sadly got worse. We’re now down to having sex like every other month and I’m always the one initiating, so it’s starting to affect my well-being and self-esteem in a negative way.
We have talked about it a few times and I tried to communicate as honestly as I could, but it’s just hard to find a solution. From her point of view there are just a lot of inhibitors, so she doesn’t get in the mood that often. We both work full time jobs and share household chores and also cook our own food every day, as well as other activities and hobbies, so at night we often just watch Netflix and chill (without the implied activities). She has also told me that she just doesn’t get horny that much and that it’s only fleeting moments. In those moments she prefers to masturbate because she gets done quickly. When we have sex she usually orgasms way before me, most of the time I don’t think reach orgasm at all (like 60-70% of the time maybe?). So she feels disappointed and having sex with me not being able to finish affects her self-esteem negatively and makes her less likely to want it.
So we’re both in a sort of downward spiral, I have performance anxiety because I don’t want her to feel bad for not making me finish and she feels perfomance anxiety when I’m not finishing. That leads to her wanting sex even less than usual and me going back to masturbating regularly, which makes it harder for me to finish when we do have sex.
To be honest, at this point I don’t feel very desirable sexually anymore. I would love to feel the excitement of flirting and leading up to having sex, but it’s just all drowned in anxiety and stress.
Has anyone here experienced something similar? Any advice is really greatly appreciated.