I’ve been with my partner for coming up on 9 years and she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me.
The only complaint I have about our relationship is that I have a much higher sex drive than my partner. We have talked before about this before and made some progress about initiating sex more often (mostly by me), being more direct about requesting sex, and being more vocal about desires but sometimes I feel like I’m imposing on her/taking advantage of how she is very accommodating to me. She almost always says yes but lately it has been feeling like she is doing it as a favor to me. That sounds harsh but it’s the best way I can describe it. She’s never really into it to the level I am which makes complete sense cause I’m the one always initiating. I’m also on the kinkier side while she’s more vanilla so I avoid any of the kinkier things I wanna do because I already feel like I’m imposing. I don’t want her to have to put up with kinky things when she’s not into it in the first place.
I just wish I could communicate that I want to feel desired and wanted instead of her doing this as a kindness to me/relationship maintenance. I’m not the best at communicating my thoughts and (I’m working on this) shut down when emotions run high because I’m very conflict adverse and just want her to be happy. I’m scared that bringing this up will make her feel self-conscious or invalidate her feelings of progress.
How do i bring up wanting to feel desired while also not making her not feel overwhelmed or unappreciated for the progress we have already made. I don’t want her to think the progress we have made isn’t valuable or appreciated I just want a little more as selfish as that sounds.