My boyfriend’s lack of interest in my body is really wearing me down. We’ve been dating for just over a year and its been an ongoing problem in our relationship basically since the beginning. In the beginning, we had sex maybe twice a week which went down to around once a week after we had been dating for longer. He’s gone down on me maybe 4 times since we’ve been dating. From the beginning, he never seem very engaged when we had sex. He wouldnt really look at my body or touch it much. He seems to get pleasure entirely out of the physical sensation of sex and no pleasure from looking at me or touching me. I brought it up with him a couple of months into our relationship – how I feel like he isn’t that attracted to me – and I would ask him to try do certain things during sex (so that I would feel more desired). This feels like a really big mistake and I regret bringing it up. It created a lot of pressure around sex for him and he became even less engaged in sex and hardly ever wanted to have sex. He reassured me that of course he is extremely attracted to me and was so confused that I could feel like he wasn’t. It’s better now, but I can tell there is still a shyness from his side around sex. This issue of me feeling undesired by him basically led to me experiencing incredibly intense feelings of jealousy, and this jealousy has created a lot of problems in our relationship. I wouldn’t be able to go out and have a good night (with or without him) because I would feel completely depressed if I saw an attractive woman. I have done and said things I’m not proud of because of my jealousy, and of course my boyfriend has also suffered because of this.
I went to therapy for a while which mostly helped me get an understanding of why I was feeling so jealous – I feel undesired by my boyfriend and I believe that if I looked different, he would be more attracted to me. They also explained that my boyfriend’s expression of desire for me doesn’t look like what I think desire looks like. He’s not “strong” in bed with me and he never seems to have an overwhelming desire to take my clothes off (these are things I’ve experienced with other men).
Fast track to now, after experiencing all of these things for a year – painful jealousy, trying to change my thoughts and beliefs, self doubt, anger at myself for being this way, the list goes on – I’ve reached a point where I don’t know what to do. These days, I just feel sad at what I feel is a lack of physical intimacy between me and my boyfriend. I’m less concerned about feeling “desired” now, but more sad that I don’t get to have sex with him much and he doesn’t enjoy my body that much. My jealousy has really bad phases, but it mostly still lurks around. I’ve reached a point where I feel like when my jealousy is really bad, I should just stay inside because its not even enjoyable to go out when I’m like that. I think the problem is that I just don’t feel that special. I hate the fact that sex is so important to me. My boyfriend shows me he loves me in so many ways all the time, and yet I’m still suffering because I need sexual intimacy. My boyfriend is literally the most amazing person I’ve ever met, and he always tries to change his behaviour if he’s upset me in some way. Except when it comes to sex. He would also gets extremely defensive about the topic when I would bring it up and say things like “we are never going to be able to fix this issue of sex, so either you need to accept it or we need to break up” (not the ideal response, I know). But the bottom line is, I definitely cannot talk to him about sex. It makes him get stressed and sad and we will end up not having sex for 2 weeks, and then I just feel worse about everything. So it’s not an option.
I just don’t know what to do anymore
4 comments
My god I hope this is insensitive but this post makes me feel like he’s either closeted gay or asexual. No judgment to him…
He has told you very bluntly that this is **never going to change.**
You say yo don’t know what to do. Well, is this the kind of relationship and sex life you want for yourself? Because this is what you’ll have, potentially forever, if you stay in this.
You have to accept that fact before you can make a decision. This isn’t going to change or get better. You’ve done the work. A lot of work by the sound of it. But you can only work on yourself. There’s not going to be some moment in the future when he suddenly, magically transforms into a different kind of partner.
I hate to tell you this, but next time when you date somebody and it’s early on and you notice, somethings so big like that don’t date them anymore. Because I think you have different libido styles and it would’ve came out at some point anyway. That is why I believe in having sex before you get married so you know who you’re dealing with. It will cause problems and the others of your life you’ve worked on yourself so I don’t believe it’s you. I believe you have different styles and you’re not compatible
I think he is just bad in bed and selfish about sex maybe? Idk…..