My boyfriend keeps pressuring me

[Elsabeth]

Well my boyfriend and I have been together for almost a year. But let's cut to the chase.
He keep pressuring me to send him nudes. I keep telling him no. But he keeps asking. Eventually I send him a pic or two to just make him stop. But also when we are together he keeps trying to make things go farther. Like a simple kiss he makes it deeper. Cuddles and he tries to stick his hands down my pants. I don't want to disappoint him, but I push his hands away and he always says "oh come on babe, just let me touch a little" I don't allow him to. It's just so frustrating. I feel like he is confusing his lust for love for me. What should I do.

[Heather]

Welcome to the boards, Elsabeth.

I'm so sorry to hear that your boyfriend has been treating you this way, and that you felt the only way you could make his coercion was to do something you really didn't want to do.

My concern is that this pattern will hold: it usually does. In other words, he keeps coercing you, first with pictures, next with sex. And you keep eventually caving -- and when we stick around someone who won't stop coercing us, we usually all will -- and doing things you don't want because your boyfriend won't consider you at all in what HE wants, and doesn't have a problem manipulating you to get it.

We will always suggest that once anyone knows (or even just strongly suspects) that someone they're intimate with is being abusive in any way, which includes sexual coercion like this, they get away and stay away from that person. After all, doing that lets us know we're not safe with that person, and that person is simply not treating us with care, love or very basic respect.

If you don't yet feel up to that, or strongly feel this is a wonderful relationship separate from this, then the thing to do is to set hard limits with him clearly and draw strong lines. Like this, "You may not ask me for nude pictures anymore. I do not want to give them to you, I will not give them to you, and if you refuse to respect that, we will not be together anymore because I'm gone. You also may not pressure me for other sexual things -- like getting in my pants -- that you want, but I don't. If you do any of that again we will also be over. Do you understand?" If he says he does, you can see how it goes. If he crosses any of those lines, then you just gotta go: he's made clear he's not someone who can be the most basic good partner to you. Healthy relationships have boundaries and everyone in them respects them.

If you set limits like that and he's a jerk about it, again, time to move on and seek out someone with the emotional maturity and basic respect for other people as a partner, not someone without those things.

What do you think about all that?