Scarleteen

My girlfriend and I have been together for about three years. She was the first person I ever used a strap on with and it was great. She has even had male partners in the past and said comparatively I was great. However this past year I have been struggling getting into a rhythm and she has been less satisfied. I love her so much and I want to satisfy her in every way. Is there any way or technique to get my rhythm back? Is it just in my head?

Hi Tina B, welcome to the boards!

Could you tell us a bit more about your girlfriend's feedback? Did she mention anything else about what has changed? Also, do you have a sense of why you're struggling to get into a rhythm? Are you experiencing any pain? If you haven't tried it yet, experimenting with different positions might help here.

Of course, there isn't a single ideal rhythm, only different ones that feel good for you and your partner. And we should remember that you are not a machine, so some changes in rhythm are to be expected.

She hasn’t really mentioned anything specifically wrong that I’m doing. She mentioned to me that maybe I should watch amateur strap on porn to see how they get into a rhythm. However, I have been watching and the videos don’t seem to be working. I have been taking this new birth control for about a year to control my cycles and it made me have crazy mood swings for the first six months of taking it, so sometimes I feel like she’s not emotionally attracted to me as she was or even as physically attracted to me because I’ve gained a little weight. She has not said this but this is just the way I feel. I also feel less aggressive or less eager to initiate sex because of the birth control and I know she’s not going to initiate sex because she wants to feel wanted. Which is always okay with me because I want her. I think it’s mostly in my head but I want to fix my problem. I’m not sure how.

Hi Tina_B,

It sounds like part of why you're not able to figure out the "right" rhythm is that your girlfriend doesn't seem super sure about what she wants you to do differently (or if she is, she's having trouble communicating it to you). So, it seems like one approach is to just play around with different rhythms or positions together to see what you both enjoy (including positions where she's the one with a bit more control over the pace or rhythm of things).

It does also sound like it might be time for a check-in about initiating sex and how you're each feeling about it. It's not super realistic to expect one partner to initiate every single time, if only because it puts managing the frequency of sex onto one person, instead of it being a thing you two work out together. But more than that, if your on medication that's decreasing your drive to initiate sex, not checking in about this is setting you both up for frustration.

I will add that this may also be a time where you two can talk about other things that help you each feel wanted within a relationship; it sounds like you may not be feeling super wanted at times, and like if there's a change in frequency of you initiating sex, she may also want to express some other ways you can help her feel wanted.