Scarleteen

I am 23 year old female. I'm in my second serious relationship. My boyfriend is 25 and we live together.
Just to give you a bit of background, I suffer from depression and anxiety which has at times caused things to be very up and down in our relationship.
I love my boyfriend very much and feel so lucky to be with him. He says he feels the same.
Recently, he has been turning me down a lot when I initiate sex. I would say that he probably turns me down more often than not. He also does not initiate sex as much as I would like him to. This sometimes makes me feel pretty silly and rejected.
When we do have sex it is great. We both basically always orgasm. We are both happy to pleasure each other manually, orally and through intercourse. He always seems to enjoy it and at the time, it does feel like he likes my body.
However I can't stop feeling like he doesn't want me as much as a boyfriend should. I just want to feel more special. I have tried to speak to him about this many times but often it's not too successful as it's usually just after he has turned me down and I am feeling hurt.
He does tell me however that it's not that he doesn't want me or find me attractive, it's just that he doesn't feel like it at the time as he's tired/stressed/not feeling well. But I just feel frustrated by this, as it seems to be the case so often. I am now starting to feel really bad for bringing it up all the time as an issue, because I don't want to make him feel pressured or drive him away. But I am worried that if he keeps turning me down, I will lose all my confidence and not want to initiate sex anymore.
I suppose I am just told by society than men want sex all the time. Also my ex boyfriend and I were together 3 years, we lived together for a year and he never turned me down once that I can remember. He wanted sex constantly, almost too much. I feel like if he doesn't want me all the time I must not be good enough for him.
I'm not sure what to do? Should I just concentrate on reducing both our stress levels, trying to relax together, maybe also try to give him some more time to himself or something. Maybe I should try not to think too much about sex and try to concentrate on our general happiness and well-being, and just hope everything falls back into place.

Welcome to the boards, honkytonk.

Before I say more, can you tell me how long you two have been together? That tends to be a big factor in this kind of situation, and what I'd have to say about it, and it's the one thing that's missing for me in the information you gave.

Hi Heather,
Sorry, we have been together around 3 years.
It's a difficult question to answer actually, as we begun seeing each other right before he went away for 4 months but it has been 3 years since he got back and we officially got together. However, we have also spend a large amount of time apart during these three years for various reasons..

No need for apologies. And okay.

So, what's MORE common than not when people have been together this long (and yep, this includes men), is for sexual desire to become less frequent and intense. I know that wasn't your previous experience with your last partner, but I would say that situation is less common and this one you've been having is more so. And by all means, the cultural narrative that men always want sex (usually paired with the idea women rarely do, or only do when it's about what men want) is wrong. In fact, in long-term relationships between men and women, it's pretty common for men to start off with more sexual desire than their women partners, and then for that to gradually flip over a few years, much like you seem to be experiencing.

One big thing I am seeing in all this is that for you, it sounds like sex is something that validates your partner's interest in you. So, when their desire for it goes down, or they say no to you when you initiate it, you wind up feeling rejected as a person, and like they have basically told you, by not wanting sex with you, that you aren't attractive or appealing to them.

That's problematic for a bunch of reasons. For one, our sexual desire often has a lot more to do with us, all by ourselves, than it does our partners, and our sexualities are more about us, ourselves, by our partners. And even more importantly, that's a lot for you to have tied up in sex, and a very precarious thing for you to have your validation of yourself based so much in, you know? You're good enough all by yourself: we all are good enough. Have you struggled before with your own feelings of worth?

Have you two been able to talk together about this, including you bringing up that you feel bad initiating so much, and like that might wind up feeling like pressure? Have you also been able to talk together about your concern that with you initiating a lot, and him frequently turning you down, you are worried you'll stop initiating and lose your sexual confidence with him? Have you two been able to brainstorm some solutions with any of this?

Thanks a lot for your reply Heather. I think you are right about sex validating his interest in me, I am just not sure how to get over this. I tell myself "it's not just about sex, he wants to be with you and loves spending time with you and we do loads of nice things together and he does so much for me", but there's a little voice saying "If he doesn't find you so beautiful and amazing that he'd never turn down sex with you, then you're not special enough for him".
I do also have issues with my feelings of worth, and I think I always have, even from childhood.

I think perhaps with my ex, his appetite for sex gave me an outlet for these feelings and I used his enthusiasm for sex with me as a way to validate myself. It has been apparent from the start that my boyfriend doesn't have the same obsession (for want of a better word). I know he enjoys sex but the way he thinks about it seems to be very different from my ex. We were more adventurous in some ways and did things that I have not done with my partner, nor do I have much desire to. This isn't because I feel any less attracted to him, but maybe because I have more of an emotional connection with him through sex, rather than a need to impress him with what I am willing to do.

But my ex would frequently tell me how he thought he was so lucky to be with someone who would do certain things with him/who had a dirty mind etc etc. This made me feel good about myself as I knew he was thinking "how lucky am I to be with this girl?".. I guess it didn't matter to me at the time why he was thinking that.

This is how I want my boyfriend to think of me too, except I do not want it to be because I do dirty things with him. I just want to feel close to him and feel like he thinks I am really special. For some reason I can't seem to separate these feelings of self-worth from sex.

I want to marinate in all of what you have just said here a little more before I come back to you with some thoughts and ideas.

But can you also fill me in on my ask about the discussions the two of you have had about any of this and your feelings? heck, for that matter, have you ever told your partner the things you just told me here in your last reply?

Still sitting with that reply (will likely add some more later this afternoon), but I do want to toss some basics about this issue with you in a very general way.

It is still incredibly common for girls and women to grow up, and keep living, with a TON of messages that basically say our worth is expressly ABOUT men's sexual desire for us, and us being beautiful/sexy/appealing to them. There are some more messages to the contrary now than there used to be, but those other messages don't seem to have decreased at all. In fact, in some ways, I'd say they have gotten even more pervasive, but also trickier to recognize.

So, pretty much any woman on earth is going to have internalized at least some of that, and from all I can tell, many women have internalized a great deal of it, especially if they're heterosexual. That given, some of what you're grappling with here is not at all uncommon for women to be grappling with, period. And if your self-esteem is also not that hot, that can make all of this even more impactful on you.

It might help, over time, to try and think about all of this in your own life history, and to try to start to recognize these messages as you see them, and the impact of them as you feel them. Sometimes, just reminding ourselves that some of our hard feelings have been literally manufactured, and largely to either benefit others (like the fashion, cosmetics and dieting industries, for example), or keep others in power (read: men), on our backs, can help lessen the impact of this particular source of some of these feelings and ideas and make us more willing to fight or reject them rather than further internalizing them.

I have a chronic pain condition, and have been whacked with a big wave of it, so I'm afraid I'll have to add the rest of my thoughts for you tomorrow. My apologies for the delay.

Before I say more, mind filling me in with what I asked about what discussions you two have had around this? Thanks.

Hey Heather,
Sorry I haven't had a chance to get back on and answer you. Before I posted this question I had briefly spoken to my boyfriend about the issue. However I hadn't really explained to him the reasons why I felt the way I did.

I hope that you don't mind me posting such long-winded question and replies. It has helped me organise my thoughts just to write them down and tell someone else, so thank you for listening.

After I spoke to you the other day I spoke with him when he got home from work. We had a long conversation about it and I told him basically everything I have told you. I apologised and told him I did not want him to feel pressured. I told him I don't feel sexually frustrated, but rather just lacking affection in general. He was understanding of this and recognised why. He said he feels bad that he doesn't give me enough appreciation and that he really does think i'm beautiful and amazing. I do believe this, I just with he would tell me more and stuff.

I also told him about the mindset I have developed about sex in terms of experience with my ex and society etc. He was understanding about this too. He still says that stress, tiredness and pressure in our relationship are the cause of his low sex drive at the moment.

Things have seemed better after the chat we had. I feel more okay about the way things are now and just want him to feel less stressed. We did have sex that night when we went to bed. So it isn't like it never happens. I just need to chill out if he's not in the mood and not take it so personally...

Thank you so much for your input and if you still want to add more feel free! x

P.S I hope you are feeling better.

No worries: this is for you, not for me, so whatever frequency of checking answers or posting works for you, that's the right one!

I'm particularly glad that what waylaid you was having some more conversation about this with your partner. All the more so since it sounds like it went really well, including that you took the positive risk of being more open, which no doubt built more intimacy, on top of being part of the route to help resolve and improve all this for you.

I'm glad you're feeling more relaxed about it, too, and less like it is impassable.

One thing you mentioned talking about was a greater need for verbal affirmation, which is awesome. For sure, sometimes we can seek more affirmation out from sex because we're not getting it from other places or ways of communicating, so asking for more of that is great. By the by, everyone in intimate relationships is going to have to figure out, together, how to work out differences like this. For instance, sounds like your boyfriend may want or need less affirmation than you (or less of it from sex). That doesn't make you broken or anything -- though if your esteem is low, that will be playing a part and is something to work on, just for yourself -- that just makes you two people who aren't the same people. Both of whom will have some needs, and both of whom might have more might be stuck right now with their personal growth or who has suffered. (If any of your thoughts or feelings about all this have you going to that awful narrative about neediness or "needy women," I highly suggest you put it in the rubbish bin where it belongs. It's sexist claptrap.)

So, it's okay for you to outright ask something like, "Hey, could you try and tell me a bit more often how you feel about me or are attracted to me? Even super-little stuff, like that you love how I laugh..." or some such. Just like it's okay for people to ask for less of that, it's okay to ask for more. You can also ask him what, if anything, he needs from you in this department. Who knows, maybe he'd like more of that about himself, too! You don't have to just wish this would change: you can ask for him to try and adjust it explicitly.

Sounds like if you two didn't talk more about it, it would also be good to ask some more about what he meant by pressure in the relationship, with the aim of finding any areas where either of you is feeling pressure, and then both doing what you can to alleviate them, both for the happiness of your relationship, but also for each of yourselves, as separate individuals.