my girlfriend and i have been together for just under a year and a half. it’s been the best relationship of my life and i’ve never been closer with someone, but recently i’ve really started to overthink my relationship due to some parts of it that have really affected me.
the main issue right now is our lack of intimacy, i have a much higher libido than her and we both recognise that and i do my best to manage it so that it never causes any problems. but it’s now at the point where we’re only intimate maybe 2 times a month, along with only seeing each other maybe 3 or 4 times a month due to her having such a busy schedule (both in university and a job, i work much less hours just now however due to seasonal based work). i spoke to her about it a few nights ago and she admitted that she had past trauma that’s made her struggle to sometimes be intimate, i’ve tried to be as consoling and understanding as i can but my needs were never fully discussed. i don’t want to be selfish and ask again because the last thing i want to do is make her uncomfortable and feel bad for not being intimate but i do understand that we also have to compromise in relationships. We barely speak throughout the days now too and when we facetime every night we don’t speak much due to being tired, but when we’re together everything’s normal and just as amazing as always.
i don’t know where to go from here, i really love her and i want to stay with her for as long as humanly possible but as time goes on its beginning to feel less and less like a relationship, i just feel so lost and stressed because of it all and i don’t know what direction to head in.
You’re supposed to have a higher libido than she does, it’s just biology. But if for the past year you’ve both had more time and energy for sex and now you don’t it’s a little curious that she’s suddenly discovered this “trauma”. Since you can’t demand she submit to sex she doesn’t want maybe you can urge her into the professional treatment she’d need to ever properly process this “trauma”. However, this just honestly sounds like a teenage romance that’s hit the wall of early adulthood wherein neither party wants to be the first to talk about breaking up. Not having sex can come down to a lot of different reasons but if you’re both just sleepwalking through all the other parts of the relationship too it might be time to end it.
I do believe the trauma has always been there, some aspects of our sex life have been a big grey. she never liked talking much and has never really taken much initiative which she told me was maybe down to the trauma so i don’t want to dismiss that it doesn’t seem fair on her.
but i did forget to mention that we stopped having sex for about six months, we were still intimate during that time just not including sex. it was her first time with someone and my second so naturally and we stopped pretty soon after due to personal reasons that limited how much she could enjoy sex. we’ve worked on it recently and it’s sort of improved but outside of it our sex life was great and we enjoyed it every time but i still don’t know how much my needs were being met.
You have too much time on your hands. It’s going to be a problem anytime you have too much time to do nothing. But also you can try harder in other ways to create a spark. Try sending lunch and a note to her work or flowers to her place. If you do things like this that’s great. But make sure she gets reminders that you love her. It’s important for that spark in the relationship.
Who’s place or where do you spend time together?
Consider who’s commuting, planning, making the most effort when you see eachother? Who accommodating whom the most? If you have more time and energy for now, perhaps you can make time together easier somehow and she will be more open to more days/time to spend together which in turn will be more opportunties to bond intimately.