I (19F) have been dating my boyfriend (19M) for the past 7 months or so. We’ve known each other for years – we dated when we were around 15, but due to a series of my mental health struggles, we broke up. We reconnected last year and made the decision to get back together. He’s the love of my life; I haven’t ever felt this way for anyone else I’ve ever dated and I’m so enamoured by him. He’s the sweetest boy, and I would do anything for him.
Since only a week or two after we started dating, we started becoming intimate, however we never had sex as the first time we tried to, he had performance anxiety, and every time we tried for the few weeks after he would get nervous (he would say it’s because he’d bigged up how much he liked me for years and didn’t wanna disappoint lol). However, a few weeks ago, we finally had sex. It was both of our first times, and very intimate, and it was such a beautiful experience. I made a joke to him the week before that whenever we finally put it in I’d probably never let him take it out lol, and while I’d intended that it was a joke, I am finding that I’ve started to really feel his absence so much more when he’s not with me. I’ve always felt a little more alone when he’s not beside me, but its always been manageable and not really that deep – I understood that we both need our time away from each other. But I’m finding that since we had sex for the first time, I feel ten times less myself when he’s not with me. It feels like my skin is screaming for him, and I’m desperate to be with him all the time. It feels like a piece of me is missing, and while I know that he misses me too, I know he’s not finding it as different as I have been. I don’t want to become co-dependent on him, but I’m not sure how to struggle less with not being around him. I spend a lot of time doing activities without him involved – work, college, hanging out with friends, but even then I think I spend 80% of my day thinking about him. We do at least text frequently on the days we’re not together, and he calls me in the evenings, so it’s not like I’m void of any contact with him outside of physically being with him. Any help would be appreciated!