Sex/Relationship problems - long post!

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-13-2004
Sex/Relationship problems - long post!
Tue, 07-13-2004 - 6:31pm
I'd be grateful for any advice. I've been with BF for just over 2 years, we don’t live together. I thought he was 'the one' from the moment we met and he says he's never felt as comfortable with a woman as he does with me, and he has talked a lot about our long term future. He is very kind and thoughtful and does a lot for me. On the down side he can be stubborn and always thinks he's right!

In my past relationships I've had a variety of difficulties, but sex has never been an issue. And when I first got together with BF he complimented me and said that he liked the fact that I was uninhibited about my body. While I wouldn’t say that I have a massive sex drive, it's not lacking either.

However 6 months ago BF suddenly brought up the fact that he wasn't happy with our sex life. He actually raised this issue while we were having sex, as you can imagine this upset me quite a bit, first of all because of the context in which he'd brought it up, and secondly because it was so out of the blue. He said that I never made any effort in bed and it felt like he was doing all the work. While I could agree that I was the more passive one in bed, and I can be quite lazy, I don’t think he was right to say I never did any work. One difficulty I have is that I have polycystic ovaries and my hormonal imbalance means that I get two periods a month rather than one, consequently I often have a heavy bleed and this can make penetrative sex difficult, however when this happens we do mutual masturbation. I need a lot of direct clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm, so usually BF makes me come and then I return the favour, using my hands or my mouth. I also often give him a massage and this leads to sex. I find this very satisfying, but BF said that 'it's just like mutual masturbation' and indicated that he wanted more. However he had difficulty expressing what more he actually wanted. He said that I could kiss and caress him more. I wanted him to be more specific but he said that that wasn't the point, and that I should just try things and see how they felt. He also wanted me to initiate sex more.

So following this I tried harder. We nearly always have sex in the morning, and I'm not at my best in the morning and I have a bad back that gets worse overnight so I'm not very mobile. So I thought I’d try initiating sex in the evening, when I'm more awake and a lot more mobile. In the fortnight following our conversation, I tried initiating sex three times, however on all three occasions he turned me down. The third time, he said that he perhaps 'wasn't ready for all this assertiveness'. So I assumed that he actually didn’t want me initiating sex in this way after all and stopped doing it. I also tried kissing and caressing him more, but when I did things and asked if he liked it, he said that I shouldn’t ask. To be honest, I could never really tell if he liked things or not so I didn’t really know what I was doing. Sometimes I’d try something and he seemed to be enjoying it and I'd ask him if he liked it and he'd say 'it's ok' without much enthusiasm.

Today we had an argument about a completely unrelated issue when he suddenly brought up the issue of sex again. He said that nothing had changed since the last time he brought it up, and said that I never kiss or caress him, which isn’t true. He said that sex felt like he was 'doing it' to me and that it was always him bringing me off and me bringing him off and that was it, and he was beginning to lose interest in it. But he also said that it wasn't worth talking about it with me because last time I got very upset, and also because it wouldn’t make any difference. Then he left.

I'm really at a loss as to what to do now. I love him to bits and don’t want the relationship to end, and I don’t think he does either, but if he won’t talk about it then how can things change? I really don’t know what I can do to improve our sex life. It isn't as if I haven’t tried to be adventurous. Earlier in our relationship I suggested trying sex toys as I can orgasm very quickly with a vibrator, but he wasn't interested. I bought some body paint but he reacted with incredulity and threw it away, the same thing happened when I suggested some sexy games like strip poker, he said it would make him feel uncomfortable. He doesn't like me to verbally compliment him in bed. I enjoy wearing sexy underwear, and I try to look after myself as best as I can. I don't know what else I can do.

I know that I must confront BF and tell him that unless we talk about it, things won’t change. But I don’t know how I can get him to open up and tell me how he really feels. I don’t think I would get upset provided we talked about it properly without arguing or shouting, but I worry that he will become defensive and it will end up like this. I'm not a mind reader and so I really don’t know how to go about working out what he wants in bed if he isn’t telling me.

Can anyone offer any suggestions as to how to proceed, I don’t want to lose him but I can’t see where we can go from here.