She’s funny, smart, and incredibly kind. I’m in love with her more every single day and am proud of who she is and to be with her. I want to marry her and have a life with her. My only hang up that I can’t get past is our sex life. We don’t have much sex, once every 2-3 weeks, and it’s never much. One round, never any enthusiasm on her part. It’s chore sex, as far as I can tell.
I just don’t really know how to fix things. I don’t know how to approach it meaningfully. I’ve had sex with about 100 people, she’s been with 3. I think our ideas of what sex can be and can feel like and that physical connection can represent. We see it fundamentally differently and I don’t know how to work on that. Having someone look at you with hunger and desire and enthusiasm while your bodies are intertwined is meaningful and carries weight. I miss that. I want that, with her. I’ve just never gotten it. I don’t know if she’s just not attracted to me, if she has her own image issues, or how to do anything about it.
She never looks at me like she wants me. Never dresses up, never puts in more effort. Never initiates, never rubs up on me. Never talks anything spicy, never says she wants me first. She never goes after me. She never gives me anything for the hell of it, because she wants to. She never explores anything with me. She never does any of the work when we are at it. I don’t know what to do.
My self image has suffered in the last 3 years because of feeling so unwanted constantly when I used to get tons of praise and attention and I’m able to identify genuine impacts of this outside of “I’m not getting laid as much as I’d want”. It makes me feel bad, it impacts my personality and how I hold myself. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it does. I just want to be wanted.
We’ve talked about it before where I’ve (far kinder than this) expressed my issues and concerns and how it makes me feel. She just acts lost and like she can’t even understand where I’m coming at it from, which I believe, but I also have no clue how to help. If she doesn’t innately want me, I can’t talk her up to that. I can explain what it’s like to feel that need for another until I’m blue in the face, but if she doesn’t get it, it’s useless.
Point being, how do I talk to her about this more? Really explain how it hurts me and makes me feel? How do we address this specific situation? Is therapy an option? Does opening things change things in any way? I just feel lost with the person I feel I’m otherwise meant to be with.