My boyfriend and I have been together for six years, in the last 1-2, I've been having a hard time feeling any romantic feelings towards him.
Generally speaking, my boyfriend is a very good person. He cares about me, has a great relationship with his family and mine, he has a good job and cares deeply about his career development and we are both saving towards a house. We also both have very similar opinions about how we'd raise potential children. For context, we do currently live together. I really want to make this relationship work.
Lately, in the last two years, our relationship has felt like it has devolved into more of a strained friendship. We don't flirt, we don't date (maybe dinner once every couple months that we either split or he covers as he makes more than me), we don't compliment each other (when he does his tone is very apathetic and it feels a bit forced) or go out of our way to do nice things for each other. In the early years, I did this often. I got him gifts when he received promotions at work, made him a get well basket after an illness he had, etc. This was never really reciprocated (to be fair I never asked him to), so I kind of just stopped. He does get me flowers a couple times a year, which I LOVE and have told him I would like to receive them more often (nothing expensive, just a grocery store bouquet), and he's kind of laughed it off, citing if it's a once and a while thing it's more meaningful. I always make sure to show my excitement and appreciation when he does get them. This is not a huge point of contention for me, just more meant to demonstrate his attitude in general about expressing romance/love.
Lack of physical attraction:
Our sex is okay, but I rarely am excited to have sex. I never seek it out or initiate anymore either. He is very interested in his own pleasure in bed, and our sex is always very rough because this feels good for him. I don't hate this - I do get off probably 70% of the time, but I am often thinking of other things during/waiting for it to be over, and sometimes it is painful. I have expressed being in pain during before, but didn't explicitly say stop because I was overwhelmed, and he kind of just kept going. He apologized when I was trying to get my emotions together afterwards and was crying a bit, and he seemed very upset that I was in pain at that point, but it was difficult for me to move past this and sex has not really been the same for me since. It was not ever brought up again. It did not used to always be like this. I used to initiate and feel very turned on before and during sex, and we'd go multiple times a day (but I think it's pretty normal to see that decrease.) I'm not sure if this is a me issue and I'm just not as into the same things we've been doing, or if it's being caused by our lack of connection.
Lack of connection:
Generally speaking, he lacks a lot of the emotional depth that I have, which makes it hard for me to connect or find common interests to talk about, we really don't like any of the same things. It is difficult for him to have nuanced conversations, and his opinion rarely changes when presented with new information. It comes off as though he is insecure about being proven wrong about things, which makes him defensive. I've been hopeful that as we've both aged and become more mature this would change, but I really hasn't.
We also have differing approaches to our political beliefs. He is very uninterested in how the social systems of the world work around him and how it affects people; this is something I am very informed about. He plays devil's advocate a lot too when I do bring up issues I care about, and when it comes to human rights issues this really bothers me. Along with that, he is a very contrarian person, sometimes even disagreeing with me, and then rewording the same thing I've said as his own opinion. This is pretty exhausting to deal with. In passing I've told him he is "kind of a contrarian" before and he was confused about why I said this. I can admit that I was a bit indirect, but I'm usually pretty conflict avoidant with him. He also is very unaware of his tone when speaking, or at least acts like he is, which has caused multiple arguments over the course of our relationship when I 'take something the wrong way' because of his tone.
This kind of all ties into my final point, which is that between us, conflicts are rarely productive because he never wants to concede any points I might make, and he is constantly trying to 'prove me wrong.' We bicker very, very often, and everything feels like a one-up, like he's trying to get me to concede to him constantly, even about little things that feel completely unimportant.
Example: He might bring up a new coffee shop to go to in town even though I'd mentioned the day before I tried it and didn't like it. I would respond with "We were talking about that yesterday, I don't really like that coffee shop," and he would then respond with, "No, when we talked about that I remember you saying "I wouldn't go to that coffee shop," not that you didn't like it."
From there, the argument would ensue about how I feel he's hung up on semantics, because the meaning is the same - I don't want to go there. And his response is usually something like, "But like you didn't say that, you said something different so I that's why I said that." Basically talking in circles, looking for me to say 'I see your point' etc. Sometimes I'll give in, and sometimes I will just disengage and say "Okay" which upsets him, usually he just responds something like "Okay, never mind I guess"
This all makes me feel like if I brought up a lot of these issues it would be a road to no where. We do have some good points of connection, it is not CONSTANTLY like this, but he and I do both agree that we argue too much. We've toyed with the idea of counseling to work through these issues, and I'm open to it. I'd love to get back to the romance and flirting and we had at the beginning of our relationship, as I do really care about him and the important pieces (family, responsible money handling, etc.) are all there! I just feel very stuck. None of these issues feel 'big enough' to me to make any big decisions.
TLDR; I don't feel connected to my bf anymore because we constantly bicker, and our sex life is not as satisfying as it used to be.