How do I bring up intimacy issues without making my partner feel pressured?
My girlfriend, 29F, and I, 31M, have been together for just over two years.
From the beginning of our relationship until around the 8–10 month mark, we had an amazing sex life. I could initiate, she would initiate, we would make out for no reason etc., and things felt passionate and mutual.
After about a year, that basically disappeared. She no longer initiates anywhere near as often, and I get rejected around 95% of the time. We are intimate at the absolute most once every 1-2 weeks, and even when we are, it does not feel as enjoyable or connected as it used to. She usually does not want foreplay, does not want to do new things like change positions, and does not want to spend as much time cuddling or holding each other afterward. She has self-admitted that’s she’s a pillow princess and genuinely doesn’t think that’s an issue at all.
She really enjoys it when we are intimate and always tells me how good I am at satisfying her and getting her to finish, but it feels more like once-every-few-weeks scheduled sex where we both just get off, rather than a deep intimate moment between bonded partners.
I love her and care for her deeply, so I have tried talking to her about it and explaining how important intimacy is to me. When I do, she says she’s feeling pressured and things like, “sex is all you care about,” “it’s normal for things to slow down,” or “it’s not unusual for that to happen when we live together, compared to the beginning when we were only seeing each other a few times a week.”
I told her I do not believe that is universally true, and my desire and love for her has only increased since we moved in together. The other night, I could tell she was getting frustrated during this conversation, and she said, “We have our whole lives together to be intimate. I don’t want to burn the candle out too quickly.”
That really hurt, because it made me feel like she is rationing intimacy and affection with me.
She is someone who has had a much more promiscuous past than I did when we were younger, including a previous marriage which ended because they became more like roommates and had zero intimacy, the exact same scenario I’m trying to avoid. On its own and at the beginning this was not a dealbreaker, and I am not trying to judge her for it, but combined with the fact that she no longer seems to view physical connection with her committed partner of two years who loves and takes care of her every day, as important, is concerning.
She does not take any medications. She is naturally a more wound up and “stressy” type-A person but she has always been that way and it never affected intimacy during the first year of our relationship.
She has a temper, and when she’s upset she speaks very contemptuously to anyone around her, including myself, which honestly is a pretty big issue for me because the way you speak to your partner, especially when stressed or upset, matters, and we get into fights because I don’t tolerate it.
I also do as much as I can to take most of the mental load of our shared responsibilities onto myself. I clean, do laundry, run errands, and go grocery shopping. I’m the one who does the cooking and she loves what I make for her. I hide notes around the house like a scavenger hunt that lead to small gifts with short letters telling her how much I love her. Sometimes I leave notes in her car before she goes to work or in the house for when she gets back. I brush her hair and give her shoulder rubs for no reason. I buy her flowers every few weeks. We have a massage table and she gets at least one or two full-body massages a week.
There is another related issue in the relationship: I feel like I am the one who always says “yes,” and she is the one who says “no.”
Whatever she wants to do, whether it is at home or going somewhere, I usually say yes. If she wants me to watch a movie with her, go out with her friends, go shopping for three or four hours, or do basically anything else, I will. I say yes not because I really want to do those things, but because I love how happy it makes her when we do them together. But if I ask for some effort on her part and for us to do something that I want, even as small as watching a movie that I pick, there is always an excuse. She is too tired, does not have time, would rather be on her phone, or she will get upset and just flat out say no because she does not want to.
If I bring up that I do a lot of the things she wants to do, she gets upset and says I am “holding them over her.” I am not trying to do that. I am just wondering where the reciprocation is. To me, taking at least minimal interest in your partner’s hobbies and activities, even if only to make them happy, is part of a normal healthy relationship.
Regarding intimacy directly, we could spend the whole day out doing fun things, playfully flirting and teasing each other, and as soon as we get home, if I try to initiate, it flips and she says I am pressuring her too much and that she is tired and not in the mood. I am in good shape, and she tells me she is attracted to me and compliments me all the time, as I do to her.
In between normal intimacy, if she is feeling stressed, she will occasionally ask me to “help her,” which means she wants me to get her off without expecting anything in return. It functions more as stress relief after work than mutual intimacy. I say yes to this because I care about her and want her to be able to rely on me to satisfy her needs, but if I ever slowly work up to asking her to “help me” as a last resort when we have not been intimate for multiple weeks, she gets upset and says it feels degrading to her, and that I am “reducing her to a sexual object.”
All of this makes me feel more like a butler than an equal partner. She does not seem to place much importance on giving back to me in any area of the relationship.
I care deeply for her as a person, and things are amazing in every other area, which is why I’m trying to make the relationship to work for me. She gets along great with my family and friends. Our humor, personalities, and interests match really well. She tells me she appreciates me and everything I do, that I am the best thing that’s ever happened to her, and we say we love each other every day. But I cannot keep being a partner who only gives without any reciprocation.