I'm a 21 year old female going through similar issues...
My boyfriend is always calling me "such a guy" and acting like I'm an insensitive b***h every time I try to get him in the mood. He's always too tired/not in the mood/ feeling fat. The more I try to get him interested the more pressured he feels and the more he hates the idea of sex. As a result of his never wanting sex, IVE gotten very jealous and insecure. I can't figure out what he wants!
I think increased communication is potentially very important for solving this issue. Maybe therapy would help. I'm assuming a lot of the lack of desire has to do with anxiety depression and insecurity. Maybe working on these problems would help sex drive. The question is whether you want to wait and help your significant other through these issues...

Have you actually talked with him? Tried to convey to him how you feel and how he makes you feel? How old is he, how long have you two been together?

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Originally Posted by clplaster

To lie next to someone but still feel alone is a very suffocating emotion.

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You really express this feeling well.

I've definitely been in this situation. I lived with a boyfriend for about 4 years when I was in my 20s and I thought we would get married and stay together and have a family, but he just became more and more remote the longer we were together. As if we were just friends.

If he was working late at his desk and I came and hugged him gently from behind, he would shrink away from me or sit stiffly and just endure it. We were visiting my sister and she later told me that every time I sat next to him on the couch, he would get up and move somewhere else. I had gotten so used to it, I didn't even notice. I just had this ache in my heart all the time. I wanted to be loved. I remember lying awake at night next to him feeling alone and sad.

Other people thought I was very attractive, but he told me he liked women thinner and he just wasn't attracted to me. (When I see pictures of myself then I was bony trying to stay thin for him.) Eventually, he announced he never wanted kids (he'd always said before that he did want them) and made an excuse not to have sex for several months, and I just gave up. This doesn't sound like it, but he had many good qualities that I even miss some times, but I don't regret leaving.
Strangely, when I left, he tried to get me to come back...

Clplaster, does your girlfriend make you feel loved?

She honestly does make me feel very loved, every other avenue of our relationship is very strong and fullfilling. Only in the ways of intimate affection do I find what I view as our Achilles' heel. She is an amazing person and to me I think she is the most beautiful and sexy woman to ever grace my world. I just wish I found more of myself in her or more of herself in me but we are just very very different people.

I know you have different libidos. Are you different in other ways, too?

We have very different family backgrounds and different religious beliefs. She was raised catholic and I was brought up Nazarene but I have taken a more logical view. Other than that she just wants me to be more of an "alpha male" instead of how I have been. I like to allow her room to do what she wants and be more free spirited but she wants me to control her more. We have our differences and none of them bring this much level of frustration, not even close.

How old are both of you. And what you you define as often or not often?

Did you ever think that maybe she is not sold on being with you forever, and is holding back until she is sure? The fact you don't live together tells me she hasn't completely come to terms with just giving you sex, whenever you please.

So let me come at you a different way. Do you live at home? Does she? Do you both work, or are in school? Have you set a date, or made plans to get to the next level??

Hey Tal,

I know she doesn't think that far ahead, not with me because it scares her. Ok a little background, I'm white, divorced with 2 kids from my previous marriage also just turned 27. She is Latina 24 years old and has a very strict family especially her father. He doesn't even know I exist; she would have hell to deal with about me being white. Then to tell him that I have kids and I'm divorced. He would view that as I had my chance and it failed therefore he wouldn't allow his daughter to be with me. He would want her to have the best of everything and for her to start anew where both she and her partner were doing everything for the 1st time. In that aspect she doesn't think of me as her life partner and I don't push it because I figure it will come in time. Although I have set a deadline on seeing progress, I will not allow her to have me without more of a commitment. Basically getting the milk for free.. Also to answer the rest of your questions, I have my own place and she lives with her mother partly because she is still a full time student. Another reason is that her mother is still single and has no one else there. Both of us work she has a crazy weekly schedule as to where I have my reg 8 to 5 and my kids on Friday or Saturday night. Ok now on the setting of the date, we haven't set one as a couple. I have my agenda and a time line that I feel is very considerate. I will not ask for her hand is marriage until I have her father's blessing or until I have tried to my hearts content to get it and he is just being unreasonable. If that's the case then I will ask without it but I do feel that because she means so much to me that she deserves to have everything the proper way. That she is worth all of the time and effort put into our relationship. I just want our intimacy to increase; I don't want to be the only compromising party in this. I mean once you start giving in and giving in where does it stop and who will you be in the end? I already feel as though I've lost some of myself as it is. I would like to be met in the middle.

Thanks for the background information, it surely helps.

I really think your expectations are to high, unrealistic, and very one-sided, as she hasn't made that kind of commitment, and your just a b/f whom is seen when there is time, in her busy schedule.

Tell me how you can really have the intimacy in a relationship you want, when your barely a secret lover, with a tight schedule?

Your way ahead of yourself here, with your time line for progress, as there is no communications going that way, just your own assumptions, as she can't think like you do at this point, with her life the way it is, nor wants too.

Please get a little more realistic, and more inclusive, as sex, and intimacy is the least of your problems to solve.

The priority would seem to be getting this relationship out of the closet, and in the open, to see if it does grow. That takes the two of you working together in the same direction, not you seeing further down the road, and planning for you both, without a clear understand from her.

That my friend you do not have at this time.

Sorry.

Well I hope it helped out. Please don't be sorry, I asked for this. I want to be as honest as possible and I would like that in return. Don't sugar coat it for me, it is what it is and that's what it will be.

I love her and I have always been ten pages ahead of her in our relationship. I'm used to it, although I have thought of myself as a secret lover just not in that exact terminology. She hides me from her father and some of his side of the family. On the other side of the token I am known on her mothers side and I know that her mother thinks fondly of me. Her brother also knows me and we get along, it is only centralized around her father for the most part. A lot has to do with the respect she has for him, that she doesn't want him to meet anyone until she knows they are the one she will marry. We also agreed on not moving in together because if her father ever found out it would crush him, that he wouldn't respect me and our relationship. There are viable reasons for the way things have gone and how they have played out thus far my only wish at this point is for her to be in the relationship the way that I am. To see me the way I see her, yes I know I probably do have very high expectations but I would like to think they are more like goals. I don't want to just coast and let whatever happen I want what I want. Thanks again for your advice but I have to work lol..

It can't be all you, and you can't force things to fit your notion of things.

My advice, slowdown to a more reasonable pace, and relax, as opposed to forging ahead.

If its one thing you learn after 30 years of marriage is to be patient with yourself, and more so with your partner.

What real good does it do to leave them behind you. Sometimes you do have to wait until they catch up, and trust me, they love you for it.

As for the intimacy, slowdown, and appreciate her position, you ain't the one yet, and your right, there is a lot more work to do, to get to that level.

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Originally Posted by clplaster

Hey BG..
Thanks for posting on mine, I was going through the list and I saw yours. Your right, after reading your question we do have a lot in common.
First off this is a two way street to me and there should be a level of compromise. Why should it be you making all the sacrifices? Why do you have to change to suit her? That’s what I’m faced with and feels that I have begun losing myself in everything that has gone on in my relationship. I would think that maybe you should talk to a sex therapist on your own at first before bringing it to her attention. See if there is something you can learn and try before taking her to them.
My GF saw a sex therapy discussion and immediately saw issues with her and some with me. We talked about it and I learned a few things as well as her. Don't make it a fight, what I do is voice myself in a non-confronting manner and let her decide whether I'm worth it. With me it isn't just let me have you and put me to sleep.. Hell no! I want her to want me too, for it to a mutual feeling.
In the end it will boil down to whether you are able to arrive at an agreeable compromise. How does it go “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” you can do everything under the sun the moon and the stars and that’s all. Put your best and honest effort into your relationship and allow her to show you how she feels about you. If you matter to her the way she does to you then she “should” recognize and acknowledge your efforts. If she doesn’t then maybe your being taken for granted and she has forgotten what you actually bring to her table.
I know it’s hard, and it will be. Sex isn’t everything in a relationship but it is a very large part. It is the one thing that you two do together that is only with you two. I mean what other parts of the relationship are there? Communication.. right.. that is also done with other people than you as well as a whole slew of items.. Sex is only between you two and should be held in the highest regards. To be sexually compatible to me is a very very very large deal, simply because it is only done with the people in the relationship.
I feel for you and hope for you to have better days, keep your head up and try to be positive.

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Thanks for the for the advice clplaster
Its more than an imporved sex life I'm looking for, its basically emotional fulfillment. A part of me feels like I shouldn't have to change or accept the way things are. But isn't compramise what a relationship is all about. I thought love was accepting the positives and negatives your partner has. At what point do you stop sacrificing your own mental sanity and move one? I feel like I have so much more invested emotionally In this relationship, and like you said, she could just walk away.

Hey BG,

No that is true, love and a relationship are very much so based on compromise. My point is that you compromise to what extent and how equal? If you have to completely compromise to her every wish and whim just to make it work then you may want to look at the level of your investment to hers in the relationship. I was merely pointing out one aspect and pretty much because that is my only complaint in my relationship. We hug and kiss a lot but that just simply isn't enough for me, I want more and it pains me because we view this so differently. That I don't know what turns her on or how to get her aroused. I also feel as though when I'm touching her that it only effects me and she is just saying "ok" in her head.

Here is something that I'm at a loss with, the other night we went to dinner had a very nice evening and came back to my house. We put on a movie and I was fixing her laptop at the same time. Well all the while we were laying there and holding each other I couldn't stop thinking in those terms and looking down her shirt etc.. Then towards the end of the movie I started expressing what I had been thinking the entire evening and she tells me that it isn't going to happen and why can't I just lay with her? I felt so disgusted with myself, knowing it was true and just wondering why I can't do that. Why do I have to always be "on"! I don't have an answer and that feeling of disgust is one of my most hated feelings, it creates so many different effects of self hate. Then after she left I couldn't sleep, just kept thinking about and was so exhausted yesterday that I almost collapsed in one of my clinics. She got off work last night and we talked about and I felt no better in fact more so that we aren't compatible and now I'm wondering where to go from here. Once we hung up I laid there again till about 4am just thinking about everything. Why does this have such an effect on me? Why am I the way that I am?

Bottom line is that I love her more than I can say and we are so awesome in every other way. She makes me so happy except with this and I wish there was something to lower my drive and desire for her because it just never f'n stops. I fell like I'm literally drowning and I can't ever get above the water.

Masturbate.

I've known some very strict Latinos. However there are no universal statements that you can make. The Latino families I've known have all be very outgoing and open, and very friendly. Hardly prudes.

I still see a very one sided relationship here. Its going to be pure hell as long as it remains that way. It can go either way down the road. She might be this way naturally and will never warm up then what? On the other hand just maybe down the road she will warm up... but if she doesn't then what?

First of all you are going to have to be more realistic in this relationship or I'm going to predict far more heartache and pain for you in the future.

Its easy to get wrapped up in a dead end relationship hoping just a little more time will be what all you need for her to see things your way... and ignore the blatantly obvious. Many of us have wasted too much time like this... myself included.

What I learned the hard way decades ago... is judge every relationship at face value... what you get now might be the best you ever get. If it isn't then its time to move on.

Whoa whoa whoa...

She made you feel like crap because you are attracted to her? Do you know how many threads we get here from women that WANT their guy to be attracted to them?

She was mad because you SAID something about being attracted to her.

That just sounds stupid. You DID just lay there with her. Does she want you to NOT be attracted to her?

I don't think the two of you are going to get past this without a counselor. If she won't go to one then you have a couple of choices.

1. End the relationship because of incapatibility.

2. Accept that what you've got right now is as good as it is EVER going to get, and accept that you CHOOSE to be there. If you CHOOSE to be there, then it's no one's fault but your own if you are not completely satisfied with the status quo.