I (26 HLF) and my partner (31 LLM) are/were approaching the 3 year mark of our relationship. I wouldn’t even say that I necessarily have a super high libido, as I have been in relationships before where the other person had a much higher libido than me, but also in retrospect maybe I just wasn’t sexually attracted to them.

We started dating at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. I had been in a string of very bad relationships but had only been fully single for about 2-3 months when I met him. I would say he is/was my first healthy and stable relationship. He was a great listener, and was always there for me on ways that my parent and sister could not. His family immediately accepted me as part of theirs. I grew up in a very broken and unstable environment so this was very new to me and felt in a lot of ways what I had always wanted. I was loyal and committed to him to a fault because I foresaw us making plans to “really” become a family of our own. We moved in together at 6 months. We adopted a dog after 1.5 years. I pushed through any hard time because I believed in us and our future, which for me would include marriage and hopefully having a child at some point. Back in December when things were especially hard and I felt stretched very thin with household responsibilities, working, taking care of the dog, trying to exercise and take care of myself. I confided in him how stressed I was but that I always had our future in mind….and I didn’t feel like he thought of me that way. He gave me an answer saying he doesn’t think of me that way, he didn’t understand why I was so preoccupied about planning for our future, why I couldn’t just take things day by day and enjoy being with each other and what happens happens. He doesn’t have marriage or starting a family in his mind at all as a goal. He said focus on prioritize yourself because that’s what I’m doing. So I did, and there was a shift in how I felt within a span of a few weeks. Focusing on the day to day I was irritated, I felt misunderstood, he felt distant from me, we fought about me wanting to spend the holidays with my family instead of his. He had a lot of insecurity that he never addressed head on, every time we would bicker or if we had a disagreement he would immediately joke after “so do you want to break up with me now?” It felt every time like I was just taken for granted, like things were immediately resolved and he was joking because there’s no way in his mind I would leave.

We only ever had sex a couple of times a week at the peak of our relationship. Now this past 6 months I have even gone off birth control completely because we only have sex 2-3x a month. I was never satisfied with that. I got new toys and things to enjoy masturbation more and fill the void…but it just didn’t. The physical intimacy was so lacking. He almost never kissed me when we weren’t having sex. Any hug we shared I always hugged tighter and longer. I made efforts to compliment him, tell him how sexy I thought he was, I can’t remember a time when he told me I looked hot or sexy. The best I got was “you look nice” and even that was rare. I started a regular workout routine a few months ago and have felt a lot more confident about my body, which only made me sex drive increase. I also became more disappointed and he even kind of discounted my idea that I was looking fitter and hotter saying I hadn’t even been working out that much or for that long, that my body has changed “a little bit”

I brought it up to him so many times. I communicated I wanted more outward affection, more intimacy. He definitely tried but it was never enough and reading through this sub I realized that nothing was going to really change that much. We were never going to have any more than basically quickies once a week at best. And I wasn’t satisfied with that, and it’s ok that I’m not satisfied with that. That’s not just the way relationships “have to be” once you get past the honeymoon phase. I fantasized about cheating on him every day for the last month. The past couple of weeks I had to acknowledge I was openly flirting with other people and hiding/intentionally not mentioning my relationship. Yesterday a cute guy in my class was (I think) checking me out and all I could think is if he asked me over, there was a decent chance I wouldn’t say no. Even just how good it made me feel for someone to look at me like that, like consciously seeing me in a sexually attractive way.

I realized that if he had been feeling and experiencing those same things, I would be upset and feel betrayed. I hate feeling like I made a mistake. I hate that he’s going to take our dog. Losing that security and predictability in my every day life is terrifying, having to move back in with my mom and figure all of that out is frustrating, and because of sex/intimacy feels so shallow. But it’s really not. If that’s what I need to feel happy in a relationship, that’s what I need, and I know it’s out there. I know there’s someone where there’s a mutual attraction and they want to make the effort to prioritize intimacy, setting aside time to ourselves to be present with each other and have thoughtful conversations.

TLDR; this sub has made me realize I’m not alone. and, for me, it’s not worth staying and investing what would be A LOT of necessary (and perhaps wasted) effort improving our intimacy and sex life for someone that doesn’t daydream or actively think about what our future together will look like. Being together and having our lives so intertwined but not consciously check in if our goals are lined up. Being hyper ambitious with someone who isn’t very ambitious at all. It just wasn’t right. And that’s ok.