Married (30sF) and been with my partner (30sM) my entire adult life. He’s the only sexual partner I’ve ever been with.

Our relationship is amazing, and he is the love of my life, and the person I want to grow old with, but we have incredibly mismatched libidos and I’m really struggling recently.

Typically, I masturbate daily usually cumming about 4-5 times a day.

He knows I masturbate often and that I watch porn and read smut. He makes fun of how many toys I have and will mention that he knows I masturbated earlier and tease me for doing it (light-heartedly) if he finds my bedside drawer open or my bottle of lube out. So he’s not blind to my sex drive… he just doesn’t seem interested in helping me out.

I’ve always had a very high sex drive. This is not a phase, but I will say that as I’ve gotten older. I feel like my sex drive is continuing to go up, and while his is wearing down. I’m trying not to take it personal, but we used to have sex a lot more. He still masturbates, and I don’t have a problem with it, but it makes me sad, considering I’m so willing. (I know sex and masturbation are different animals, but it hurts nonetheless).

I used to work very different shifts from him, and would find time to play with myself without issue. Throughout COVID and various schedules changes, I’ve always managed to find a way to get myself off. During the pandemic, I “showered” for what felt like hours every day or would wait for him to mow the grass, or something in order to make it work.

This past week, he’s been sick (tested positive for COVID, so hasn’t gone to work, or left the house but has been more or less healthy)” and I haven’t had the house to myself. I masturbated in the shower once, played with myself in the car one night, and played with a toy for the 15 minutes while he went out for a walk, but all-in-all, I’ve only cum once in the past five days. And I think it’s finally starting to dawn on me how much I rely on him not being around in order to have any sort of sexual satisfaction.

That realization hit me like a ton of bricks this week. And I guess I’m really feeling a lot of resentment and fear and sadness. And I don’t want to feel that way towards him.

I’m in my early 30s. I’m starting to feel old and undesirable, despite knowing I’m objectively the best I’ve ever looked. But I think the lack of sexual intimacy and attention is really starting to get to me and hurt my self-esteem and make me feel sad.

On the other hand, I feel young. Too young to be stuck having to beg for sexual attention for the rest of my life. I’ve mentioned this to him before that I struggle with how his lack of interest makes me feel.

I know he loves me. He’s so caring. Acts of service are so intrinsically a part of him it sometimes astounds me how good and caring he is with stuff like that. But that does not often extend to “words of affirmation” or “physical touch” and overall, I find myself feeling so incredibly loved, but never desired.

I mentioned this disconnect to him before. Maybe a year ago, I started to get attention from some guys online. It felt really nice to be wanted, and I responded to it more than I should have but I ended up speaking to my husband about it before things went too far. He was upset that I was feeling the way I was but said he could understand why I felt the need to do respond because he hadn’t been really doing a great job of showing affection or attention. He said he wanted to do better. And I felt like we were gonna be fine.

Since then, we’ve had sex less than 5 times, a few other sexual encounters in between, and all but once, they’ve been initiated by me (more information later). The majority of these have happened on vacation, when I don’t have toys and am practically begging him to do something with me.

A week before our last vacation, I asked him to have sex with me, and he said “let’s do oral, the condoms are packed away in my bag upstairs”. I was so ecstatic that he’d thought to pack them!

Fast forward to the trip, I asked to use them and he says “oh I didn’t mean I had them packed for this trip, I meant they’re still packed away from June.”

I tried not to look devastated, but I was. I’d been so excited all week that he’d had the forethought to pack them only to find out he was so disinterested in using them with me, they’d been packed away in an unreachable location for months.

I’ve been upset all week and I know I need to talk to him.

It’s weird but I know he can tell it’s coming. Last night he scheduled sex before I left for the gym… this is the first time this has happened all year. He went and liked a bunch of my photos on Facebook (which is unusual). He asked for kisses before bed.

The last time these things aligned it was after I mentioned the online attention I’d been receiving when he tried putting his best foot forward.

I had sex with him last night, and I almost cried during it. I wish that was a lie. It sounds so pathetic.

There was so much frustration I’ve been feeling all week and now I’m regretting not saying no and using it as and opportunity to talk, but I wanted sex so goddamn badly.

I don’t even know what to say. I’ve been looking at advice all week and keep seeing: leave, cheat, or live without sex, and none of those feel like options.

I’m nervous to talk because last time, I know it made him feel so horrible, and like I didn’t love him. And I don’t want to make him feel that way. I love him so much but I feel like I’m physically in pain this week.

I’m not sure what I’m asking for, but please be nice. I just want things to get better.