My girlfriend and I have a really nice relationship. We get along great, like each other’s company, play games, joke around, and have a nice, intimate time together, very supportive of each other’s needs. We’re definitely in love. As a couple in our 20s, we’re both smart and value intelligence, both have academic / intellectual inclinations and are a sort of classic nerd couple. We’re not exactly the same though. I’m a bit of an introvert and she’s a bit more extroverted and has more friends than me. I’m more conservative and she’s more liberal/progressive. I love debating and like to play devil’s advocate and she takes things a bit more personally and is more emotive. I’m super awkward around her more giggly friends while she finds the long intellectual conversations I have with mine a bit intimidating. But somehow even despite our differences we get along well and people think we’re a cute couple together.

All in all, things are going great! But she’s also my first real girlfriend. I’m really curious how typical our experience is, what your relationship is like, and would love to have a discussion, especially from women, but with guys too, about relationships in general. I.e. what you think my girlfriend really thinks, how you’d view a relationship with someone like me, how you think my girlfriend might view things, where we might each be making concessions, as well as how it compares to your experiences perhaps in your own relationship or relationships. I’d basically like to find someone with whom we can openly talk about our relationships, even, and perhaps with a bit of a focus on, how the stuff behind closed doors, weaves into the whole thing.

In that context, I guess I should tell you about the stuff that’s a bit more of the behind closed doors stuff because I’m curious how common this stuff is. I’ll be honest even if this stuff isn’t all the best. For one thing, even though she’s my first relationship she had an ex before me, and she cheated on him a bit early on while we were dating. I’ve made sure to not let her forget that and I’ve used it from time to time to guilt her, though it secretly kind of turns me on. We’re usually quite fun and agreeable, but we do argue about things. I’m pretty pragmatic and she tends to be more emotional. I have a temper in private and sometimes yell at her and can be pretty mean to her sometimes in a kind of whiny and guilting way. I have a tendency to sort of have slight meltdowns and freak out about stuff and she can be pretty supportive of me when I’m freaking out or nerding out. In private I’ll admit I sometimes gaslight her and try to make her feel stupid for the sake of winning arguments, or guilt her for dumb things. All of this is even though she’s really smart and it secretly bothers me ever so slightly that she scored better than me on the standardized tests we’ve compared. In turn I think she manipulates me using sex from time to time. I can’t exactly figure it out but I think she does and honestly I feel like I’m sort of addicted to her in that way sometimes.

Even so, she does look up to me and admires me for my talents. I’m not a 6-6-6 guy, but I am smart and talented, sort of intense about the things I’m interested in and can talk intensely at length and she listens to me and supports me. I’m mildly ASD and tend to be pretty opinionated and fairly stubborn about my interests and views about the world. We bond mostly over my interests. I desperately crave attention and she generally give it to me and I get upset when she doesn’t but really she’s a very good girlfriend even though I can tend to be kind of selfish. Sometimes I guilt her about her weight or her body generally in sort of subtle ways. I’m also bad and kind of lazy about texting and things like that.

She lets me have sex with her basically whenever I want and I do push for it very often, sometimes even being pushy, pouty or guilting about it even when she isn’t in the mood just because I want it. Or really kind of pushing late at night like for 4am sex when I have to wake her up and she’s still half asleep. Sex with her is really incredible though and I’ll admit that I don’t usually last very long inside her and it’s usually pretty quick but she is very supportive about that and I love that she kind of massages my ego around sex. There are times occasionally when I’ve cried around sex and she’s always been really supportive. I tend to cum when we do it and she doesn’t but nevertheless the intimacy is nice and we both enjoy it a lot. I have spent effort to eat her out but we don’t do that much since she has a few hangups with it so it’s easier not to and she seems to be just content enough with our relationship and sex as is. I have certain fetishes I haven’t shared with her because I’m scared of what she would think. I also find it arousing, for instance when she cries or when she’s giggling on a facetime call with her friends. She knows I have a little bit of a foot fetish and a few things. My penis isn’t the biggest but she tells me it’s the perfect size for her which I’m guessing may be just sort of massaging my ego because she loves me which is really sweet but I don't know. She does seem to like making me feel good and is just generally very supportive about encouraging me to not feel any shame. Sure I’m embarrassed a bit that I’m not exactly rocking her world. We’ll joke casually and good naturedly about my penis size or the stamina issues and because it’s good natured I just let it slide in good fun because it’s kind of intimate anyway.

Our sex life is pretty fun and it’s imtimate and you’d never really know the difference in the light of day. I mean, how typical are the things we have going on behind closed doors? Are those present in your relationships, or have then been? In a way it’s sort of a turn on both in a dominant way that she is sort of such a submissive to me at sex even though I’m not the greatest at it. She supported me in the early days especially. And from the submissive standpoint that there’s this one-way vulnerability of being overwhelmed so easily by the feelings of being inside her. I really am curious what she thinks about it.

I’m not telling you this for some fetishy reason. I’m just trying to give you context about how our relationship goes. I’d really like to hear about your relationship, compare notes, and just hear generally about what the “behind closed doors” is really like in typical relationships. Are they one-sided? What do you think she honestly thinks of me? What kind of trade-offs do you accept in relationships? How typical or atypical is our sex life? Do you think she’s told her friends anything? What kind of stuff would she keep private? Is she telling the truth about enjoying intimacy with me, or is she protecting me? In general, how healthy is our relationship? Is yours healthy? How do you feel about toxic relationships? Is ours toxic or dysfunctional? Is this just how relationships are? Are we just inexperienced? What should we do next?

This is all true by the way. I’m not really looking to be lectured but I would like to talk. I’m curious about my relationship. I’m curious about your relationship. And I’m looking for an even-handed conversation and am also happy to answer questions.

I’m happy to talk to guys or girls and would just generally like to openly share with each other. Contrasts, etc. with your experiences. Have you dated a guy like me? Also, happy to receive your judgements.