This is actually a sad story:
This is an odd one. I’ve been with her for 3.5 years, though most of it long distance, so our time together was limited to a couple months each year. Recently she finished school and moved across the country to be with me, before she did I expressed my concerns that I didn’t want to be the reason she’d move and that I can’t promise we’d end up together. She moved anyways, we’ve been living together for about 6 months. Things have been going alright, but lurking problems with our sex life have come to the fore.
She has a health condition which limits her ability to move her hips and limits sensation – that’s as specific as I’ll get. Otherwise she’s very active and lives a normal life. I’m her first sexual partner, but she is not my first. Sexual contact and quality time are how I best “hear” the affection of a partner, I’ve always been a sexual person. She is not asexual, but due to her condition she simply doesn’t enjoy sex and never has – best case she has minimal sensation and worst case she starts to hurt. She isn’t vocal, can almost never finish (even on her own alone-time, due to a lack of sensation), and doesn’t see sex (or being physically intimate) as a big part of a relationship – I always have. I always have to initiate, and while she will reciprocate it almost always feels somewhat forced on her part, like a chore, which leaves me feeling utterly terrible. I’ve communicated my concern about our sexual incompatibility, several times over the past 3.5 years, and she’s always said she will try. My problem is that I’m not sure there’s anything to “try”. I don’t want her to have to “try”. I’ve tried to get her to open up, to relax and accept herself and be more sexually free, but when there isn’t sensation it’s just a nonstarter for her, which also means she almost never initiates anything and there’s never any romantic interactions outside of the of when we’re intimate – it’s not how she thinks.
My mind has begun to wander. I remember previous sexual partners and I miss feeling physically wanted and satisfied, I miss having an actively participating partner. I miss the feeling of being able to satisfy my parter, and the intimacy that a good sex life brings into a relationship. I cheated on a partner of mine in the past, immediately came forward with it, and felt terrible – I swore on my life I’d never do that again to someone I love. I’m going to seek professional help but the waitlist for therapy at my University is at least a month, and frankly the therapist is terrible. I’m stuck in a shitty cycle of 1) feeling like I deserve a sexually compatible partner, 2) degrading myself for labeling my girlfriend (in my head) as sexually incompatible with me despite all her efforts and her condition, 3) reconciling with the fact that she has a medical condition and doesn’t really have any control over the situation, and 4) trying to understand how to make things work or if that’s even an option.