Boyfriend in his 30s is wonderful but rarely wants sex

[RoseKitten]

My boyfriend and I are both in our 30s. I love him deeply. He is kind, very attentive, ambitious, good with my friends, family and nieces, and very attractive. He goes to the gym 5x a week, and it shows: he is in incredible shape. I dream of marrying and having children with this man. I know he would be a wonderful husband and father.

However, he seems uninterested in sex. I knew something was a bit 'off' when we first started dating: he didn't invite me to his place until about date 7 or 8, and that was only because I basically invited myself around. When I went around, I was expecting to stay the night (although it wasn't explicitly discussed), but he told me he had to go to bed early because he needed to be up at 4am, so he dropped me back at about 10pm.

When we do have sex, it's fantastic. He is an amazing lover, and I find him so physically attractive, but we don't have sex enough for my liking, and I just feel it is not important to him. He very rarely initiates, and he always wants to take me out rather than spend time with me at home. Maybe I am being paranoid, but he seems to do everything possible to spend as little time as possible at my place or his.

Some other things that did/do not 'add up' for me:

• After about date 5 or 6, we were WhatsApping one night, and I asked when he would invite me around. He wrote something like, "Netflix and chill is low-effort. I need to take you out to nice places." I wrote, "The "chill" part is nice, though, no? ;)" He then wrote, "If you want a f*boy, I am not the man for you."
• Despite his seeming lack of interest in sex, he has no problem showing me affection (kissing, holding hands etc.) in public, and he DOES initiate these things most of the time.
• I am a bit ashamed to admit this, but I did once go through his phone when he was out of the room, and there was nothing in there that suggests he is cheating.
• As I said at the start of the message, going to the gym is a big part of his life, and he looks amazing. He is also quite particular about his appearance - teeth, hair, skin, everything. I know the gym and grooming etc. have all sorts of benefits, but surely one of them is to look sexually attractive. In other words, I've always felt that men who put so much effort into their appearances do so at least in part because sex is important to them, and they want to look as good as possible for it, yet... sex is not a priority for him.

To finishing things up, 98%, 99% of our relationship is so good, but this final 1-2% is so important, yet I feel almost greedy wanting it. I want to discuss it with him, but a) I don't know how to approach it, b) I am not worried about his reaction (we have discussed difficult topics before, and he has always been calm, respectful, understanding and helpful), but I am worried that he may tell me something I have not prepared for.

So,

1. What do you think the issue(s) may be?
2. How do I approach discussing them with him?

Thank you.

All this! The words that sprung to my head as I was reading OP's comments were "cryptic behaviour". The massages, the wanting to go out all the time, the satisfying but rare sex, even the perfect body. He's hiding who he really is, he's performing a role. Who you see is not the authentic him.

It's not necessarily nefarious but it's dishonest (possibly also with himself). One possibility is that he wants kids, so he's performing the perfect boyfriend as much as he can, although frequent sex is just not something he can force himself to do.

I'd be more worried about that than the rare sex, because that's the core of your relationship. A real intimate relationship cannot be built when either or both parties are faking who they are.

From reading this my guess is that he take viagra and therefore needs to plan intimacy. Wilting flowers are quite common in the gym community, too much testosterone. Is he starting to become bald?

What frequency of sex are we talking here?

For most relationships, the frequency of sex reduces over time.

The fact he’s barely interested just a year in, and has never been particularly keen, demonstrates that if you stay with him, you’ll likely have zero sex life once you’ve provided him with the children he wants.

There is,the lack of sex for one.

It won't get better,if you're not having loads of sex at this point you won't later on. Don't settle. I don't like his fuck boy comment either ,as a pp says there's a shame element to it.

Gay. Or if not gay, a weird shamey misogynistic attitude towards a woman wanting sex. Either would be more than enough to have put me off.

Do you really want to live like this?

Agree, and this thread is demonstrating how strong the stereotyping of men as all sex obsessed is. There must be a lot of shame around being a man with a low sex drive.

My friend started seeing a local farm worker. He was the least homosexual man you could ever meet. They married and she seemed happy. They wanted to have a baby but after a year nothing had happened. Doctor appointments followed and it emerged that they hardly ever had sex. He was her first real boyfriend and she had accepted that not much sex was the usual thing. They were told that they just had to have lots of sex and a baby would follow. He loved her but he just couldn't do it. In the end the marriage collapsed because he had to admit thst he was gay and had always known it but was desperate to appear 'normal' to family , friends and other farmers.

I agree you have never talked about frequency, libido is such a personal issue.

Really it depends on how much intimacy is on offer and it’s meeting in the middle. It’s worth having a proper discussion over a number of days but maybe it’s just too mismatched for you.

The not going to someone’s place till date 7/8 is fine. I’m older and things were often slower back then but I do not see an explicit problem with that. The sort of gluttonous smorgasbord that is modern dating is all a bit rushed these days isn’t it.

I had one a bit like this OP. Two years after our break up I’m 80 percent sure he was gay.
I still don’t really understand how someone gay could be such a great heterosexual lover, but as a PP has pointed out there is a strong desire to be the ‘Perfect Straight Man’ in societies eyes.
In my ex’s case he was extremely successful, ambitious, handsome, intelligent etc but some thing was not quite right.
I still miss him tbh but the relationship ended up shredding my self esteem and I had to leave

It doesn’t really matter what his reasons are, gay / past trauma

if he doesn’t have an interest you can’t make him and since it’s very important to you it’s always going to be an issue.

i wouldn’t pursue this, it’s not going to change and he shouldn’t have to nor should you.

OP, your original post made me think he may be gay but unable to address it. Any other suggestions re this?

i don’t know if it has been mentioned, but any chance he has ADHD?

not asking because everyone and their mum think they have adhd now, but I have similar issues with my boyfriend (minus the fboy comments) and we ended up concluding that it was pretty much down to adhd.

We had a lot of sex in the beginning though, pretty much 3 months straight of daily sex. I miss those days 🥹

Yeah, my thought too. Are you sure he is straight?

The early days of a relationship you'd expect to be really excited about having sex and "at it like rabbits" at every opportunity.

I wrote, "The "chill" part is nice, though, no? ;)" He then wrote, "If you want a fboy, I am not the man for you."*
Shaming you for being interested in sex is a huge red flag. It's not about wanting a fuckboy, it's about wanting sex with him.

I'd be out, because you're clearly not compatible and he's more interested in how your relationship looks on the outside than how you feel in it.

Op, stop all the handwringing. This is much simpler than you are making it.

You are with a man with a very low sex drive. This won't change.

Are you happy to be in a marriage with someone who doesn't want sex?

Yes or no.

Based on your posts I think it's a no, which means you need to break up with him.

It doesn't matter if he's gay or asexual or porn addled or on steroids. This is who he is. Do you want that or not?

I'm curious as to how this would be linked to ADHD?

My thoughts exactly. I was dating a guy like this, it fizzled out my side because of the lack of sex. All the same markers, lovely person, loved taking me out, but avoided being alone with me where sex could happen like the plague.

I saw on Facebook, He came out a few years later and is now married to a man.

It’s like reading about my brother (much younger than me)!
The reason I know about his ‘love life’ is a couple of his ex gf’s have mentioned the same thing to myself and my dsis (weirdly I know).
Hes also a gym bunny and looks great and gets loads of female attention, also works in football etc.
He would talk the talk to my other 2 brothers but his gf’s would say not much was going on in the bedroom dept.
I honestly think that he just doesn’t have those urges, he’s defo not gay. He loves the company of women but more for cuddles rather than anything else.
My other brothers can’t get their head round the fact that he gets all this attention and doesn’t act on it.
I just wanted to say that some men are just like that and it doesn’t mean there’s anything else going on.

Hi OP, I married someone like this. I always had the concern but I pushed it down and pretended that it was ok, but it wasn’t ok. It made me increasingly sad, I constantly tried to find answers - is he gay, is he addicted to porn, was he abused as a child etc. In the end I had to just accept that it was just the way he was, and we were just not compatible. Ultimately I just desperately wanted babies, and that couldn’t happen when we barely had sex.

We divorced 20 years ago, and I’ve been married to my now wonderful DH for 15 years and we have three lovely kids (and regular sex!).

I wish you all the very best as you work through this.

And there won’t be signs if he hasn’t admitted it to himself yet.

It sounds like he just has a very low sex drive. Not sure why you need all the theories about him being gay or in another relationship when the most obvious answer is just that he doesn't need sex frequently.

I'm also confused about why you think he goes to the gym etc because he wants lots of sex @RoseKitten . The two things aren't really linked at all. Admittedly I'm a scruffy bugger but if I put on a nice shirt, have a haircut / shave etc, it's because I want to feel good about my appearance, rather than for anyone else. I've had periods of very high and very low libido, my appearance has never changed based on how much I want to get laid. Would you say the same about a woman who spends hours making herself look good OP? That she's only doing it because she wants sex?

I wonder if it’s so amazing cause like the keeping up appearances, the gym bod, showing you off etc what is really important to how he appears to others, so when he has sex he is performing for you.

TBH does it really matter? This will grind you down over time. You’ve only been together a year and it’s already impacting your self esteem and making you question yourself. That’s no way to live.

I get what you say about everything else and only you can decide how much this will contaminate your life. When younger I would have said the same as you but now I know it would seep into everything and make me very unhappy to feel so unwanted and being made to feel like a sex pest. Could you have an open and frank discussion, maybe framing that you really like him and want to understand as you are finding this difficult, but being clear you aren’t begging for more sex in any way? You can then decide whether you believe what he says and whether you can live with it.

In my boyfriend’s case he has massive issues focusing, anything and everything will distract him.

Gay/Steroids