Hello there, thank-you for you reading this... be warned, it might be quite a ramble...
I have been in a relationship with a man for three years, after leaving a traumatic relationship where there sex was non-existent. When I met my DP I told him that sex was enormously important to me and that I couldn't be in a relationship where it wasn't central to our intimate life and he agreed that it mattered to him to.
For the first three months all was great (truly amazing), then we stayed in a hotel and he said something vaguely derogatory about my body during sex (as if sex would be better if I didn't look the way I do), and since then our sex life has never been the same.
This has been going on for two and a half years during which time he has been diagnosed with depression, had CBT, prescribed Sertroline and changed jobs a few times and I have supported him every inch of the way, something he acknowledges and is grateful for though he knows how very unhappy I am.
Sexually he ignores me completely. He never says a sexual word to me. Never kisses me beyond aiming a peck above my top-lip. never says of his own accord that I am attractive, turns away if there is anything sexual on the tv, will not contemplate watching porn and says he has never really had any sexual desire, has no clue what turns him on and sex simply never enters his head.
Every six to eight weeks or so things reach something of a crisis and recognizing how upset I am he gets in to bed naked, touches me till I orgasm and then lets me touch him till he comes to, but never now with penetrative sex or even usually with any level of passion or kissing.
After much begging he went to the doctor and was diagnosed with low testosterone for which he is now being treated, but it hasn't made any difference. He has erections now to some degree, though not as a reaction to me, and he is capable of orgasming so I think it is more emotional than physical and he says it is because his last girlfriend hurt him so badly he cannot let his walls down, though we live together and look after our respective children together, and life should be good.
Two months ago I found out he was flirting with a woman in America and that their conversation had moved in to a sexual realm. I was heartbroken but he said he was trying to see if he was capable of some sexual feeling (and apparently he was: telling here he had been masturbating in the shower thinking of her: presumably while I was asleep in the room next door) and making that safe by her being so far away and therefore untouchable.
I have tried to get past this. I ranted, raved and sobbed. He promised the world. Said he was mortified by his behavior. Said things would change and for a week or so they did.
But we are back where we started. If not in a worse place because I am so angry. He is drinking more, has stopped taking the anti-depressants that essentially saved his life, and is back to being argumentative and confrontational whenever I raise the subject of my own deep sorrow.
Yesterday things yet again came to a head when I got upset about everything and he said he simply doesn't have any sexual feelings at all. That he will go to the doctor again but cannot relate to men who think about sex as he just doesn't feel that way. That he knows I am upset but feels nothing sexually.
I have asked him whether he is gay, asexual, miserable with me... but he says no, he wishes he was different and he hopes things will change again, but at the moment sex just isn't on his radar.
He will not contemplate going to Relate as he says he can't see how it will help and gets angry if I suggest it. But I am 45 and cannot resign myself to a lifetime without sex, despite the fact that the relationship is otherwise lovely. I am not unattractive, though I am overweight and I am trying to deal with that, but I have looked like this since the day he met me and he says I have got nothing to do with his lack of libido, though I feel desperately ugly now after being a sexually confident woman all my life.
I feel broken...