When I told him that sex seemed to be all he cared about now, he got defensive. I dropped it. That was the whole conversation about how we had stopped having the conversations I missed.
Before we started sleeping together, we could talk for hours. I liked him, and there was a closeness that felt almost like being best friends. There was romance, too. Spending time with him meant more than finding somewhere to hook up, which is why the change has been so hard to ignore.
I had already told him why I hesitate to have sex early on. In my experience, men can act differently afterward. I was worried that once we crossed that line, the part where we were getting to know each other would disappear. Eventually, I did have sex with him. Now, every time we hang out, that is what we do.
I enjoy sex. That makes this harder to explain, even to myself. I am not wishing we had no physical connection, and I do not want to pretend I have been unhappy with every part of it. I want the sex and the conversation. Wanting one has somehow left me wondering whether I am allowed to miss the other.
The difference is in what happens around it. We used to have hours of things to say. Now everything seems to turn sexual, or we end up hooking up somewhere. I miss feeling that he wanted my company for its own sake. There is a particular loneliness in being wanted physically while wondering whether the rest of you still interests someone.
I cannot say what changed for him. Maybe he thinks we are enjoying the same arrangement. Maybe what I understood as the beginning of something closer means something different to him. His defensiveness did not give me an answer. It just made it harder to keep talking at the moment I needed him to understand what I was saying.
This happened with the last guy I was talking to as well. That is the detail that keeps pulling my attention back toward myself. When something happens once, I can be disappointed in that particular connection. When it happens again, I start looking for something I did: whether I waited long enough, whether I gave the wrong impression, whether enjoying sex somehow made the romance seem optional.
None of those questions tells me what this man actually wants. They do make it easy to spend more time examining my own behavior than noticing whether I like what we have now. I keep trying to persuade myself that I am overreacting, as if missing a whole part of our time together is too vague a complaint to count.
I have not decided to end things. I am still caught on whether this is a good enough reason: I like him, I like the sex, and I miss talking to him.
