My boyfriend came to see me this weekend after moving to another city for work last month. I had missed him. I wanted him. Somehow, the thing he had said he could keep up with had become the thing that made me too much.
I’m 34, and I love sex when I feel close to the man I’m with. That last part matters. I spent three years celibate because I didn’t meet anyone I wanted. Having a high sex drive doesn’t mean I’m interested in whoever happens to be available. When I do get attached, though, wanting sex several times in a day can feel completely natural to me.
This time, I really liked him. He had presented himself as someone whose desire would match mine, so I thought this might be a part of a relationship I could simply enjoy. Instead, I’m writing about it in tears, trying to understand how my enthusiasm became something I was supposed to reduce.
It isn’t the first time. My ex-husband also described himself as having a high sex drive, then told me mine was too much. We lived in different countries and saw each other perhaps three times a year. Those visits weren’t ordinary days together. There was a lot of time apart behind them, and a limited amount of time before we would be apart again.
The distance matters in my current relationship, too. His move is recent, and this weekend followed a stretch of missing him. That doesn’t mean he should want sex as often as I do. But it does seem relevant to the difference between wanting someone every day and wanting him when I finally get to see him.
I’ve had boyfriends who lived nearby, and we didn’t have sex daily. I also work in an exhausting field. This isn’t a life with no obligations and an endless schedule for sex. It’s that when we have time together, and I feel connected, I’m happy to want him more than once.
That desire isn’t something I’m used to hiding. I’ll send a flirty text. I’ll say I want him. I’m comfortable being the one who initiates. Yet the more I hear that my appetite is excessive, the harder it gets to offer that part of myself without wondering whether I’m about to become a problem again.
In this relationship, I even stopped going to the gym because I felt it increased my libido. I was already trying to turn the volume down. I didn’t want him to feel overwhelmed by me. Finding myself in the same position after making that change has left me tired in a way that goes beyond being turned down.
I don’t have a neat account of what happens next. Right now, I feel done with trying to find someone, although I really liked this man. I spent three years not wanting anybody. Now I’ve found someone I want, and I’m back to wondering how much of that I’m allowed to show.
