After seven or eight weeks without penetrative sex, my boyfriend and I finally had it again. He nearly tried to enter me in the wrong place, blamed me for it, and finished about two minutes later. We’ve been together four years. I came away wondering how we could still be having sex that left me this frustrated.
I’m 27, and I want good sex on a regular basis. Saying that plainly feels easier than admitting how angry I am with myself for staying. We aren’t married. I want to break up with him, yet I keep getting caught on what happens afterward: being single, being lonely, having to get through the days without the person I’ve become so emotionally dependent on.
The problem isn’t that I haven’t told him I’m unhappy. We’ve talked about our sex life so many times, and those conversations haven’t led to anything changing. That makes another conversation hard to believe in. I already know how to explain what’s missing; I don’t know what another explanation would accomplish.
Over the past year, I’ve also stopped wanting sex with him the way I used to. That part is difficult to describe without making it sound as though I’ve stopped caring about sex altogether. I haven’t. I still want a satisfying sex life. I just don’t feel much desire for the man I’m actually with, and the latest disappointing attempt hasn’t helped.
It wouldn’t be honest to say he’s bad at everything. I enjoy oral sex with him. But that doesn’t make the rest of our sex life satisfying, or make the long gaps easier to accept. I don’t want one thing we do well to become the reason I talk myself out of wanting more.
I’ve started describing myself as emotionally codependent because I can see how much the fear of loneliness is doing here. Knowing that doesn’t make it disappear. Instead, I get frustrated twice: first about the relationship, then about my inability to leave it. I’m already unhappy, but the unhappiness I can imagine after a breakup still scares me.
I’m looking for work across the country and abroad, which gives this a practical edge. A job could take me somewhere new, but I’m afraid I’d be alone in a new city or another country and struggle with that. Staying in my hometown doesn’t feel reassuring, either. It’s small, and meeting new people here isn’t easy. There isn’t an obvious place on the map where being single suddenly seems simple.
I keep thinking about how much of my twenties I’m willing to spend this way. That thought makes everything feel urgent, even while I’m hesitating. The job search is happening now. I don’t yet know where it will take me, or whether I’ll be willing to arrive there single.
