My partner and I have been together for over a year, and he was my first. When we were back home, we had sex fairly often. We were getting comfortable together, learning what intimacy felt like between us. I expected university to give us more opportunities.
We attend the same university. I share a dorm room; he has his own room off campus. On paper, his place seems like the obvious place for privacy. But he doesn’t invite me back there. When he does initiate something, it’s often in my shared room, where it can’t really go anywhere.
Our sex life has become unpredictable. Sometimes we’re intimate two days in a row, then nothing happens for two weeks. Sometimes it’s once, followed by a stretch of waiting until another day happens to suit him. I’d happily have sex every day, but I don’t need that. I’d be content with less if it felt more consistent.
We’ve talked about it. He says he wants sex less often than I do. I hear that, and I don’t want him agreeing to something he doesn’t want. Still, when I initiate and he brushes me off, it hurts. Sometimes he says we’ll do something later, and then later passes without anything happening.
The difficult part is that he’s affectionate. He tells me he loves me and reassures me every day, especially since I explained that the rejection was affecting my confidence in our relationship. I appreciate those words. We’re loving with each other in ordinary moments, too. There isn’t a simple absence of care I can point to.
I keep thinking about how things used to be, and wondering why having more freedom hasn’t brought us closer physically. We’re young and healthy, but clearly that doesn’t mean we want the same amount of sex.
I love him, and I don’t want to end our relationship over this. Yet I keep returning to the same question: how do I become comfortable wanting more than he does? I don’t know whether I can lower my desire, or whether there’s a way for us to make this feel better together. His reassurance matters to me. So does the intimacy I keep missing.
