TLDR; my long-term partner does not act romantically interested in me anymore, and we are approaching a 5-6 year move to another state, 1,000 miles from where we grew up and our families live
Hi, Reddit—
I made a throwaway account to post this (see: paranoia), but I am a long-time lurker of r/relationships and could use your input. The situation is more complex than this post could convey, but I am afraid to approach those closest to me about all of this because my boyfriend and I have been together so long that our circles are essentially unified. Let's start from the beginning.
My boyfriend and I met not long after I turned eighteen and quickly began spending all of our time together. It's corny to say so, but I have always described our relationship as "love at first sight." We know everything about one another, and we're from the same general area (the rural Midwest), meaning that by nature we share a good deal in common. The dating pool for gay men where we grew up was, as you might suspect, modest, which is not to suggest that we didn't immediately click or that I began dating him because I felt as if ~I had no other options~. He is admittedly wonderful in nearly every way: handsome, witty, gifted with an infectious personality and no small number of talents. We know the ins and outs of one another's family, extended members included, and we have adopted three pets of our own over the course of our time together. I feel lucky to have him—truly—but something has to give.
We have moved across the state together twice, first when I transferred universities and again when I began my master's program. He graduated a year after I started my bachelor's (see: our age difference), and his line of work allows him to find a job just about anywhere. We have precious few friends in the area, and the same was true when we moved the first time. As a result, we are around one another constantly, which hasn't been an issue until recently, and even then, "issue" feels dramatic. We simply see one another every night, rarely go out, and as textbook homebodies, most of the time pass our free time together watching TV, playing video games, or reacting to what we see on the Internet. We don't go out to bars, gay or otherwise, we don't go to the movies, we go out to dinner *maybe* once a month, and very rarely do romantic things anymore, which has never really been a problem: I love him, and we're broke.
But the thing is, Reddit, he doesn't make moves on me anymore, hasn't for a long time. We don't have sex. I show affection, and he acts like it's a chore. We kiss when we leave the house, when we get home, and when we go to bed. But if I try to initiate something more, there's always an excuse. Weeknight, weekday, holiday, it generally follows the same pattern. And for what it's worth: I'm most often the bottom. I prep, I clean, I get everything down there in order; all he has to do is show up and do his thing. To my frustration, I can't count how many times over the past three years I have done just that—gotten things all squeaky clean—to find that he just responds with the verbal equivalent of ":/."
[Side note: sincere apologies to anyone unfamiliar with or not inclined to anal, but this is a part of it, if you weren't aware, a laborious part of it, I might add.]
And it's not that I "go through the trouble" of prepping without asking. More often than not, we talk about having sex, I go through the motions, and he's suddenly deflated. And he's young, he's fit, he's full of energy for everything else! So it all just leaves me feeling unwanted, unattractive, mopey, and bothersome. For context, since we've met, I have gained some weight and lost some hair (yay, genes!), and given how close we are, he's seen me use the bathroom, throw up on myself, fart—you know, human things that we pretend we don't do out of politeness. But I'm not ugly. Strangers flirt with me, slide me their numbers, ask me out, which is all very flattering and which naturally makes my boyfriend jealous to no end.
Sex isn't everything, granted, but it really starts to take a toll on a person after a while. What breaks my heart above all else is how much and how frequently I feel like he no longer has any romantic interest in me as a result of it. I mean, picture it: I attend classes alone, write papers alone, go to cafés alone, skip out on social functions to spend time with the person I love more than anything, and come home to him only to find myself feeling just as invisible there, if not more so. I have lived the entirety of my adult life with him, have had sex only with him, have built up a whole life with him, and here I am now, at 24, feeling like I have no recourse but to continue living this way because I know nothing else.
It's emotionally exhausting, and I would be lying if I didn't say that so many of my neuroses and so much of my depressive thoughts have their roots in the simple, stupid fact that my boyfriend and I have sex 5 times a year despite seeing each other for the vast majority of the other 360. Since I'm officially ~in my feelings~ about it now, and because writing it all out might have some cathartic effect, allow me to ruminate a little more before bringing this story to its climax (pun intended).
Here's a "short" list of related behaviors:
(1) He turns every potential innuendo into something grotesque or otherwise purposefully unappealing—as if to distance himself from experiencing attraction toward me.
- EX: Earlier tonight, I bent over to plug in my phone while he stood directly behind me. We had been joking around and playing with our pets for the two hours leading to that point. He said, "Oh, what a nice angle," and I flirted back, asking, "oh, for what?" He paused, looked around, and jokingly gestured to the knife sharpener, a long, metal rod, and said, "Oh my God, could you imagine what that would be like up there? It wouldn't bend, it would just [hand gesture of something piercing through a curve]," and walked away. Bye, moment! Hello, new anxiety!
- This isn't an isolated example. It's just always something so specific that it's hard to recall other times he has deflected. Sometimes the imagery is excessively violent, other times he will draw attention to the fact that I poop from my butt and will come up with some creatively disgusting comment. We are adult, gay men. It is a documented fact that he likes butts.
(2) When I bring up these feelings to him—that I feel as if showing me physical affection is something tedious for him—he overcorrects and takes it as a personal critique.
- EX: Keeping with the earlier example from tonight, after he cancelled out any sexual ideas about me with that bit of dark humor, I confronted him about it, as I sometimes do. He began to act defeated and told me to lie down with him. I reneged, and he began to rub the front of my joggers. But the stupidest thing about all of this is that I don't want it to be forced. I want to feel like he genuinely has an interest in me, that he finds me hot without being prompted. And I don't think that's a lot to ask, dear reader. So I shut down and went into the office to do my homework. I hate feeling so hypocritical about it, really, but I'm just not into it when it's contrived.
(3) He occasionally talks about how attractive he finds actors, athletes, public figures, etc., but hardly tells me that I look cute on a given day, that he likes my new shirt, that I'm hot. And when he does, it's often only to reciprocate whatever compliment I've given him, which—again—feels contrived and insincere. I know everyone has eyes, I know we all find certain celebrities attractive, but within the larger scheme of things, it kills me to hear him compliment others when I feel so attention-staved and regularly voice that feeling to him.
I know this post is long, so I appreciate that you're still reading. But here's the kicker. I just received word that I have been accepted into an incredible PhD program 1,000+ miles away from our home state, our families, everything and everyone we've ever known. He's supportive, he's proud of me, and he's warming up to the idea of making this huge change for my sake, knowing that we'll be there for five or more years.
So as much as it breaks my heart to even consider the thought—crying while I type this, by the way!—this juncture presents me with the opportunity to start fresh somewhere new, to save him from drastically reducing face-to-face contact with his family, to allow him to find someone with whom he can find that spark. What this all boils down to, dear reader, is that I have a wonderful, generally loving relationship with a person who feels like home, but I constantly wonder if he sees me more as a friend, more as an assumed presence in his life than anything at all romantic. I would miss him without end, would miss my pets, our shared life, everything, but I could at long last dispense with the weight of feeling invisible to the one person whose eyes I want on me. I could devote myself to my studies, unconcerned that I was failing to spend adequate time with my partner and very best friend, as well as potentially meet someone who found me attractive and saw me as more than a friend.
But I'm just not sure if the opportunity cost is worth it, so I'm asking you all—total strangers—to evaluate it with objective eyes. I love him, but whenever I raise the question of couple's therapy, he maintains that we are healthy as is. I just feel so helplessly unfulfilled and unwanted in the prime of my youth, and I don't know how much longer I can endure feeling so unseen.
What do you think? Am I making mountains out of molehills, here, or is physical affection really as important as I'm making it seem? Is a sexless, love-rich relationship worth more than a sex-rich, loveless one? What would you do in my shoes? Is there a way to fix this? Or ought I just accept that I have found my true best friend, not my spouse, and move on with my life?
Thank you in advance, and thank you for bearing with me.
Submitted February 25, 2019 at 09:12PM by uovogrigio https://ift.tt/2H3q2zu
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