My girlfriend (23F) and I (25M) are about to be together for 1 year, and we haven't had sex due to issues she has with it, I assured her I can be patient, but I'm starting to doubt my own words

Good night everyone. I originally posted this on another subreddit but did not receive any significant responses, so I figured I'd try my chances here. Will adapt it to this sub's rules the best I can, but if something is amiss, I'll be happy to modify it.

First, apologies for any possible grammatical errors, english is not my native language and thus I may write too much in fear of not being precise enough. Secondly, I wasn't sure this would require an NSFW tag, but I put it nonetheless to be cautious.

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On to the situation at hand, wall of text below.

As the tittle suggests, my girlfriend and I, who I very, very much love with all my heart, have not had sex yet in the entirety of our relationship. To contextualize, we are not each other's first partners nor we are virgins, however, we both had, individually, just gotten out of abusive relationships ourselves and agreed we should communicate and be careful with each others' sensibilities to a higher degree than normal. This didn't really became an issue because, fortunately, we hit off incredibly well: we share enough interests and world views to live peacefully but with enough differences to not be carbon copies of each others. As an example, we both love video-games with many genres overlaps, yet I like isometric RPGs while she can't stand them and she also playes mobile games, which I despise, however we can enjoy them individually and not drag the other to do something he/she dislikes. This is basically how much of our relationship works.

The main issue we, or rather, I am facing is the act of having any form of sexual relationship. When we started dating, she confessed she never had positive experiences regarding sex with her exes, both men and women (She is Bi, I'm Straight) and always had difficulty saying "No" to people, so she ended up simply "giving herself up" for 30min to an hour in hopes of making her partners satisfied (Her words). When she told me that, I made sure to let her know I'd never ask for something that would make her uncomfortable and asked how she'd like to proceed with that. Basically, she said she'd talk with both her therapist and a sexologist to see how best to work her apparent issues with the act itself, because as I understand, it's not that she lacks desire (I initially thought she could be asexual, but she made clear that wasn't the case) but that the act was always uncomfortable and she wanted to progress slowly but steadly, she also asked for my help in this by making sure I would not her fall into a "comfort zone" and never work this through.

I love this woman from the bottom of my heart. She is the very first person who made me daydream about a future together, to be there for the good, the bad, the boring, all of it. She wasn't even my type physically, as she is very petite and I always had a preference for more curvacious women, yet she stirs a fire inside that fuels a desire I've never experienced before. And more, I actually believe she feels the same in literally all aspects, except the sexual one. I admit I don't bring this up often because I'm afraid she might feel bothered or even direspected by this, but the truth is this thing is special to me. Very special. My whole adolescent life I was mocked by friends for not acting on my hormonoes since from that age I felt like this was something very intimate and very personal. I had casual sex once, and while it wasn't exactly bad, it was both nothing special and certainly not worth all the social setup. I know this speaks volumes about a few issues of my own and I would never intentionally project them on anyone, especially not on her.

We did talk about this a few months ago, where I told her how this was very special for me and how the lack of it was bothering me a lot, but at that time I also told her what was hurting the most was thinking how she apparently didn't care about that at all and how unimportant this whole thing seemed to her. Obviously I made sure to let her know, as I quite literally always do when we talk about things like this, that she is not to blame for anything she feels or doesn't feel, sometimes different people react differently to different things and I was frustrated with my own expectations not being met, not with her and that she shouldn't feel obliged to do anything, only if she wanted out of her volition. She confessed it was not that -at all-, that she actually sometimes feels bad for "putting me trough" this, that she wished this wasn't as difficult as it is, she even confessed that one time, when I was getting out of the shower and began talking with her, she was looking at me in the eyes not because she was uninterested in what she was seeing, but rather she was so interested she thought it would be rude to look where she wanted, so she did her best to lock on my face. She also disclosed a situation where she fantasized for an entire car trip after reading some erotica before I picked her up. Honestly, this conversation -did- make me feel a lot better at the time, however the most progress we had since then was when she was over at my place for an afternoon and I gave her a back rub, which she later confessed actually aroused her. This was in november, if I remember correctly and the last time we did something remotely intimate. I go to her place fairly often, we chill at the couch while watching Top 10s on YouTube or stuff like that, but we cannot have privacy over there, as her parents would understendably be uncomfortable.

I honestly don't really know what to do. Each day that passes I feel like I'm inadequate, that I'm less of a man for not being able to neither help her with this more efficiently nor be at peace with what I have. She is obviously not perfect, but I feel like she is perfect for me and I feel awful thinking I can't be the same for her. I don't know what do to.

TL;DR: Sex is important for me and the lack of it in my relationship is starting to seriously bother me; girlfriend however has issues of her own regarding the act. Things are moving too slowly for me.

Submitted January 03, 2020 at 03:46PM by ThrowRA8569 https://ift.tt/2SNY0hr