(Dual track) I think my boyfriend is no longer sexually interested in me

Rappler’s Life and Style section features an advice column by husband and wife Jeremy Baer and clinical psychologist Dr. Margarita Holmes.

Jeremy has a Masters in Law from Oxford University. He has been a banker for 37 years and has worked on three continents. For the past 10 years he has worked with Dr Holmes as a co-teacher and occasionally as a co-therapist, particularly with clients whose financial worries are interfering with their daily lives..

Together they wrote two books: Love Triangles: Understanding the Macho Lover Mentality And Imported Love: Filipino-Foreign Connections.

Dear Dr. Holmes and Mr. Baer,

What’s happening between me and my boyfriend lately is bothering me. We’ve been together for almost two years now. Before I moved into his apartment, we slept together very often. But now I feel that he has no sexual interest in me.

I know he loves me but I feel bad because I feel unwanted. Since then I always make the first move and he rejects me so many times as if he is saying something to me to get me to leave him alone.

I just noticed that he’s been making comments lately about how hot some girls are. And since I moved in, he put me on a strict diet and exercise plan to make me look “hot.” He says it’s for my health, but I know he just wants me to look like the girls he thinks are “hot.”

I don’t have the courage to talk to him about it because he just says, like always, that I’m sex obsessed. He doesn’t understand that for me it’s not just about doing it, but that it’s also a way of expressing our love and acceptance for each other. It also makes me feel safe that he’s still attracted to me. I’m really confused about this. I don’t know if this is just a sexual problem or a relationship problem.

Help!

Helen

Dear Helen,

Thank you for your email.

In most relationships, the period leading up to marriage is the time when both partners are at their best, showing each other their best qualities and trying to suppress their worst. As the relationship matures, they relax, become aware of their likes and dislikes, and generally reach a compromise, tacit or otherwise, about how the relationship will work best for both of them. If all goes well, they may marry; however, if they cannot reach a mutually acceptable compromise, they usually split up.

Applying this to your own situation, Helen, you can draw some conclusions. Your relationship was going well enough at first that you and your boyfriend (let’s call him Pete) felt comfortable enough with each other to decide to move in together. Now there were three options: move in with him, he move in with you, or find a new place together.

You chose the former, which might have been a hint of things to come. After taking you under his roof, in his apartment, Pete began his “health campaign” to make you conform to his ideal image of a hot woman. You presumably went along with the diet and exercise routines because they were actually good for you, even though you realized that wasn’t Pete’s real reason for encouraging you to do it. However, the great sex you both had previously enjoyed began to fade, and when you bring up the subject with Pete, he simply accuses you of being sex-obsessed.

It’s a fact that the frequency of sex generally decreases over time. The thrill of novelty wears off, life gets in the way, familiarity and the aging process replace the original urgency and intensity. But this usually happens over a period of many years, so it may be a warning sign that it happened so early in your relationship with Pete.

You say you want a healthy sexual relationship, and that’s a perfectly reasonable goal. However, if Pete is already trying to turn you into someone else, into the girl of his fantasies, and the sexual element of your life together is inadequate at such an early stage of your cohabitation, it suggests that his experiment with you is not working. Therefore, you need to ask yourself if Pete is the right man for you.

All the best,

JAF Baer

Dear Helen:

Thank you for your e-mail.

I agree with what Mr. Baer says above on three points: (The initial phase of your relationship) is the time when both partners are at their best, showing each other their best qualities and trying to suppress the worst. As the relationship matures, they tend to relax (and their true selves may emerge…not because they were hypocrites before, but because that’s human nature).

When love is still fresh, you tend to be in a better mood and willing to do much more to make your loved one happy. The frequency of sexual intercourse generally decreases over time; again, this is not necessarily for any reason, but due to factors that can be reasonably explained using various psychological, sociological, anthropological and even economic theories (or facts).

Him calling you a sex maniac, apparently more than once, is reprehensible and could be reason enough to leave him in my opinion, especially IF he has no good qualities and if he doesn’t apologize or mean it when he realizes (usually not until you tell him) that only mean, manipulative and malicious people use his tone.

However, there are some points on which I disagree with both Mr Baer and possibly with you. These are the following:

The reason he put you on a strict diet and exercise program could well be that he wants you to be healthy so you can live a longer life together. You getting “hot” could be a welcome “byproduct”/side effect, but that is not the original reason he put you on such a program.

There’s only one way to find out – by having an open (yet gentle) conversation about it. But you both seem uncomfortable starting uncomfortable conversations, so this will take some conscious effort. Since you’re writing to us and not Paul, we can only encourage you to take the first step.

Another difficult conversation to have is the type of sex you want and need. In terms of frequency, who takes the initiative, and what message you want to convey with it. As long as you don’t insist on penile-vaginal (or anal) penetration, Paul can take the frequency and initiative for sex if it’s important to him that you’re happy. What these two need is mainly a willingness to do it… an erection, however, is not a matter of will, it requires a little more momentum to occur (just like lubrication usually needs the same).

This brings us to the third aspect you miss about sex with Paul: “It’s not just about doing (it), but also… a way… to make me feel safe (because it shows) that he’s still attracted to me.”

That’s a lot to ask of a man who knows you’re unhappy in your relationship but doesn’t really know why. Expecting him to make love to you in a way that makes you feel safe and proves he’s still attracted to you may be asking too much right now, especially if he’s also feeling insecure about his ability to give you the kind of sex you need.

Sometimes people just want sex to relax, laugh, and/or forget about the demands their world (or their partner) places on them. Sometimes people just want orgasms (to get them and hopefully give them) to help release tension. In other words, not for deep feelings, but for pure and simple pleasure.

Albert Camus once said: “One can only live with those who set one free, who love one with an affection that is as easy to bear as it is strong to feel. Today’s life is too hard, too bitter, too anemic for us to subject ourselves to new shackles from those we love.”

Unless you can communicate with each other in a loving, accepting, and non-threatening way. You could be talking past each other and not even know it. Perhaps an honest conversation will encourage him to be more honest with you as well, and it can be the first step for each of you to understand how to give the other what he wants, and maybe even figure out if this is what he wants to do at this time in his life.

Honest conversations are often scary, but their rewards are immeasurable. So how about it, Helen? Do you want your dream relationship so badly that you start conversations like this?

Please write to us again if you need help with this.

All the best,

MG Holmes

– Rappler.com

Please send comments, questions, or consultation requests to [email protected].