I want to have sex with my boyfriend but I can't enjoy it

I’m so sorry that you’ve been struggling with all of this for such a long time, and that it sounds like you also feel so unsupported and alone in this. I hope that I can offer you a doable path to turn things around for yourself and some support.

I want to start by letting you know that your boyfriend’s idea that relationships “shouldn’t” have sexual⁠ (sexual: About or relating in some way to sex or sexuality.) issues or conflicts like this is seriously uninformed. Many relationships have issues like yours, and if any sexual relationship⁠ (relationship: An ongoing interaction or association with another person, place or thing.) lasts long enough, things will crop up over time: one or both partners wanting sex⁠ (sex: Different things people choose to do to actively express or enact sexuality and sexual feelings; often this involves genitals, but not always. ) less or more often than they did before, or not liking things they did in the past, or wanting something different that a partner⁠ (partner: In a sexual context, a person with whom someone is having some kind of sex. The term "partner" can be used for all kinds of relationships, not just serious ones. "Partner" can also mean the person someone is with in a romantic or familial partnership.) may or may not be into, this list could go on forever. Him saying that to you when you are right there, living evidence that yes, this IS an issue in a relationship is extra uncool in my book. I wish that he had offered you validation and support, instead. I hope that if you stay in this relationship with him in any way, that moving forward he makes some real effort to learn how to better respond to you when you’re having a hard time with something.

Know how sometimes when something is wonky with a laptop or a phone, we can sometimes fix it by doing small things, like closing an app, while other times we need to shut it all down and give the machine a full reboot?

It sounds to me like what you ideally need — for your relationship and yourself, but mostly yourself, who I’m concerned about most — is as full a reboot of your sexual life and any choices to be sexual with this (or any) partner as you can get.

You’re making clear that you didn’t start from a place of desire⁠ (desire: A feeling of wanting something. In the context of sex or sexuality, desire can be a feeling of a physical and psychological want for any kind of sex or way of being sexual.) in the first place with this, and that while it sounds like you have still had some good sexual experiences despite that, you’re saying that on the whole, you do not enjoy the sex you’re having, and you’ve gotten to the point where it all feels forced, frustrating, and worst of all, where you’re having sex out⁠ (out: Short for ‘out of the closet’. When someone’s LGBTQ+ identity is known to other people.) of obligation and even finding yourself checking out while you’re being sexual. In other words, you’re even at the point where you don’t want the sex you’re having. That’s a terrible place to be in, and I’m sorry you find yourself there.

In a situation like this, the first thing that needs to happen is for you to stop with any kind of sex in this relationship, full-stop. I don’t say “need” very often in the work that I do, because we’re all so different, including our needs, there are some things that are pretty universal. Having sex when we don’t want to, when we’re just not really feeling it, or when we feel like we have to make ourselves, is something that anyone who works in sexuality knows pretty much always has profoundly negative effects on a person doing that, their sexuality and their sexual life, and sometimes very big and long-term effects. Please stop doing this to yourself. It's so damaging. Please let whenever the last time was that you had sex when you didn't want to be the last time you do that in your whole life. Your life will be far better for it, I promise.

Unlike your boyfriend, I wouldn’t say that sex everyone involved really wants and is into is necessarily always easy: we can still have or experience challenges or other things that might not make all of sex feel easy, whether that’s something like a history of sexual assault⁠ (sexual assault: When someone is attacked, or attacks someone else, in a sexual way.) , differences in frequency of desire, disability or illness, being new to sexual communication⁠ (communication: Various ways we express ourselves to others, such as through speech, written words or symbols, sign language, body language, touch or art.) or struggles to find ways that sex really feels satisfying or right for everyone involved. It may be that it’s been his experience for himself that it’s easy, so he’s just not seeing how challenged you are, or even getting all of the many ways that even sex people really want may not always be easy. But I would say that when we have an earnest, mutual and very real desire to be sexual together, the part where it’s a thing we feel a real want for should not feel like something anyone needs to work as hard as you’ve been working.

When someone has gotten themselves to the spot you have, until you can resolve that, you’re going to be carrying all that stress and negativity and anxiety and worry that you have gathered up over time with you each time you try and be sexual from here on out. Our sexualities are something we often grow up thinking about as only physical, but they are just as — and sometimes even more — emotional and psychological, about our minds and feelings, as they are about the rest of our bodies. When someone else is involved, they’re also interpersonal.  All of these negative, anxious, and otherwise hard feelings you have been having and accumulating over the last few years are now all effectively part of your sexuality, as far as your mind and body are concerned. They both lack the capacity to ignore all of those things, and they absolutely are going to respond to sexual situations with those feelings in play. Think of this negative stuff like a toxin that can build up in our bodies unless we find a way to clear it out.

You’re going to need as clean⁠ (clean: In a sexual context, usually a word used to suggest a person doesn’t currently have anysexually transmitted infections. That term, however, stigmatizes people with illness. Less stigmatizing choices are "negative," "clear" or "STI-free.") a sexual slate as possible so that you can get a sense of what you actually want (and don’t) when it comes to you, your sexuality and — only after you sort for those first two things — any sexual interactions or relationships with other people, including this current partner. No one could figure this out at the point you’re in without giving themselves some major space, and I think it’s fair to say that most people would be feeling overwhelmed in the way that you are.

There are a few ways to clear as much of that accumulated sexual struggle and yuck from your system so that you can get a fresh start.

The first is one I would suggest you consider non-optional,  though it’s probably going to sound the most scary: I think you should start by not being sexual with your current partner at all for at least a few weeks, and more if more feels right to you. I just don’t see how you can figure out what you want and how you feel with their wants and their feelings so omnipresent. You need some real space for yourself. Like I said, this probably sounds scary. However, he has said that he wants you to feel comfortable and not do things you don’t want. He has also said he wants to know if he or anything he is doing is the problem. To figure those things out, you can’t also be trying to meet his sexual wants or needs at the same time and continuing to soak in all the yuck of this. You also say you have a great relationship outside of the sex. So, I think if he’s serious about walking the walk here, and earnestly wants a relationship that’s right for both of you, giving you some time away from the sexual part of your relationship should be something he’s both willing to do and highly supportive of you doing.

Once you have that space, before you can start thinking about the yum, as it were, you need to clear out the yuck. Time away from sex itself, and from the expectation of you engaging in sex,  will probably take care of some of this all by itself. That’s the easy part. The harder part is going to be giving yourself real permission to do this for yourself, and to come to and accept whatever conclusions you do. It will probably also be a little challenging for you — as it sounds like it has been already — to let go of the feelings of guilt and shame you have been having about not wanting what your partner wants you to, and not feeling how you’d like to feel. This is going to take some time, too, and no small amount of self-acceptance and self-love.

I think you can benefit from taking an honest inventory of all of those bad ways you have felt and then checking in with yourself about them and the whole of this situation. That’s something you could do with therapeutic support, like with a sex or general therapist, and if that’s an option for you, I’d suggest you look into it. When we’re feeling isolated and alone in something like you’ve been, like another person isn’t understanding or fully seeing us, then having the kind of help where we also are being seen and validated by someone else can make a big difference.  A therapist can also help guide you in this, so you wouldn’t have to try and figure out the best ways for you to work through this on, or mostly on, your own.

If that’s not an option, isn’t something you’re open to, or you want more ways to do this than that, I think this is also something you can work through with a combination of reading some good stuff about sex with partners and sexuality (I can help with that), and some self-designed process for working through your feelings on this and identifying what you want. Journaling is one free-to-cheap way to do that, and it’s one I like because it makes its own record for you to refer to how and whenever you need.  You can do it with pen and paper, with a journaling app, the notes app on many phones, or, if writing things down isn’t your way, you can also talk it out and save those talks with a voice recording application. I’m suggesting thinking about this in ways where you effectively take some notes because I think it can be a lot harder to think through something this big without giving it some kind of structure, and hard to remember all you’ve thought about without something to refer back to. Taking notes in this can also help to illuminate thought or behavior patterns it can otherwise be harder to see.

Whatever vehicle or vehicles you choose to do it with, it seems to me that these are the kinds of big questions you’ll want to be asking yourself, and then looking to the answers for when it comes to making decisions about sex in this relationship or any other:

• What would a sexual life that I do deeply want, for myself, and that I think I would enjoy look like? 
• What does feeling sexually attracted to someone look and feel like for me? How do I feel about sex when I do feel that attraction, and how is it different from how I feel about sex when I don’t?
• What do I need in a sexual relationship in order to feel able to ONLY have sex that I deeply want and enjoy, including feeling able to stop any kind of sex that isn’t doing it for me, or ask for something different? What is missing from this current relationship in terms of those needs or wants being met?
• What do I need to hear a partner say, or what actions does a partner need to often be doing, that make me feel able to be honest with them about sex and sexuality and my feelings about them in this regard?
• If this current relationship only had the things in it that I actually like and am very into, what would it look like? What kind of relationship would it be? Would it be a sexual one at all?
• Do I feel able to ask for the kind of relationship I want from this relationship, or do I feel like it’s more that I can choose to have this as-is, with parameters set more by my partner, or I can just choose not to be in it at all?
• What do I really, really want? What am I just so, so done with?

This process gets to take as long as you want or need it to. It may be that you just needed to give yourself permission to take this break and ask these things, and you might come up with all the answers in days, maybe even less. Or you may find that weeks to months are more of what you need. Some people who engage in this kind of process — stepping away from sex with partners and then taking real time and focus to evaluate what they want — discover that that process offers them so much, they want to extend it and explore more deeply or widely and aren’t interested anymore in thinking about sexual partnership at all for the time being.  Wherever you land, I hope that you can center your own wants and needs with this and take what time that is without worrying about some kind of ticking clock in the background from your partner. They can wait on sex with you until you work out what you actually want and need around it. (And if it turns out they can’t, well, then they’ll have made it clear that they aren’t ready, willing or able to be a good partner to you in this.)

I have a few books to suggest for you, and I think it would be great if both you and your partner could read them. He sounds like he needs the kind of information that’s in them that you do, and whatever you or the two of you choose for your relationship and interactions moving forward, I can say confidently that these books will be beneficial for you both. You can likely find or order all of them from your local library.

• Come As Your Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life, by Emily Nagoski
• Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections, also by Emily Nagoski
• Magnificent Sex: Lessons from Extraordinary Lovers by Peggy Kleinplatz and Dana Menard
• and, for yourself, What You Really, Really Want by Jaclyn Friedman

I'd also suggest taking a look at a few articles here that I think may be of use to you in all this:

• Will The Real Bad Sex Please Stand Up?
• Don't Want to Have Sex?
• Just the Basics, Ace: An Asexuality Primer
• Yes, No, Maybe So: A Sexual Inventory Stocklist

When you feel like you’ve had enough space and engaged in enough self-reflection to bring this to your partner, then you can start talking with them. It may be that when you feel ready to talk, you don’t feel like you have all the answers yet: that’s okay. You can start talking about this in the ways where you do feel like you know enough to do that, or where you do feel ready and right to talk about a thing. Since this has turned into a really big problem, it’s not likely to be something y’all can have a little talk about and have everything be what each person wants. I suspect that you may find in your time away that the thing you really need to talk about is if this is even right for you as a sexual relationship at all. Unless your feelings change in this process, which I doubt, it may even be that you come out on the other side of this process very clear about a need to move on in that respect — though perhaps stay connected in other ways — and give both of you the chance to seek out only sexual relationships each of you really, truly wants and feels a very real desire for.

But who knows! I’m wary of making too many predictions when it sounds like giving yourself the chance to really come to this in an open-ended way, rather than in a way where you keep trying so hard to meet someone else’s needs or pre-existing ideas, is so new. There are a myriad of conclusions you might come to here, and any of them will be right if they’re what’s right for you.

If you want or need more help or support with this process as you go through it, or with things like how to bring this up to your partner, or negotiate what you need, please feel free to circle back to us. You can use any of our direct services to get more help, anytime. I’m rooting for you, and, in particular, rooting for you to both find and accept what it is you really do and don’t want.