Maybes

Sometimes I wonder if my relationship with my boyfriend started too quickly - or at least the sexual aspects of it. I went from completely untouched, never-been-kissed virgin to fuck-like-bunnies nympho in under a year. I had never even dated before he came into my life. He was... quite experienced for his age, all of 16 at the time. He's admitted that he pushed me, because he thought loosening up and bringing some sexuality into our relationship would make me happy. And for a long time, it did make me happy, wonderfully happy.


Somewhere along the line, something changed. Maybe it was the winters where we rarely had sex because I was always sick. Maybe it was the pain of trying to have sex when my back was chronically being a royal bitch. Maybe it was the slow, insidious, creeping onset of my anxiety disorder. Maybe it was all of them, or none, but somehow I began to lose my libido (in all senses of the word, not just the sexual). We have gone from having sex 3-5 times each weekend he visited me, to once a month... or once every two months. I'm not certain how long it's been this time. At least a month, I think, but I've lost track.

And it's not as if I'm just avoiding having sex. Compared to a few years ago, I rarely jerk off now. It used to be multiple times every day. Now, I'm lucky if I want to jerk off once a week. I have to force myself to get started when the review backlog builds up... and then I have a wonderful, marathon session with half a dozen toys, and I thoroughly enjoy myself.

That's one of the strangest things. I still love having sex, and I still love masturbating. I have crazy-good multiple orgasms. I have a damned good time. But... I almost never want it. I want to want it, but I don't.

Were you able to follow that? Good, that makes one of us.

Whatever the source, I've begun to wonder if the sexual aspects of our relationship got going too quickly for a little virgin like me. The of the decline in my libido and the beginning of our relationship hitting a very, very long rocky patch that we're still enduring line up a little too well. It leaves me wondering: if we had taken longer in the getting-closer stages, devoted less time to making out and pawing each other, would our relationship be faring better today? It's always seemed like the sexual intimacy opened the door for a wonderful emotional closeness that we'd been reaching for before, and that our relationship had been deepening and blossoming.

An insidious little voice that I know is my anxiety disorder whispers that it was all never anything but sex and endorphins and such. I know this isn't true, so I try to ignore it.

I'm left with more questions than answers. Maybe we should have taken it slower in the beginning, taken more time to kiss and cuddle and talk and dream instead. Maybe I should have spoken up when he was pushing me too fast, instead of assuming he knew what relationships were "supposed" to be like, because he'd been through it before. Maybe I shouldn't have jumped off the deep end of sexuality right from the get-go.

But maybes don't repair a broken libido and a battered relationship. Woulda coulda shouldas just send us spiraling into dark places inside ourselves, where we might be better off not looking.