Sex life has completely flipped upside down in the last few months (21F, 20M) /u/Own_Plant_3578 Sex

I’m gonna try and keep this short – my girlfriend (21F) and I (20M) have been together for one and a half years. When we first started dating, she was on hormonal birth control, and we had a very active sex life (~2x/day). After around six months, she stopped taking birth control for health reasons, which I fully supported. However, her sex drive essentially dropped to zero afterwards and she didn’t really want to have sex anymore after a while. Even after starting again 2 months ago, nothing has changed.

At first, I tried to initiate, but I got turned down most of the time, which led to me feeling pretty rejected and relying on masturbation instead (no porn). Eventually, I proposed that (and she agreed) she’d just only initiate when she wanted to do sexual stuff. However, this led to me putting a ton of pressure on myself to perform and essentially gave me performance anxiety I’ve been stuck with for like the last 8 months. It’s created a cycle where she initiates after a month or so, I get really excited that she finally wants to have sex but also super nervous, I can’t get it up, and she doesn’t want to initiate again after a failed attempt because she thinks I don’t find her attractive.

What confuses me however is that she has completely forgotten about our initial sex life: she seems to think I’ve always had trouble getting hard and that she’s always had a low sex drive. I’ll mention how we used to do specific things and she’ll be like “We did that?” This already makes me feel bad cause it makes me feel like it wasn’t really that enjoyable or memorable to her even though at the time she said it was great and she loved it and all that. Additionally, she tells me she doesn’t like the way I initiate sex — this makes absolutely 0 sense to me because I have been trying to initiate the exact same way I did all the time when we first met and had sex daily. All of a sudden, she doesn’t like it anymore. She said to me once (crudely paraphrased): “Not to compare with my exes, but sex is just different now because my ex-boyfriends were in relationships prior to me so they knew how to initiate sex. I’m your first so it’s understandable you don’t really know how.” I don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell me she doesn’t like the way I initiate back when we were having daily sex, especially when I’d ask her if there’s anything I could do better.

Another example is that when we first met, I’d get daily blowjobs (she would personally beg to give me them). Now, she says that she hates giving blowjobs because it makes her mouth hurt. If it makes her mouth hurt and she doesn’t like it, I’m obviously not going to ask for them, but it’s a complete shift from when we first started doing stuff and she’d literally ask me to facefuck her as hard as I could everyday! Surely her mouth was hurting when she’d give them to me when we first met? It makes me feel like she used to like me enough to push through it in the past but now she doesn’t like me enough.

It feels like she’s a completely different person sexually. Prior to us dating, she had multiple sexual partners (a few in high school and one in college). On the other hand, I only had been with one previous partner (in high school) and all we did was use hands/mouth whereas she’d done it all. My self-esteem is already poor and to know she was willing to do stuff willingly with them but hates it with me just makes me feel bleh. I’m a pretty kinky person in general (or at least I was with my past partner) and I know she’s done some pretty kinky stuff too, but our sex life now is so rare and vanilla because it just seems like it’s a chore for her. I really appreciate that she tries at least to initiate every once in a while but I end up not getting hard like 80% of the time. For all the experience she has prior to me, it doesn’t really do any good cause she just likes to lay there and let me do all the work usually lol

At this point, I don’t know if her low libido or my erectile issues are the bigger issue (probably both cause I guess they feed into each other). I don’t know if she genuinely just doesn’t have a high sex drive anymore or if she simply hates trying because I have bad anxiety and can’t get it up. I’m only 20 and I know it’s just anxiety because I’ll have an erection through all foreplay – it just disappears only as I go to actually put it in. I’m trying to figure out how to address this, but it’s taking a toll on my self-esteem and our sexual relationship. Any advice?

I truly wonder whether just fixing my erectile problems will solve everything (her wanting to have more sex, enjoying sex more, etc.) but it’s hard to do when it feels like I’m the only one enjoying it lol

TL;DR: Gf (21F) stopped BC, lost all her sex drive, and I developed bad performance anxiety as a result. She rarely wants to have sex, likely due to a mix of my anxiety and her low libido, and I stay anxious because she seems uninterested in intimacy. She’s also completely forgotten our active early sex life and dislikes things she once enjoyed, making me feel confused and insecure.

I’m gonna try and keep this short – my girlfriend (21F) and I (20M) have been together for one and a half years. When we first started dating, she was on hormonal birth control, and we had a very active sex life (~2x/day). After around six months, she stopped taking birth control for health reasons, which I fully supported. However, her sex drive essentially dropped to zero afterwards and she didn’t really want to have sex anymore after a while. Even after starting again 2 months ago, nothing has changed.

At first, I tried to initiate, but I got turned down most of the time, which led to me feeling pretty rejected and relying on masturbation instead (no porn). Eventually, I proposed that (and she agreed) she’d just only initiate when she wanted to do sexual stuff. However, this led to me putting a ton of pressure on myself to perform and essentially gave me performance anxiety I’ve been stuck with for like the last 8 months. It’s created a cycle where she initiates after a month or so, I get really excited that she finally wants to have sex but also super nervous, I can’t get it up, and she doesn’t want to initiate again after a failed attempt because she thinks I don’t find her attractive.

What confuses me however is that she has completely forgotten about our initial sex life: she seems to think I’ve always had trouble getting hard and that she’s always had a low sex drive. I’ll mention how we used to do specific things and she’ll be like “We did that?” This already makes me feel bad cause it makes me feel like it wasn’t really that enjoyable or memorable to her even though at the time she said it was great and she loved it and all that. Additionally, she tells me she doesn’t like the way I initiate sex — this makes absolutely 0 sense to me because I have been trying to initiate the exact same way I did all the time when we first met and had sex daily. All of a sudden, she doesn’t like it anymore. She said to me once (crudely paraphrased): “Not to compare with my exes, but sex is just different now because my ex-boyfriends were in relationships prior to me so they knew how to initiate sex. I’m your first so it’s understandable you don’t really know how.” I don’t understand why she wouldn’t tell me she doesn’t like the way I initiate back when we were having daily sex, especially when I’d ask her if there’s anything I could do better.

Another example is that when we first met, I’d get daily blowjobs (she would personally beg to give me them). Now, she says that she hates giving blowjobs because it makes her mouth hurt. If it makes her mouth hurt and she doesn’t like it, I’m obviously not going to ask for them, but it’s a complete shift from when we first started doing stuff and she’d literally ask me to facefuck her as hard as I could everyday! Surely her mouth was hurting when she’d give them to me when we first met? It makes me feel like she used to like me enough to push through it in the past but now she doesn’t like me enough.

It feels like she’s a completely different person sexually. Prior to us dating, she had multiple sexual partners (a few in high school and one in college). On the other hand, I only had been with one previous partner (in high school) and all we did was use hands/mouth whereas she’d done it all. My self-esteem is already poor and to know she was willing to do stuff willingly with them but hates it with me just makes me feel bleh. I’m a pretty kinky person in general (or at least I was with my past partner) and I know she’s done some pretty kinky stuff too, but our sex life now is so rare and vanilla because it just seems like it’s a chore for her. I really appreciate that she tries at least to initiate every once in a while but I end up not getting hard like 80% of the time. For all the experience she has prior to me, it doesn’t really do any good cause she just likes to lay there and let me do all the work usually lol

At this point, I don’t know if her low libido or my erectile issues are the bigger issue (probably both cause I guess they feed into each other). I don’t know if she genuinely just doesn’t have a high sex drive anymore or if she simply hates trying because I have bad anxiety and can’t get it up. I’m only 20 and I know it’s just anxiety because I’ll have an erection through all foreplay – it just disappears only as I go to actually put it in. I’m trying to figure out how to address this, but it’s taking a toll on my self-esteem and our sexual relationship. Any advice?

I truly wonder whether just fixing my erectile problems will solve everything (her wanting to have more sex, enjoying sex more, etc.) but it’s hard to do when it feels like I’m the only one enjoying it lol

TL;DR: Gf (21F) stopped BC, lost all her sex drive, and I developed bad performance anxiety as a result. She rarely wants to have sex, likely due to a mix of my anxiety and her low libido, and I stay anxious because she seems uninterested in intimacy. She’s also completely forgotten our active early sex life and dislikes things she once enjoyed, making me feel confused and insecure.