I am a 31 year-old gay man in my first monogamous relationship, now going on 3.5 months. My boyfriend is 45. For the first two months of our relationship, our sex life was great: it was frequent (about 3 times per week), spontaneous, and incredibly hot.

Then, it began to wane. He mostly stopped initiating, and many of my attempts have been met with excuses about how he was tired or had to work. I've talked with him about it several times, offering to work with him in terms of timing, schedule, ways of initiating, etc., and though he has been receptive to these conversations, it seems little has changed. In fact, we're now having even less sex than before (once a week if I'm lucky, but sometimes I can get him to lie with me while I jerk off, which was advice I adapted from another column you wrote.)

He says he is attracted to me and loves having sex with me—and this is evident while we're doing it—and yet he claims he has a low libido and also some difficulty feeling "needed" in certain ways due to an emotionally (though not sexually) abusive childhood. He has also said that he tends to think of sex in a relationship as "exceptional" (versus routine.) In the times between us having sex, I feel little sexual desire from him in terms of comments, compliments, flirtation, etc.

I don't want to be a nag by bringing this up again, but I'm not seeing much change after three weeks. Are our needs just too different? How long should I give this to change before I break up with him? It's very painful for me, as sex is a major way that I like to express and receive love, and my sexual appetite is still ravenous.

Sexless And Sad

My response after the jump...

You've been going out with this guy for 3.5 months, you brought this problem to his attention three weeks ago (no change since), and there was probably a gap of at least two weeks between identifying the problem bringing it up. So you had barely passed the two-month mark when 1. the sex began to falter, 2. you realized that this guy doesn't express affection (comments, compliments, flirtatiousness) the way you need a boyfriend to, and 3. you have different libidos and conflicting ideas about the importance/frequency of sexual activity in a relationship.

DTMFA.

He's not a motherfucker, of course, so this is more of a DTNGWIRFY ("dump the nice guy who isn't right for you") situation than a DTMFA situation. But you two aren't a match—you're not sexually or emotionally compatible—and better to part now as friends than to drag this out for a year or ten and part as bitter sexually deprived/sexually harassed enemies.

Of course not every couple is immediately and explosively compatible on the sexual front right out of the gate. It can take time for two people to discover what works for them and begin to carve a groove into each other. But what you've discovered in the 3.5 months you've been together, SAS, sounds terminal.

DTNGWIRFY.