I (23F) have been with my girlfriend (23F) for just over a year. She has been so amazing to me and loves and cares for me deeply. She often tells me how much she wishes to marry me one day (she might have already proposed if I hadn’t told her I wanted to wait for all of that) and talks about our future kids and life together, and at first I returned those sentiments, but I’ve been on a very difficult mental health journey of my own for several years and the further this relationship goes on the more conflicted I constantly feel over it. I was asked by someone if I was “truly happy” in my relationship and I started crying and couldn’t answer. It keeps me up almost every night.
The main “issue” would be that I have never been very comfortable with physical intimacy and we have never had sex, although she has attempted to initiate it several times. She has been very patient and understanding every time I turn her down, but I can tell it’s taking a toll on her. She very much wants to be intimate with me and expresses that often, but every time we are about to get intimate I get this intense anxiety and shut down. I love her and I am definitely attracted to her, but I just feel like I am missing that drive people have towards sex that lets them overcome their fears and insecurities. We have discussed this before. I like kissing her but I have never felt anything special from it. This had led me to wonder if I am asexual, but I think it has to do more with anxiety and body image issues. When I first got with her I did not think I was asexual and I had also never been intimate with anyone.
Something that has been bothering me is that, whenever we are together, either alone or in public she will often grab my boobs or touch me in a way that makes me uncomfortable and the times that I have expressed I didn’t like that she will joke and say “you don’t let me do anything anymore” or “I can’t even have this,” remind me that we are dating, and then laugh it off. I haven’t been very firm with this because I feel like I owe at least some intimacy to her and I already feel guilty about never having sex with her. She will often make very sexual statements to me and at first I returned them and enjoyed it, but now it makes me so uncomfortable and I have no idea why or what changed in me.
The longer this relationship goes, the more I feel like it isn’t going to work out. More and more often I find that something she is doing is irritating me that shouldn’t be irritating me and I want to see her less and less. My mental health is getting worse and the guilt of not being what my partner wants is eating me alive. She keeps reassuring me that she loves me and wants to spend her life with me even if I can’t ever have sex with her but I can tell she’s frustrated with that and is hoping one day I will finally be ready. She thinks that we are soulmates and I am perfect for her and wants to spend our lives together. I do not want to break her heart. Part of me thinks about a future with her and is overjoyed. Another part of me dreads it and wonders if there is someone out there who would be a better fit for me who I could feel fully comfortable with being around all the time. But I do not want to ruin a good relationship because of how divided I feel in my own head. We have been discussing moving in together but I have been pushing it off saying I’m just not ready to move yet etc. This is upsetting her because if we could be together every day nothing would make her happier.
I keep holding on because I know how happy she is with me and I am hoping that maybe if my mental health gets better so will our relationship. It’s so insanely confusing to me because some of the time I am happy with my relationship and think it’s amazing and love spending time with her, but then there’s time where I feel a heavy weight on chest and my stomach hurts when I think about the relationship and it fluctuates so wildly between the two even the span of minutes. She can tell something is wrong but I keep trying to reassure her and I don’t know why. We have always told each other we would never end the relationship out of nowhere, and if there was a problem we would try to work it out first. I don’t even know what the problem is to even try and work it out. I feel like saying “sometimes I feel sick when thinking about our relationship” is a horrible way to address this but it is the truth and I don’t know why.
Does anyone have any advice on how to keep my relationship going or how to bring this up to her? Is this even an issue that can be worked on?
tl;dr My girlfriend thinks we are perfect for each other, I have a lot of doubts; I am unable to be intimate with my girlfriend and she says she’s okay with that but I know she isn’t