Girlfriend doesn't want sex anymore

colmdel

Hi all!
I have been going out with my girlfriend for the last 6 years. We are really close and everything was going great. Recently she sat me down and told me that she is does not want to have sex anymore.

She has decided she does not want to have sex (or do anything else) until she is married. She has always been religious and has spoken about being worried about having pre marital sex a few years ago. We had a very long chat about this before and with the pro' and con's etc. I gave her plenty of time to think with no pressure. Her views are her views and I was trying to respect them. She eventually decided that it was a bad idea as we would probably grow distant and lose how close we are.

Now to the present.

She told me she does not want to have sex anymore. She had been to confession and is off her contraception. BOMBSHELL!! She told me how she knew how much of a big deal this was and that if I can't do it then so be it. We had a good long chat about it where I told her how I felt rejected and just generally upset about all this.

I'm trying to respect her views on her religion but I can't help but feel betrayed! I am not religious and believe that sex is an important part of any relationship. I love this girl to bits but now I don't know what to do. This is something she has decided and she spelled it out pretty bluntly when I was talking to her about it that I have two options.

A. If we are strong enough we will get through it
B. Break up with her

I am so confused. My head is telling me run but my heart is breaking! I can't help but feel like she is trying to push me into marriage. I don't think I want to marry someone who can make such a rash decision. If she can go without sex now what's to say I won't have a sexless marriage.

Sorry for being a bit all over the place everyone I just don't know what to do. Any advice greatly appreciated.

LegacyUser

So she made a major decision that directly impacts on your relationship and has basically told you like it or lump it? If she had held up these beliefs all along would be one thing, but it's unbelievable to suddenly impose a ban on sex after being together for so long! It's hard to know if she might be pressuring you into marriage just going by what you've posted but its funny how she was happy to let her religious views slide for the first 6 years.

Honestly, only you know if you would be happy in a relationship with no sex and her basically calling all the shots on any sex life you do have (what if she decides it's only appropriate to have sex for the purpose of having children once you are married?). But I don't think you're wrong to feel betrayed or hurt, I know I would. As you said yourself, sex is an important part of any relationship (particularly when it has already been part of yours!)

Normally I'd say try talking to her, but it sounds like she's given you a pretty clear-cut ultimatum. Really sorry OP, but I would strongly considering ending it if I were you. If she is happy to pull the rug out from under your whole relationship dynamic that you've built up to this point, you can bet you won't get much of a say when/if you do get married.

Little Acorn

You should not get married because you feel forced into it or just to keep the other person happy whilst forgoing your own belief's/happiness.

Sorry to be blunt but you just don't sound compatible. What if you did ever marry or have children. There could possibly be further arguments about how ye raised children in the future. She seems very set in her beliefs and that is fine , but it doesn't mean you have to go along with what she wants if you are not happy. In fairness she has laid her cards on the table and given you some no bull options.

I think you should pick option B.

December2012

You are very incompatible over this point. Incompatibility is a warning bell when considering getting married. The fact you are together six years and not planning on getting married makes it seem to me as if she wants to.

Have you discussed marriage or your future, apart from sex?

Obliq

colmdel wrote: »

I don't think I want to marry someone who can make such a rash decision. If she can go without sex now what's to say I won't have a sexless marriage.

Sorry for being a bit all over the place everyone I just don't know what to do. Any advice greatly appreciated.

I agree with you here OP, and I'm sorry for your troubles For what it's worth, I think you've nailed it about her ultimatum - it is indeed an extremely rash decision to come off contraception, ban sex until marriage and offer you a take it or leave it situation. Not only rash I would say, but hurtful that she could treat you that way. In effect, what she is saying is "my religious convictions about purity are more important than you". I'm sorry.

Your words of warning to yourself about a sexless marriage are good advice I reckon. If she continues to be so strict in her religious convictions (and at this point, you have no reason to think she won't), you will either have many MANY children and a lot of sex while she is pregnant, or no sex. You sound like you have a normal, healthy sex drive - tbh, it is not considered entirely healthy any more to reject your own desires to the extent that she is willing to (and not only that, requires YOU to be willing to).

I think SHE has called a halt to your relationship, and this way, can comfort herself with notions of purity after YOU have to come to a decision with your sex life at it's core. She may never figure out that she herself is ending the relationship, even if you're the one to call a halt to it.

Again, sorry for your troubles. You clearly invested a lot of love and care into this - someone else will be happy to accept that, someday.....

maria34

I would think she wants to get married and have kids and you dont want to so she us playing that religion card now. Because before she was on the pill and had sex with you.

Ann84

This is a warning sign alright. If she doesn't realise that sex is something both of you are entitled to and have to share (if you want to be in ahealthy committed relationship) I'd imagine this won't be the last time you are left wanting.

There have been nnumerous threads on here from men and woman who married partners despite knowing there was a different sex drive and now years later, after kid's etc.the truth comes out.
If you take sex off the table, your effectively friends... I would think seriously about how selfish your gf sounds, what will it be like sharing children with her, will it be her way or the highway then too?
Ps-it was easier to remain abstinent when engagements only lasted a few months and people weren't trying to maintain live-in relationships as people do today long before marriage. The world has changed and I don't believe that a sexless pre-marital long-term relationship will make a happy marriage...

token56

6 years is a long time to be in a relationship but to then suddenly decide to drastically change the terms of it, especially such a significant part as sex, is completely unreasonable in my opinion. There are two ways I see this, either this is ploy to try encourage you to marry her, or she has no problems enforcing such a significant change at this stage in your relationship with a like or leave it attitude. Either way I think she is treating your views and more importantly you, with no respect, respect which you certainly have earned after 6 years.

Ending a relationship after 6 years is absolutely heart breaking, but if this is really the decision she is making, it is the only outcome for me. As hard as it is to accept you simply aren't compatible any more in the way you want your relationship to continue and ultimately the things you both value in a relationship.

If ending it the relationship is what you decide there is always the possibility that she might recant, but it has already gone too far in my opinion. It is however something you should prepare yourself for just in case.

strobe

Would be an instant deal breaker for me. Either she's trying to manipulate you into proposing rather than just talking honestly with you, or making it clear that she has unilaterally decided from here on in sex is always on her terms or not at all, regardless of your feelings on thr matter. Either way the attitude is riddled with selfishness and entitlement.

I can't really see a way back from here. You either agree to marry her and then resign yourself to a life with a woman who views your sex life as something she controls absolutely without so much as consulting you, or you walk away.

Boskowski

It's basically let's get married or else.
If it was me that'd be 'else' then. And I'm not talking about being dominant or in the right or anything. I'm talking about the long term effects on your relationship. If you marry her now after such a stunt you're almost guaranteed to resent her over this sooner or later. This is most likely not going to end well.

Obliq

colmdel wrote: »

I'm trying to respect her views on her religion but I can't help but feel betrayed! I am not religious and believe that sex is an important part of any relationship. I love this girl to bits but now I don't know what to do.

I just want to add this to what I said before - I do think that unfortunately this is make or break time for you and she has put the ball firmly in your court. This is the time she is clearly asking you to sh*t or get off the pot, and this is how important her religious convictions are.

Suppose you do now continue your relationship on her terms, marry and have children. Are you comfortable with the knowledge (certain at this stage, I'd say) that any children you do have would be brought up to the idea that sex is only for reproduction and they will be impure if they don't fall in line with this repressive notion? Time for you to realise that your religious/otherwise convictions will not count for much if you bring up children together.

Big Bag of Chips

I'd be having a chat fairly sharpish if I were you colmdel.

To me it sounds more like she wants to get married, than she wants to abstain from sex. How old are you both? Are you even engaged yet? Has marriage been discussed? Has she always been religious, or is this a new thing? If she has always been religious but still had sex, then I call BS on her story now.

My friend is very religious, and decided on no sex before marriage. Her bf (now husband!) knew this from the start, and was happy to respect her beliefs. But that's because it was her fundamental belief, not something she just decided well into the relationship.

Women (and men!) can, and do go off sex. I think there are 2 possible scenarios here.
1: Your gf has gone off sex and is using religion as a cover story. If this is the case, then I wouldn't be expecting a fulfilling sex life after you've gotten married... People often get married thinking things will change. They rarely do. There have been numerous threads here over the past while about men in sexless marriages... Going on years. But they entered the marriage thinking things would be different once they got married.

The other scenario is: she is trying to push you towards marriage, and rather than sit down and discuss it like adults, she again is hiding behind religion as a cover story, rather than just being brave enough to have an adult conversation with you.

I think a frank talk is needed between you both. But if she is adamant, then I wouldn't pin too many hopes on it all changing and getting sorted once you're married.

P. Breathnach

OP, you are not religious. My guess is that others who have posted in this thread are not. Neither am I.

But your girlfriend is.

I have the advantage of being old enough to remember when many people elected not to have sex outside marriage because that was the advice of the church to which they adhered. It was not seen as a dealbreaker at the time, and many people were virgins when they married. A lot of those marriages were successful (and, of course, some others were not).

It seems that your girlfriend was never quite comfortable with the idea of sex outside marriage, but parked her reservations for a number of years. You could see it as her putting your values ahead of her own because of her love for you. Now her values have been put back on your shared agenda. Perhaps you should consider that it's her turn.

You have been together 6 years. Had you come to see it as a permanent relationship? Was marriage on the cards? Was her sexual relationship with you, in her mind at least, made acceptable because she supposed that you were going to marry, making it less of a sin in her religiously-mediated worldview?

Do you love her enough?

iusedtoknow

I would see this as a red flag for a number of reasons.

1. she seems to be pushing you towards marriage and as others have said, hiding behind religion to do so. If she had always been religious, and sex was never on the agenda, then TBH, it would be fine - you'd know what you're getting yourself into. However to change dramatically like this 6 years into the relationship is something else.

2. This could make your future together pretty awkward. If she came contraception, does that mean she's against it? I'm not catholic myself (or remotely religious, I'd actually verge on anti-religious) but if she sees contraception in the same way as the papacy, it's worrying.
Also, if she is like this now - what about your kids? Would you want them to be raised in very catholic house, with the idea that sex is only for having kids and nothing else?

TBH, i see the ball as being in your court. She is the one that has changed dramatically, you are the one that needs to decide what is OK for you.

Sleepy

Get the hell out OP.

If she's telling the truth, she's letting religion deprive her of a normal relationship and marriage will make no difference to that: sex will become something only for reproduction, missionary position above the nightdress stuff and you'll eventually leave her / cheat on her / end up resenting her for ruining your life.

If she's not and is simply using her re-discovered "religious beliefs" in an attempt to manipulate you into marriage, is that really the type of nutjob you want to have anything to do with?!

Run for the hills and never look back.

dipdip

There's a lot of unnecessary scaremongering going on here. You would be surprised how many people choose to abstain from sex before marriage and if you look at the sociological research they are generally pretty happy with their married sex lives - but that is another issue.

Understandably you are freaked out about this. The goalposts just changed.

There is no point pressuring her into something she does not want to do. It sounds as though she has been having sex out of fear of losing you. Which she now may well do, so not an ungrounded fear.

I would say that the most important thing in a successful relationship is shared values. If you don't want the same things, then long term your relationship will not work out.

Alternatively you could just get married, but your head would need to be in the right place for that. And it doesn't sound like it is.

ash23

I think if she is a practicing member of her religion (goes to mass, recieves sacraments, celebrates religious holidays etc) and you believe that she genuinely is doing this because of her religion then I have to say you should try to see it from her side.

She had issues about having sex before marriage but presumably she put these to the side for the last six years because she loves you and thought that you would eventually end up married. Now 6 years have passed with no proposal and possibly pressure from her family (if they are also religious) plus good old religious guilt added to it and she has decided to make a decision.

My opinion on this would be seriously dependent on whether she has expressed concern about sex before marriage throughout the relationship. If it's something you knew she wasn't happy about for a long time and she had reservations about and you were not acting on it (by discussing getting married and timeframes etc) then I think she was right to issue the ultimatum to get you to make up your mind.
If this is totally and honestly out of the blue then fair enough, you should feel aggrieved.

Either way it seems she has made up her mind and honestly after 6 years together I think if you aren't sure whether you want to marry her or not, then you don't and you should just finish it.

I'd be of the opinion that if she's withholding sex now to get what she wants, it's unlikely to change when you're wearing wedding rings, and is likely to get worse. It only has to work once to set the pattern.

I'm not religious so I can't really relate to the religious abstention thing, but I do know that even if I had all the sex I wanted, whenever I wanted it, I would find a strictly religious person very difficult to live with. Moderately religious is fine, but once someone is all born-again virgin and heading to confession it makes me think it's a more rigid thing than I could live with.

Either a) she's genuine and not tryin to influence you into appeasing her by rushing into marriage, or b) she's willing to use sex as a tool to get what she wants, regardless of how you feel about it.

If you're a fan of unilateral decisions, go for it. Sounds like a dictatorship rather than a partnership though.

rcarroll

You know your gf better than anyone - why has she put this ultimatum to you now? I think if you look hard enough and talk to her about it, you might find out why. We can speculate here that it's religious reasons, catholic guilt, lack of interest in sex, a push to marriage etc but I'd be talking to her first before throwing away the last 6 years.

Honestly, the way she's gone about things is bad, but maybe she's fed up of waiting six years for a proposal and wants to know if you're serious about her or not? How long were you going to let the relationship tick by before you proposed? Is it something you'd talked about? You mention that she's religious - then probably you knew that marriage was important to her. You also mentioned she was uncomfortable having sex before marriage...well maybe she's been spending the last 6 years trying to be ok with the situation because she loves you...and now she's starting to realise she's not ok, and that maybe the proposal was never going to come??

Tramps Like Us

It depends on your age... six years is a long time to be going out, think she wants you to **** or get off the pot in terms of marriage.

colmdel

Hi everyone!
I really want to thank you all so much! I had another long chat with her about what this is going to do to us, how much it has upset me and that if I didn't love her so much I would be running for the hills. I am confident that this is purely a religious thing I just never realised how much it bothered her. I also told her this is not going to rush me into proposing and if anything it will break us up which she understands. This is very upsetting for the both of us but she is certain she needs to do this no matter what. We may have just become incompatible overnight and it is the beginning of the end.

It is still very early days at the moment and very hard but only time will tell.

Thank you so much everyone I'm sorry I couldn't possibly reply to everyone individually but I really appreciate everyone's comments. Oh we are both 24 by the way

token56

I would be quite biased towards what I think you should do given that it seems to be genuinely for religious and I am strongly non-religious. It is all down to how much you are willing to accept the consequences of her religious morals, not just this but any future issues which might arise because of them. Like I said if it was up to me I know what I would do, but only you can weigh up the pro's and con's here and decided what is right for you.

I have to commend you OP on the way you are handling this. You are being extremely mature, not making rash decisions, and are communicating very well about how this is making you feel. Imo not a lot of people would act as you are, so well done on that.

Best of luck with whatever decision you make!!

To be honest, I think 24 is way too young to be committing to marriage anyway, even if you are together for so long. If you've been together since you were teenagers, the chances were always that you were going to grow in different ways as that particular few years of your life sees so many changes.

I hope you both find happiness, whatever your decisions.

MagicMarker

Jesus man, 24!? Run, run quite fast.

Her religious beliefs obviously aren't that important otherwise she wouldn't have been setting them aside for the last 6 years.

Seriously, you'd be mental to get into this kind of situation at 24.

LegacyUser

At 24 you are both to young to get married. At 24 does she expect you go out with her for a another few years without having a sex life. You then will have to propose to her and then have a big white wedding.
After doing this she will have sex with you until she gets pregnant. She will only have sex when she wants another child. Meanwhile you will be working long hours as she will want to stay at home with the children.
Within a few years you will resent her and any family that you have with her.

I would tell her at 24 years of age you are not happy to play the part of being her boyfriend, that you are not willing to give up your sex life and that at 24 you are both to young to get married so you are braking up with her.
I would also say to her that once she said this to you it was the end of your relationship as you saw what a miserable life you would have if you stayed with her.
Tell her if your religious beliefs are that important to you that you will be single for a long time.

Once you do this keep well away from her because if you she lets you have sex with her again she is doing this to get pregnant so you will marry her.
Sometimes things happen for a reason and in this case I would tell you it is to prevent you from ending up in a miserable unhappy relationship or marriage.

P. Breathnach

colmdel wrote: »

... if I didn't love her so much I would be running for the hills....

That's a very important piece of context; you love her deeply.

...this is not going to rush me into proposing ...

Yes, but... You love her; you have a six-year history together; I imagine that you saw the relationship heading towards marriage, but were both approaching the idea of marriage fairly slowly.

Things have now changed, and I think it very good that you recognise her need rather than blame her for taking her religious beliefs seriously.

You need to clarify one thing for yourself: do you want to marry her? By that, I mean marry her for love, not for sexual opportunity. If this issue had not arisen, would you have continued to have a sexual relationship with her, thinking "this is the woman I want to marry"? Or would have been "I am enjoying sex with my girlfriend"?

On the basis of what you have told us, I am quite prepared to accept that she is not playing games, that she is sincere in her convictions. I also think it might be unjust to make any assumptions about what she might be like about sex within marriage.

Tough times for both of you. I hope that you find the best resolution of your difficulties.

Bananaleaf

If she was so religious why did she have sex in the first place? My initial opinion on this is that she no longer enjoys the sex and this is the first thing that has come to her mind (probably due to the role religion plays in her life) to get her out of it.

Using marriage gives her quite a lot of time, more than 'I don't feel well or 'I've a headache tonight

I'm sorry to be so harsh, but sure, I could be way off.

CaliforniaDream

I think people are being very harsh on the girlfriend.
This wasn't a rash decision. The OP said before she had expressed concerns and was worried about this. It's not news to him. She's always had these values but put her partner's before hers.
It was obviously too much for her and she's feeling terrible about it. I'm not religious so I don't know what she's feeling, but it sounds like she's deliberated with this for the entire 6 years.
And it's got no bearing on what sex would be like after marriage. She might really enjoy having sex, it's just the marital aspect that she's agonizing over.

OP, you love her and she loves you. I'd think long and hard about making a decision and I'd make sure it's one that both of you will be happiest with in the long term. 24 is not too young to be married but it's not something to rush into either.
Take a step back and look at you relationship as a whole. She's either worth waiting for or not.
But it sounds like you are both trying to communicate with each other so keep that up.

Good luck, it's not an easy decision.

Stavro Mueller

You mentioned confession so I'm going to assume your girlfriend is catholic. A bigger worry for you is what might happen if you did get married. Will she also be following the church's teaching on contraception and making a decision for you both on this matter? Would you be happy with that?

suicide_circus

serious alarm bells here op

you dont sound ready to get married at 24 and you also dont sound prepared to be abstinent until you are ready.

if you do marry this girl, you can expect her religious views to govern much of your life. I couldn't do it.

after 6 years, to suddenly issue this earth shattering ultimatum is frankly very worrying and does not bode well for the future.