My partner of a year and I live together and emotionally I’m so content! However, our intimacy has hit a wall. For a while, we enjoyed our pleasure-based fun and our communication was on point! I didn’t think much about the fact that he didn’t seem interested in intercourse (penis-vagina) because we were having fun regardless. Six months into seeing each other, I asked if he was interested in intercourse. He expressed that he was interested but was avoiding it because he’s terrified of pregnancy.

Hormonal birth control isn’t an option for me for medical reasons, and non hormonal options are expensive and frighten me. We bought condoms, agreeing that was our option, but they stayed in their box.

When I finally tried to have the conversation with him recently, he said that he’s still interested, but now it causes him anxiety because we simply haven’t done it. He said he’s anxious about performance and that “It” has become this large elephant in the room that stresses him out to even think about.

Now I have negative connotations with any of our sex. I feel like there’s so much tension around “Is this finally going to evolve into intercourse?” I’ve expressed that I want to respect his feelings and don’t want to pressure him. I just want to feel intimate with him — my long term partner — and right now I want something other than oral/hand play.

He always agrees that he wants to make it happen and work through it but then our ideas never come to fruition. We’ve tried sex toys to spice it up but it’s not working. This tension is affecting us in so many other ways now and I hate it. Something isn’t right here and I’m running out of ideas. I can’t tell if this is a communication break down or a sexual compatibility issue. Blah.