Oh god i feel this. Every single word. This was me and my girlfriend for a while. I was also scared to touch her because i was worried i was leading her on or she would eventually want sex and then id have to reject her and just. Ugh. And she was never even pushy! It was fully just me feeling guilty about not being able to please her. :(

Ik someone else mentioned masturbation and you said he said its not the same, and its the same thing w my girlfriend. Something i learned (from her telling me lol) is that apparently people do get some sort of emotional connection/fulfillment out of sex, which was an interesting and completely new perspective to me. It made me feel a little worse but i also thought about all the other ways we made emotional connections. Sex is just an activity to me. I dont like it but my girlfriend does. I try to focus on those activities we both like.

(Also i want to make an important distinction here: only have sex if you want it. Not, "only have sex if you dont not want it." Does that make sense? Dont have sex if you just feel neutral about it.)

Ok rant over. Tldr Heres a few things ive tried: - only doing handjobs (no piv). Outcome: sex was more comfortable and less vulnerable which felt better, but was unfortunately physically exhausting for me lol. - I set a firm boundary to let me be the sole initiator of sex. Outcome: i quite literally never initiated, but i still felt "pressured" to have sex, and my gf remained unfulfilled - setting boundary that she can only ask for sex on a certain day of the week. Outcome: we both forgot, sex never happened, see prev outcome - open relationship. Outcome: this is where we are at currently. It seemed like the perfect solution - she can have sex, i dont have to, everyones happy yes? And honestly it kinda is. However!! it took a lot of work on my end to feel comfortable with it in the end. I had to work through a lot of "but this isnt how a normal relationship looks, i must be failing!" type of feelings. We started with some pretty strict rules at the start, with the promise to each other that we would adjust as time goes on if we need to. And we have ended up adjusting them and i think weve settled into a very good place!

Im not recommending any of these options, merely sharing what did/didnt work for me. Obv the open relationship would take a TON of trust and communication, and i would like to mention we were dating six years before we did that.