Submitted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008
By dunit, 24, from Canada:

I've been with my boyfriend for 2 1/2 years and we've been living together for most of that time. He has a very introverted personality and rarely expresses his feelings/emotions (what guy does?? lol).

We both enjoy porn from time to time and aren't ashamed to admit it. The problem is that we never enjoy it together. He has become very withdrawn over the past year and a half or so, but I guess he's always been that way somewhat. It's a long story but something possessed me to put an internet monitoring program on our computer to see what he's up to when I'm not home. It was worse than I thought. He's on porn sites everyday for an hour +. He's on a sexual dating/friend site for the sole purpose of exchanging sexual fantasies etc. And yet, we only have sex maybe 1-2 times a month, and a lot of time I'll try to initiate it and he pushes me away claiming that I have "bad timing" and that he's tired. When I saw all of his internet activites I thought maybe it was me not making enough of an effort. So I sent him a racy email detailing some of my sexual fantasies and asking him to reply with some of his (to try and inject some life into our relationship) and he never even acknowleged it. He's always said that he has a hard time putting sex and relationships on the same level. Almost like he thinks they're 2 separate things. I'm really worried that he's totally lost interest even though he says it has nothing to do with me.

Some contributing factors to this mess could be:
-He's gained a bit of weight since we've been together and I know he's not happy with himself naked.
-We've had a few long conversations and he's expressed more than once that he doesn't think he's capable of feeling love and that he knows I deserve better.

Maybe you can help explain some of this to me? I fear that our sex life has gone down the tubes and that I've done pretty much all I can think of to repair it. I've even tried to break up with him but he wouldn't let me so it's not that he doesn't care. I've talked to him until I'm blue in the face expressing how I feel about all of this but nothing ever changes. I just feel like I'm dating an inanimate rod or something. Like he's here but not here all the time. Any insights?

VictorM's advice:

To be honest, I think he needs professional help. Your information is too sketchy to have any kind of educated guess at what's happening. Clearly there's a self-esteem problem, but unless he gets to the bottom of where it came from and what's causing it, not much is going to change.

Apparently he can relate better with people he doesn't know (the members of the website and porn stars) than he does with you, but that is all part of his introvert/inferiority complex personality. He's escaping into a fantasy world and you're the real world. Don't take his actions personally.

If he understands that his behavior is not healthy, get him to see a professional therapist; if he thinks nothing is wrong... well, you can't help people that don't want to help themselves. In this case, be aware that you don't need his permission or approval to break up with him.