We became sexually active at a fairly early age and once we started we made love at least once a week. It continued like that until I went off to college, which is odd because that really should have made our sex lives even stronger, being that I rented my own apartment and we could be alone whenever we wanted.  That was about 4 years ago and ever since our sex life has drastically declined even more.  I love her to death and I know she feels the same way about me, but I feel like she's not attracted to me anymore.  We are both in good shape and a good looking couple.  I am still just as attracted to her as the day I met her and she still turns me on the same.  Cheating is something I will never do, I really only want her!  If we do have sex, which has become once in 3 months, if that, I know she is not enjoying it.  She has always complained about pain from sex, but she is kind of small and I am a little over average, but during the first two years of our relationship she would be aroused enough to not feel much pain if any.  Now when we do make love she will only do the missionary and she barely moves, while 4 years ago we were trying about every position in the book.  We were doing other things as alternates to sex, but I really have a problem with that as well.  During the early stages of our relationship she was very open to new things and we experimented a lot.  When we didn't have sex, we would give oral sex, and usually even employ the 69 position which I love.  For the past 4 years we haven't even done that.  She has gotten to where she can only get off by "dry humpin" and then giving me oral sex after she climaxes.  Even that has become something of a chore for her.  She will not swallow, but not only that, she won't even let my sperm touch her.  She has a cloth ready and as soon as I'm close to ejaculation, she pulls out and puts it in the cloth.  Her not swallowing is not a big deal, but it is a huge turnoff to have my penis shoved into a cloth when I am ejaculating.  She just doesn't seem interested in me physically anymore at all.  I don't really understand.  I feel like I'm in the best shape of my life and I look better than I ever have.  We are both in our early twenties and we've been together for almost a decade and I will be with her forever no matter what, but I cannot live happily like this.  Her excuse lately is that she wants to wait until we are married, but as I said, I believe that's just an excuse and things may not even change once we're married!  Thank you for your time Dr. Ruth and I really hope you can help me out with this so that we can go back to being the sexual lovebirds that we used to be!

Please put aside all issues having to do with your or her appearance. Her reaction has nothing to do with how you look. I can’t tell you exactly why she is acting like this, but I can make a guess. I think as long as you were both in high school and you were having sex on the sly, so to speak, she felt somewhat in control. But when you got your own apartment and it was too easy to have sex, she began to feel a little guilty about it.  Somewhere inside her mind a little voice was saying, “This is wrong.”  It’s not that she didn’t love you or want to have sex with you, but the limits had been taken away and all that freedom, outside of the bonds of marriage, felt wrong to her. I doubt she could put it into words exactly, but because of those feelings, those twinges of guilt, she pulled back a little. I’m also going to guess that when you had sex, sneaking around a bit, it made her feel romantic. But going to your apartment just to have sex removed some of that romance. And so that guilt is holding her back to some degree. Will she blossom when you are married? I can’t give you any guarantees, but she might. I suggest you talk about this with her some more, and not to put pressure on her in any way; I also suggest that you consolidate your marriage plans, assuming they’re nebulous at this point since you didn’t say you’d set a date. See what happens, and let me know.