Could never making my ex orgasm have contributed to her losing attraction, even though she said she enjoyed sex and later stopped wanting it because of stress/pain?
I’m 21M and my girlfriend recently broke up with me after roughly 8 months.
One thing I keep thinking about is that I never made her orgasm during our relationship.
Earlier in the relationship our sex life was actually pretty regular. For a period we were having sex roughly every week, sometimes more. She told me she enjoyed having sex with me and was something she liked. She never told me that the sex was bad or that she was sexually unsatisfied with me.
However, she never orgasmed with me.
She had told me that an ex had made her orgasm around 2–3 times in their relationship, so I know she is capable of orgasming with a partner. She can also orgasm by herself much more easily.
I definitely cared about her pleasure. I researched it, tried to pay attention to what she liked, and I was willing to use oral/fingers rather than just focusing on penetration. Even times when I lasted over an hour she wouldn’t orgasm. The issue was that she was quite difficult to get feedback from sexually. She generally was against receiving oral very much, didn’t like being fingered by a partner, rarely initiated sex, and wasn’t particularly communicative about what would get her off. Sometimes she would basically start sex without being very horny and see whether she got into it as we continued.
She also told me she could go months without masturbating and generally seemed to have a low libido. She said there was sometimes only around one week of the month where she actually felt noticeably horny.
Later in the relationship the entire sexual dynamic changed.
She became extremely stressed with university and said stress made it difficult for her to get into a sexual headspace. She was also taking Accutane/isotretinoin and became very dry, and penetration started hurting her. Our sex frequency eventually dropped to around once a month or even less, and I barely had opportunities anymore to actually experiment and learn what worked for her.
This was frustrating coz I’m a guy and I wanted us to work on it together. Toward the end, though, she told me that sometimes she felt stressed about coming over because she knew I would probably want sex even tho I never pressured her.
When she broke up with me, sex was not the only reason she gave. There were some pretty major long-term issues too. I definitely want children one day and she was around 80/20 toward not wanting them. She wanted to focus heavily on university/career and seemed to want a more independent lifestyle than I did. We also had some differences around health/values. So I understand there were multiple reasons for the breakup.
What I’m struggling with is whether the orgasm issue could have been a major underlying reason she gradually lost romantic/sexual attraction, even if she never consciously said that.
I recently heard dating advice claiming that if a man consistently fails to sexually satisfy a woman, eventually her attraction/respect for him drops, regardless of how well he treats her otherwise. Basically, that emotional support, attention, dates, etc. cannot compensate for a woman associating a man with mediocre sex.
Part of me thinks there may be truth in that, and it’s brutal to think that maybe if I had been able to make her orgasm consistently, the sexual connection would have been strong enough that she would have been more motivated to stay and work through the other issues but idk.
The other part of me looks at what actually happened and thinks it doesn’t fit perfectly. She wasn’t constantly asking for sex and leaving disappointed because she didn’t orgasm. She progressively wanted sex less, had a naturally low libido, became stressed, experienced dryness/pain, and eventually started seeing sex itself as another source of pressure.
Does this situation sound like poor sexual satisfaction could realistically have driven the loss of interest, or am I taking one thing I regret and turning it into the explanation for a breakup that had several other causes?
I’m completely willing to accept that I could have been a better lover and I want to improve for future relationships. I’m specifically trying to distinguish “this is something I should learn from” from “this is probably why she stopped wanting me.”
TL;DR: My ex enjoyed sex with me but never orgasmed with me. Her ex had made her orgasm a few times. I cared about her pleasure and wanted to learn, but she had low libido, gave limited sexual feedback, later developed dryness/pain and major uni stress, and our sex life largely disappeared. She eventually broke up with me for several reasons including kids/future incompatibility, stress and sexual pressure. I’m wondering whether never making her orgasm could secretly have been a major reason her attraction declined, or whether I’m over-attributing the breakup to something I regret.