Relationship lost its fizz

I've been with my girlfriend for 8 years now, we meet in the first week of uni, quickly fell in love and for the first year we had great, regular sex. As can be expected the amount of sex began to decline after the first year, but in our third year of uni with all the stress of work and exams it pretty much ground to a holt. The next two years we had a semi long distance relationship as I did my masters and started a phd, meaning we only saw each other once a month and we didn't always have sex when we did. We then moved in together and I thought our sex life would pick up but we only ever managed about once every other month. Everything I've tried to boost our sex life has failed and I'm all out of ideas. After reading this you might think that I'm shallow and only care about sex but that's not true, if I could remove sex from the equation everything would be perfect. I love my girlfriend so much but I can't spend the rest of my life with her like this. I don't know what to do, I'm scared that if we remain in this rut I'm going to end up cheating on her and breaking her heart but to break up after 8 years together would be so so hard

I'm quite perplexed. You say that you don't only care about sex and yet it seems to be a deal breaker for your relationship? Usually I come under the impression that if sex is that big of an aspect that it breaks your relationship it implies strong physical but weak emotional affection. You shouldn't be scared you're going to cheat on her, cause you don't want to make her said right? You love her? You want her to be happy? Can you not control your sexual urges? Maybe you could release them some other way if you had them like watching porn, obviously only if your gf approves and even then communicating that may cause problems. However if your urges are that dire that may need to be your last resort. I think that your sex life isn't always going to high sparking in activity. Since people can change in terms of wanting it and getting aroused by it. So it kinda makes sense their is a decline, some people even get just plain bored of it, if you do it too much. I assume you've communicated this to your girlfriend? That you want to increase both of your sex lives, that'd be a good thing to do if you haven't already. Also you never mentioned why your sex life has slowed down? You just said that it has? You've moved in together right? So don't you two have enough time to get it on when you want? Or do you not have enough time? Or does she not want to? You say if you can remove sex from the equation everything will be perfect. So why can't you? People survive without sex on a regular basis, I don't see the difficulty in just being satisfied when you do have sex and the emotional support from her. Unless you've built up an addiction to craving sex and needing it to function a relationship. The only scenario where I see this not being applicable is if your relationship is purely focused on physicality from both ends, i.e you only want each other for physical pleasure, kissing, hugging, cuddling, sex. With little emotional support, then it's a problem because the purpose is kind of lost in that regard. So it's kinda hard for me to give any real directed advice other than, tell your girlfriend if you haven't already. And if you can't find any solution and NEED some sort of sexual gratification and want this relationship to still work out try porn for the gratification? Telling your gf first for obvious reasons.

Hi Max88, Is it a possibility that both of you are just preoccupied at the minute and that this is being blown out of proportion. Keep positive and do something different and fun together it helps spice things up and keeps things interesting. Talk with her it is the simply things..... after so long together you can drift and communication can dissolve. I am sure she notices too...