My boyfriend proposed to me, but then we stopped having sex for a year

Sarah*, then 24, had no idea why as soon as her boyfriend Dan* proposed, he suddenly stopped wanting to have sex with her. A year later, she finally found out why...

We met in our final year at university and I couldn’t quite believe my luck that the tall, good-looking rugby player wanted to be with me.

After graduating, Dan* and I became a proper item and that first summer was spent in a hazy blur of boozy nights out with friends, romantic picnics by the river and sex – in copious amounts.

Even when we both started working, him in finance and me in publishing, life was fun, exciting and completely hedonistic. We talked about spending our lives together and I couldn’t wait for him to pop the question.

Then, one night when I arrived home from work he led me up to our little balcony which he had filled with candles. He got down on one knee and as he slipped his grandma’s diamond solitaire on my finger I felt so happy.

We celebrated our engagement with a bottle of bubbly and then fell asleep in each other’s arms.

Making excuses

The next morning I tried to initiate sex but Dan said he had to be in work early, so it didn't end up happening. And soon a week had passed and I realised we hadn’t consummated our engagement. Feeling keen to, I dressed up in heels and my sexiest underwear, but still he shied away, making an excuse about not feeling well.

I didn’t think much of it at first and wondered if he was stressed at work. But soon a month had passed and we hadn’t been intimate – the longest we'd gone without sex in our whole relationship.

I tried everything to get him into the mood, from watching an erotic movie to sending sexy text messages.

"Are you having an affair?" I asked him one night when yet again he insisted he was too tired.

"Don’t be ridiculous," he replied. "You know I would never do that to you."

I trusted him so then I gently made another suggestion.

"Perhaps you should see the doctor," I broached, wondering if there was a medical problem.

"I don’t need to," Dan snapped.

The truth comes out

This pattern continued as the months went by. Finally, after a year without sex, I booked a romantic weekend away, determined to bring the spark back.

After enjoying a bath together, we laid on the bed wrapped in the soft hotel bath towels and he still wasn’t up for it.

"What’s wrong?" I asked, as I lay with his arm wrapped around me.

There was silence for a moment and then his voice started speaking, shakily.

"I’m sorry," he replied. "I still love you but the attraction isn’t there anymore. I couldn’t bear to tell you it was over."

The room started to spin as Dan’s words echoed around my head.

Unable to fight back the tears I cried and cried, devastated that he didn’t feel the same – heartbroken that I wouldn’t be marrying the love of my life.

But then as the tears subsided, I felt hurt and angry too.

"Why did you put me through a year without sex before you dumped me?" I asked, furious.

"After we got engaged something changed and I started panicking about being married," he admitted. "It felt too serious and it just killed the attraction. I thought that if we weren’t intimate you would realise my feelings had changed and that the relationship would end."

World fell apart

It turns out that he thought by us not having sex, he thought it would save him the ordeal of actually dumping me. It felt like a coward’s way out.

For months afterwards, I felt like my whole world had ended. But as time passed, I realised that I hadn’t deserved to be treated like that. I was worth more.

And the following year I got together with my boss at work. Now we’ve been married for 10 years and have a very healthy sex life. In fact, it just gets better and better, and I’ve never once doubted how attractive he finds me.

*Names have been changed to protect identities.

Read more: All of Yahoo UK's How I was dumped stories.