A very dear friend (lets call this one Princess) finds herself in quite a dire predicament. She’s 7 or so months into the longest relationship she’s ever had (she’s mid-20s), things have quietened in the bedroom and the gut-butterflies department and she’s finding it hard to know if it’s all ‘normal’. A fair point I think. You’re brought up and socially conditioned into believing that the spark of a relationship will dull with time, but you’re never told to what extent.

The bigger picture is important here. Princess is a depressive. Not to a debilitating degree most of the time, and certainly it ebbs and flows. Work has been a bit of a disappointment recently so she’s currently on the downward part of the curve. Cue: death of a libido. This comes as quite a blow to her randy boyfriend who practically wags his tail in her presence. He’s a good guy though, and understanding about it which I know from personal experience is a rarity. He doesn’t have the most self-esteem in the world though, so she treads carefully.

Her problem is this: she’s unsure if the general decline of her sex-drive and stomach fluttering is a natural development of their relationship+time=depressive dip, or whether her feelings for him are dwindling. She loves him, but is she ‘in love’ with him?

Now, I’ve ended relationships in exactly the same situation twice in my life. On one occasion I was right, and it was the best thing I could have done, however, the other break up will always be a regret. I was young, and didn’t fully understand or accept the depression I was going through. By the time I’d come through the other side and realised how much I still wanted him, he was with someone else. Trying to talk Princess through this is proving tricky; how do we establish what is the right course of action for her while protecting him. “It’s not you, it’s me” smacks of libel and any sort of ‘trial separation’ is likely to leave him crushed.

In many ways the best course of action could be ‘wait and see’ but it doesn’t seem like the most well-constructed plan either of us have ever made. They’re poly, and she Tops him but she’s considering bottoming to someone as a one-off, non-sexual thing. A good spanking as catharsis as it were. I hope that fixes it, they’re a lovely couple.