Sexual musings -or- a decision

I have been with my current sexual partner / boyfriend for just over a year and a half now. The first time we met we talked about our lives, and a significant part of that for both of us was sex. He'd had all kinds of kinky sexual experiences and relationships and I thought "finally... someone who wants what I do."

After yet another sexual conversation we had today, he made me realize that calling him my sexual partner is a misnomer. We had great sex in the beginning. It was vanilla, but it was fabulous, so I was OK with no kink. Not happy, but OK. Then he got depressed and I couldn't make him have sex with me, or really do anything but work and play video games, no matter how hard I tried. I didn't realize that depression was the problem, or that no sex is a pretty common response to it. Eventually I just turned off the part of me that wanted sex with him, that thought of him sexually at all.

When he snapped out of it, he wanted sex again. In fact, he's been manic so he wants sex all the time. But I just didn't. And frankly, for the most part, I still don't. We've been trying to fix this and talked a lot, but just this last weekend I realized the problem.

I'm fucking bored with sex his way.

We talked a lot about kink, and why he wasn't OK doing it with me. I mean, his depth and breadth of experience leaves mine in the dust. Originally he said it was because my experience was more formal, I'd had an actual Top rather than just playing fun games in bed. Then it came out that he's not really kinky at all, he just likes sex "however you want to dress it up." So if I want kinky sex, I have to ask him for it. Right then. If I don't demand it when we're already in bed on our way to sex, I don't get it. And frankly, I'm not OK with that.

I call myself a switch. I still believe that I am. But my desire to Top anymore only comes out when I've been bottoming for a while. Between that and the poor luck with my last half-dozen sexual partners and their poor reactions to my kinkiness, I'm just not comfortable asking when we're in bed. Not the first time we do it, probably not the first couple of times.

I'm still not very experienced in kink, and I must still have at least a little bit of shame tied to it, because I'm just not comfortable with asking for it from someone who doesn't actively want to do it. Not at the moment. It feels too much like force to me. I want to be on the same page as my partner. Hell, even the same book would work. But we're just not.

After our conversation today, which went about as well as any of them ever do, I went outside for a smoke. And I realized that all the sex we'd had had been on his terms. The way he wanted to do it. Because what I want is to bottom, and I'm too subby to stick my ass in the air and tell him to spank me. And I'm done with sex on anyone's terms but mine.

I told him today that I was bored with the sex we'd been having, and he told me that if I wanted kinky sex he was going to have to get sex at all. We're saying the same thing, in order to get sex we have to do it my way. It's just from opposite sides of a wall that neither of us is willing or able to climb over.

He also said that if what I needed was "to have sex with a bunch of guys" in order to fuck him that was fine. But if what I need to do in order to be comfortable having sex with him is to have sex with other people, I honestly wonder if I should bother even trying to rebuild our sexual relationship. I love him, but this is too much work. If we're this different sexually, will it ever work out? Or will it always be one or the other of us being uncomfortable or unhappy?

I don't know.