Almost one year ago in our two year relationship, I (30F) caught my boyfriend (33M) saving raunchy and very hot photos of his ex-coworkers, I'll add that these photos were posted in a way that made them accessible to anyone on the site they were posted on and not directly sent to him from them.
At first I thought nothing of it, but I began to feel as though I may be lacking compared to one of them in particular when I learned that he was also following her regular socials, giving her cash birthday gifts, and commenting on her SFW photos as well.
I asked him straight out if he had feelings for her, his answer was no. I asked if he would feel wronged if he were in my shoes, he said yes and that he vowed to stop.
We didn't argue, we were just talking, but in a moment of weakness and poor impulse control I couldn't stop myself from asking what she had that made him want her. I'm sure he felt pressured to answer me and he did by telling me the he was 'shallow' with no further elaboration.
I should have kept my thoughts to myself but I foolishly pursued and asked what he meant by that.
His response was that he found me only 'moderately' attractive compared to her, but that he valued our relationship more because he knew I was a better match for him.
I understand this may be common, possibly even normal, and since then he has made what I feel is every effort to make it right such as spending more time with me or elsewhere than on social media, telling me that I'm beautiful, and skipping the birthday gift as far as I know. I feel that he does value me and our relationship, he shows it as much as he says it, and I also feel that I have forgiven him for it, but what he said shattered my confidence and I can't bring myself to make love to him anymore.
This ridiculous feeling of being unwanted haunts me whenever we start getting intimate, even if I felt aroused beforehand, it all drains away from me when it starts to be more than kissing and touching. The worst part is that I haven't told him why I have developed this aversion to sex as I don't want him to feel responsible for it, instead I tend to make excuses to get up and put physical distance between us for a period of time which I know can't be very much better than dumping the truth on him. I have been trying to reassure myself, meditate, focus on building my self esteem back up, but it's been several months and none of the ways I'm using seem to be working.
TLDR; 33M dedicated boyfriend told me 30F I was just 'so-so' looking several months ago and I have been unable to fix the damage it did to my confidence since then, leading to trouble in our intimate lives.
How can I break my fixation on his past comments and resume our normal intimate life?
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