Mismatched libido is one of the most common reasons couples come to sex therapy. It is also one of the least discussed, because both partners usually assume the difference means something bad about one of them.
Difference Is the Norm, Not the Exception
Two people almost never want sex with identical frequency, at identical times, in identical ways. Therefore some degree of desire discrepancy exists in most long-term relationships.
The problem is rarely the gap itself. Instead, it is what each partner has decided the gap means.
The Story Each Partner Tells
The higher-desire partner often concludes they are unwanted. As a result, every approach carries more weight than intended, and rejection lands harder each time.
The lower-desire partner often concludes they are broken or under inspection. Consequently, sex begins to feel like a test with a pass mark, which reliably lowers desire further.
Both readings are understandable. Both are usually wrong. Meanwhile the pattern hardens into a scoreboard nobody wanted.
Spontaneous and Responsive Desire
Some people experience desire before arousal. Others experience it afterwards, once something has already begun. Neither pattern is a malfunction.
Couples who understand this distinction often stop trying to manufacture spontaneous desire in a partner who has never had it. In addition, they stop treating willingness as a lesser form of interest.
What Else Changes Desire
Sleep, stress and workload. New parenthood. Medication, including antidepressants and hormonal contraception. Chronic illness and pain. Menopause and andropause. Unresolved resentment, which is probably the most common cause of all.
Because so many of these are physical, a medical review is worth doing alongside therapy rather than instead of it. See therapy for chronic illness.
What Helps
Take frequency off the table first. Negotiating a number rarely works while both people feel judged.
Separate affection from initiation. In many couples, all touch has come to signal a proposition. Therefore the lower-desire partner withdraws from touch entirely.
Talk about what each of you actually wants. Not more, or less, but what specifically. This conversation is difficult and it is usually the one that moves things.
Deal with the resentment. Desire rarely returns to a relationship in which one person feels unseen outside the bedroom.
Why a Certified Sex Therapist Helps
General couples work often treats sex as a symptom of communication. Sometimes it is. However, it is also its own subject, with its own physiology, history and vocabulary.
Michael Nee, M.A., LMFT (#89379) is a certified sex therapist, an AASECT member and a member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. As a result, desire, frequency, function and intimacy can be discussed directly rather than translated into something more comfortable.
Read more about sex therapy for couples and couples therapy in Los Angeles. To arrange a free consultation, call (310) 927-1755.