Q&A: Matching Your Partner's Sex Drive
It's actually about asking yourself what kind of sex is worth wanting
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Here's another excellent question from a reader:
Q: I'm reading your book come as you are for a second time, it's really eye opening. I was wondering if you have any other recommendations for someone struggling with matching their partner's sex drive and response ways. Hopefully that makes sense. Thank you
A: Great question—in fact, it’s the single most common question that people have about sex in a relationship, wondering about different levels of sexual interest between partners.
Let’s begin with this: Literally every single relationship that lasts long enough will definitely experience at least phases when each partner’s interest in sex is different from the other’s. It’s entirely normal and healthy and not a problem, and the most efficient way to turn it into a problem is to start worrying about it.
But we do worry about it, don’t we? What if your partner’s reduced sexual interest could be a reflection on our own sexual desirability or their attraction to or interest in us. What if it’s not just sex they’ve lost interest in, but the whole relationship? Distress about a change in sexual interest can literally end a relationship, even a relationship of multiple decades’ duration.
But the reality is that sexual interest is influenced by many, many factors, including things that have nothing to do with our partner, our relationship, or sex itself. Stress, exhaustion, distraction, body image issues, worry about other friends and family, and much, much more. Anything that hits our sexual brakes will impact our interest in sex.
You can read my Dual Control Model piece here.
So my recommendation for someone struggling with what’s technically known as “differential desire” is first of all, of course, to read Come As You Are, paying extra attention to chapter 7, the desire chapter, and talk about it with your partner. I mean, of course that’s what I recommend.
This is the chapter that changed the most in the revised and updated version, published in 2021. (If you’re interested in what changed in the revised version, I made an audio preface for the podcast I record with my sister: Part one, part two, part three.) In the original version, I describe how there’s spontaneous desire, which feels like it just appears out of blue, and there’s responsive desire, which emerges in response to stimulation and pleasure, and both are normal. Spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure; responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure. I suggest that people normalize and work with responsive desire, if it’s something that’s happening in their relationship, plus I offer strategies for creating spontaneous desire, since people are very attached to the idea of spontaneous desire as “better” than responsive, even though it isn’t, it’s just different.
But when I revised Come As You Are, I incorporated the research of Peggy Kleinplatz and her team at the University of Ottawa, on Optimal Sexual Experiences. They interviewed dozens of people who self-identified as having extraordinary sex lives. And here’s one of the most important lessons we can learn from these extraordinary lovers: when they described their extraordinary sex, they did not talk about spontaneous desire. Only a small minority even mentioned it as a significant characteristic of their spectacular sex lives.
Peggy's book is, well, magnificent.
To me, the moral of the story was: forget about desire. Forget about spontaneous desire, forget, even, about responsive desire. Desire is not of interest.
The question that Peggy’s research suggests we ask ourselves when we’re struggling with low or no desire, low or no frequency, is not “How do I want more sex?” it’s “WHAT KIND OF SEX IS WORTH WANTING?”
What kind of sex is worth wanting?
After all, it takes time and energy not just to have sex, but to prepare for sex. When we’re dating, we’re thrilled to invest time and energy in getting ready to be with our certain special someone. Well, when we’ve been in a relationship with someone for a long time, we still need to invest time and energy in getting ready, in switching out of our mundane state of mind into the “magic circle” of eroticism. And why would we bother? We only do if the sex is worth it.
So read the chapter, talk about it with your partner, talk to each other about what kind of sex is worth wanting, and then—here is my last big piece of advice for today—think concretely about what barriers stand between each of you and sex worth wanting. You can’t find the time, you’re too distracted and stressed about other things, your partner is depressed or anxious, one of you has chronic pain, there are difficult feelings between the two of you, residual from some past conflict… whatever it might be. Some of these will be factors you have some control over, others will be things you can’t control at all.
And of course once you know what the barriers are to sex worth wanting, the next question is: What are you willing and able to do to create that sex in your life and relationship?
It’s not about matching levels of sexual desire. It’s about matching investment in creating an erotic connection that’s worth the effort it takes to create it.
Hope that helps!
Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com
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Stay safe and see you next time.