One of You Wants Sex. One of You Doesn’t. Here’s How to Fix It.

By Annette Benedetti, sex educator, intimacy coach, and host of the Talk Sex with Annette podcast

A mismatched sex drive is the fight almost every long-term couple ends up having with their clothes on. One of you wants more sex. The other wants less. And at some point that difference stopped being a difference and became a fight you keep having on repeat.

Here’s the part nobody tells you. The gap itself was never the problem. The problem is the two stories you each start telling yourselves about it.

To break those stories down, I sat down with Tara and EJ Kerwin, a married couple and two licensed therapists who built their whole practice, Relationship Renovation, around his-and-hers perspectives on the same relationship. Tara’s a licensed marriage and family therapist. EJ’s a licensed professional counselor. They’re not here to negotiate how many times a week you should be having sex. They’ve lived on opposite sides of this exact gap: the rejection, the grief, the pressure, the resentment, the loneliness. And they found their way back to each other.

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A Mismatched Sex Drive Is Not About How Often You Have Sex

Almost every couple with a mismatched sex drive thinks the fight is about frequency. It isn’t.

The minute you do hook up, both people start feeling pressure, but for opposite reasons. The lower-desire partner is already bracing: how long until I feel that pressure again? The higher-desire partner is counting the other direction: is it going to be three weeks? A month and a half?

So couples go hunting for the magic number. If we just figure out the right frequency, make an agreement, schedule it, then we’ll know what to expect and the anxiety will stop. As Tara puts it, chasing quantity kills quality, and it’s quality that actually grows desire back. When sex feels good and connecting instead of pressured, the frequency rises on its own.

The Two Stories: What the High Desire and Low Desire Partner Each Believe

Underneath a mismatched sex drive are two stories, and they usually break down along gendered lines even though they show up in queer relationships too.

The higher-desire partner, often the man, jumps straight to love. Not desire, not attraction. Love. EJ said it plainly: it goes right to “you don’t love me anymore, you don’t want to be with me.” One of the most unique parts of a monogamous relationship is the thing your partner now doesn’t want to do, so the brain leaps to rejection.

The lower-desire partner, often the woman, is telling a different story: you don’t see everything I’m already carrying, and this is one more task on the pile. When sex comes loaded with the pressure to orgasm, or to make sure your partner orgasms, it stops reading as pleasure and starts reading as another job. Tara was blunt about it: once it becomes a performance, you’d rather just not.

And there’s a second layer for the lower-desire partner: the emotional labor. If you don’t orgasm and you’re honest about it, you can end up spending the next hour reassuring your partner they’re great in bed. The caretaking never switches off.

When Low Desire Is Grief, Not Rejection

Here’s the moment in the conversation that stopped me. When Tara lost her desire, she wasn’t feeling nothing. She was feeling grief.

She’d been the high-desire partner early on. Then she went from zero kids to four in eighteen months, twins with months of colic, and her connection to her own sexuality went, in her words, from 360 to zero and stayed there for years. Underneath the numbness was profound grief and a pile of guilt she couldn’t name.

Her body had gone numb to protect her. And as she and EJ got better at talking about that grief instead of fighting about frequency, something surfaced that neither of them expected: sexual trauma from early childhood that her body had buried. That discovery changed everything about how they understood her desire.

I want to be careful here, and Tara was too. Not every low libido comes from trauma. But trauma of many kinds, including years of gritting your teeth through sex you didn’t want, can register in the body and produce exactly this numbing. Your body keeps the score whether you remember the event or not.

How Motherhood Severs the Connection to Desire

The other truth in this episode is one I lived myself. Motherhood can strip your sexuality right out of you.

Tara built a whole life around a simple, frisky, self-directed version of herself, then at 37 and 38 everything flipped. A decade later she’s still asking, “Who am I now?” Sexuality was one place it played out, but the loss was global: identity, body, role, all of it. And it’s genuinely hard for a partner to understand a loss they can’t see. That gap in understanding is where couples get stuck.

How to Fix a Mismatched Sex Drive: The Conversation That Starts It

So how do you actually get back? Not with a switch you flip. With reps. The Kerwins had to say what each of them was experiencing, out loud, without blaming the other, over and over.

A few things that make that conversation work:

Get the time and place right. You cannot have this talk at 11pm on a Friday in the bedroom, because getting into bed already signals the will-we-won’t-we anxiety. Pick a neutral time when neither of you is activated.

Use “we” language, and ask permission. Not “you never want me.” Try “I’d love for us to learn how to feel more connected in this together, and it doesn’t have to be right now.” Gaining permission lowers the defenses before the conversation even starts.

Build in a structure and an exit. Agree on a code word. Agree that if either of you gets flooded or feels blamed, you can pause and pick it up tomorrow. Structure is safe. Structure is what lets you tolerate a hard conversation without it becoming another fight.

Check in at weird times. The Kerwins built a “frisky scale” they could reference anywhere, even walking through Home Goods. Normalizing the check-in takes the charge out of it.

The Gatekeeping Myth

A lot of higher-desire partners get angry and decide their partner is gatekeeping sex, controlling them, doling it out as a reward for good behavior. EJ’s answer is worth sitting with: in the overwhelming majority of cases, it isn’t gatekeeping. There’s just no system yet for freely exchanging intimacy and support.

And Tara flipped it in a way most people never hear: holding all the “control” as the low-desire partner feels terrible. It’s not a power anyone wants. When sex only happens if you say go, that isn’t a throne. It’s a weight.

The reframe that fixed it for them was treating intimacy as an ecosystem, not a transaction. No balance sheet, no tokens cashed in for sex. Just a free exchange of love and connection across the whole spectrum. When that system is healthy, sex starts happening on its own.

Start Here Tonight: Safety Containers and Small Steps

You do not have to be aiming at intercourse to start rebuilding a sex life. In fact you shouldn’t be.

The Kerwins use what they call safety containers: agreed-on physical closeness with zero expectation of anything more. Maybe that’s French kissing and nothing else. Maybe it’s lying naked together with penetration explicitly off the table. For one couple recovering from infidelity, the first step was simply removing the pillow they’d kept between them for years, with no snuggling required yet.

The point is regulating your nervous system so closeness stops triggering panic. When Tara’s buried trauma surfaced and she got anxious around sex for the first time in her life, EJ would just rub her neck and shoulders. Sometimes that led nowhere else, and that was the win. A regulated body is the foundation everything else gets built on.

From there, put sexuality back into your life together even when it isn’t intercourse. Wander a sex toy shop on a date night. Watch a sexy film. Talk about sex, because your brain doesn’t fully distinguish vividly talking about it from doing it, and the conversation itself rebuilds the erotic connection. New experiences spike dopamine, which is exactly why so many couples have great sex on vacation. You’re building a new intimacy story, not resurrecting the old one. That old version is gone, and chasing it is what keeps couples stuck.

Don’t Wait for a Crisis to Fix Your Sexless Marriage

One number from the Kerwins is worth burning into memory: they say couples stay in sexless or low-intimacy relationships for around nine years before getting any support. Picture how much resentment compounds in nine years. You do not have to wait for the breaking point. The skills that build emotional and physical safety are learnable, starting now.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a mismatched sex drive mean?
A mismatched sex drive is when one partner wants sex more often than the other. It’s extremely common. The conflict usually isn’t really about frequency, it’s about the different stories each partner tells themselves about what the gap means.

Is it normal for one partner to have a lower sex drive?
Yes. Desire naturally differs between partners and shifts over time with stress, parenthood, hormones, trauma, and life changes. A lower drive is not a sign the relationship is broken or that either person is doing something wrong.

Can you fix a sexless marriage?
Often, yes, if both partners genuinely want to rebuild it. The first and most important step is an honest conversation confirming you both actually want a sexual connection back. From there, small steps and consistent, blame-free communication do the work.

How do you talk to your partner about a mismatched sex drive?
Pick a neutral time and place, not the bedroom at bedtime. Use “we” language, ask permission to have the conversation, and agree on a way to pause if it gets overwhelming. The goal of the first talk is safety, not solutions.

Does low libido mean I have trauma?
Not necessarily. Many things lower desire, including stress, exhaustion, and parenthood. But because the body can store trauma as numbness, unresolved trauma is one possible factor worth exploring, ideally with a professional.

Explore the healing work → 365 Days of Orgasms

Full Transcript: One of You Wants Sex, One of You Doesn’t

Why Desire Gaps Become Battles
Annette: Today’s Talk Sex with Annette topic is why the bedroom became a battleground and how to get your sex life back. One of you wants more sex, the other wants less, and at some point that difference stopped being a difference and turned into a fight you keep having with your clothes on. Here’s the part nobody tells you. The gap itself was never the problem. The problem is the two stories each of you start telling. The one who wants more is lying there thinking, you control this and you don’t want me anymore. The one who wants less is thinking, you only want me for sex and you don’t see everything I’m already carrying. Two people, same bed, both feeling powerless, both quietly deciding the other one is what’s broken. And that’s how the bedroom becomes a battleground.
Today we’re calling a ceasefire. My guests are Tara and EJ Kerwin, a married couple and two licensed therapists who built their whole practice, Relationship Renovation, around his and hers perspectives on the same relationship. Tara’s a licensed marriage and family therapist. EJ’s a licensed professional counselor, and they’re not here to negotiate how many times a week you should be having sex. They’re here because they’ve lived on opposite sides of this exact gap. The rejection, the grief, the pressure, the resentment, the loneliness, and they found their way back to each other. And they’re going to walk us through how you can as well. Tara and EJ, welcome to Talk Sex with Annette.
Meet Tara and EJ Kerwin
Annette: I’m going to hand the mic over to you in just a minute, but before we dive in, I’ve got to remind y’all that you can find all of my new video releases on my website, talksexwithannette.com. If you sign up for my e-newsletter, you can have them all delivered right to your inbox, so scroll down for a link to that. You can also find a whole lot more over on my Substack, also at Talk Sex with Annette. And you can find both myself and my guests anywhere you want by scrolling down to the notes section below. All the links are there. But for now, take it away, EJ and Tara. Tell my guests a little bit more about you.
Tara: First I want to say thank you for that introduction, and thank you for all of the work you do, because this is a topic of such confusion for so many people. I love meeting other experts in the field who are trying to normalize it and give some solutions to something that feels so powerless at times. So thank you. EJ, would you like to do the introduction?
EJ: Yeah, like you said, we’re a married couple. We got together, we were already therapists, and we just thought, hey, we’re therapists, we’re a little bit older, we’ve had a great dating period, life is just going to be awesome from here on. And the wheels came off our bus after Tara went from zero kids to four kids in 18 months. We got pregnant with twins on our honeymoon. The biggest story is that we just decided, if we are struggling with this and we have the skills we have, couples must really need help. So let’s figure out how to do it. Over the last 10-plus years, we’ve had a counseling center in Tucson, Arizona. We have a coaching practice now where we work with couples worldwide. We have a training program for therapists. I have a men’s group. So we’re doing our best to help couples navigate all of this, but definitely the intimacy is a repetitive issue.
Tara: Going into the blended family and going from zero to four kids was very stressful, and the first thing that was impacted was our intimacy, because we’d always had a really great sex life. That was also the hardest thing to navigate. It took us years, almost a decade, but we shared our story throughout. It’s not like we were ever sitting here saying, here’s how you do it, we figured it all out. It’s a process. Helping people understand it’s not about flipping a switch. If there’s a sense of urgency, we have to help you slow that down, because we know what we had to go through in our own experience. I’m grateful that we can share our knowledge, our expertise, and our own shit show to help others make some changes to support each other through it instead of feeling alone in it.
Annette: And that’s why everyone’s going to want to stay to the end, because this isn’t going to be a talking-head podcast where experts speak down to you and say, here’s what’s wrong and here’s how you fix it. You have an actual couple who have gone through this, found some solutions, and can help guide you and get you started on your own journey back to each other. By the end, I’m going to have them give you your takeaways, things you can start implementing in your bedroom and home life, starting tonight. So let’s dive in. Let’s talk about how to get couples back in bed and doing the fun stuff. Cheers.
Quality Over Quantity for Sex
Annette: Almost every couple with a desire gap thinks the fight is about how often they have sex. I would love to have you speak to that.
Tara: For me, when it got down to quantity, I would get so anxious, because for me it’s all about quality. We have so many couples come into our practice asking, how many times a week should we be having sex? And maybe one partner, normally the male, but I don’t want to generalize too much, feels like that’s the indicator of how well their relationship is going. The more frequency the better, but that’s because you feel emotionally and physically connected and the quality feels really good. Versus, if we try to get to three times a week, one of them is basically just feeling pressured to do it, and now it becomes more of a task. Because if it’s not happening two to three times a week, that means our relationship is bad, and now there’s stress in it. So we always focus on quality, not quantity. I know that’s hard to hear, but the more quality experience you have, that organically increases quantity, because it feels good and connecting instead of pressured.
EJ: It becomes about how often, but really what it’s about is the pressure. The minute you do hook up, both people start to feel this instant pressure of when’s the next time, but for very different reasons. Like most things in this dynamic, there are two totally different perspectives. Tara’s was, okay, we just did it, how long do I have until I’m going to feel this pressure again, which is basically instantaneous. And mine was, okay, is it going to be three weeks? Is it going to be a month and a half? It would launch immediately. That’s what couples struggle with, because they figure, if we figure out the perfect number, make an agreement, schedule it, then we’ll know what to expect and we won’t have to deal with this low-level anxiety.
Annette: Or high level of anxiety.
EJ: Oh yeah, exactly.
Annette: There are two very different stories going on here. And for my listeners, you know I’m a queer woman, I’m pansexual, I’m in both heterosexual-facing and queer relationships. While in this conversation we’re really speaking from a heterosexual perspective, this has shown up in my queer relationships too.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
Annette: In this situation, with men and women, there are two very different stories that typically arise that get assigned to the genders. I’d like to focus on what those two stories are about what’s actually happening in the relationship because of the lack of sex.
EJ: It’s quick for me. It’s, you don’t love me, you’re not attracted to me.
Annette: So it goes straight to love. It’s not about desire, it’s not about wanting, it’s about you don’t love me anymore. Because those can be very different things.
EJ: I really think men jump right to love, at least that’s what they’re reporting. And I felt that too. If this is one of the most unique parts of our committed, monogamous relationship, and this is the thing you now do not want to do, then you clearly aren’t into me anymore. I rarely have a guy come in and the first thing he says is, she’s not attracted to me anymore. It’s, she doesn’t want to be with me.
Tara: She doesn’t like me anymore.
EJ: Yeah, she doesn’t like me. That’s a very quick leap that men make, for sure.
Annette: And when it comes to women, what do you feel the story is?
Tara: The story is, you don’t see how much I have going on and how overwhelmed I feel, and that’s the one thing you’re focusing on. You’re so selfish, you can’t be there for me emotionally, but you want me physically. Go F off, man. That was my story. And unfortunately for you, I’m a woman, so you get two perspectives that feed into it. For me, it feels like an add to my workload. Especially if sex carries any stress with it, meaning either I’m not getting off, or I have to orgasm during sex or my partner’s going to be upset, or if they’re hard to get off. When we’re focused on orgasm, especially in the actual bedroom, it’s, okay, now this is another thing I have to do. I know it’s supposed to be pleasurable, but once I’m in there, I’ve got to make sure they orgasm, I’ve got to orgasm, or they feel bad about themselves. It’s all that. And I’m like, I’d rather just not.
EJ: That’s where it starts to metastasize into this really yucky dynamic, because men don’t relate to that. That complexity of thought around sex, unless they’re dealing with erectile dysfunction, for the most part doesn’t exist for a guy. They’re like, what are you talking about, it’s another workload? This should relax you and chill you out. That’s what it does for me. This should be an amazing thing. So when we hear our partner say, you’re just adding one more task I have to do, it crushes us again. Makes us feel like, really, hooking up with me is a task? It’s a burden? Oh, well, that sucks.
Annette: Even in the situation where, for me, one of the biggest things, it’s taken me a long time to orgasm. One of the things I dread most about sex with partners is the pressure for me to have an orgasm, even more than their orgasm. If you don’t orgasm, I’m good, I know I did my job. But it’s the pressure I feel from a partner to come for them, and then I don’t even get to enjoy my own orgasm. And if I’m honest and I don’t, then it’s the hours of emotional labor of reassuring them they’re great in bed. Men don’t think about that either, when we don’t come, and obviously they’re concerned about it, that also turns into a form of emotional labor for us.
Tara: It’s that caretaking, overfunctioning piece. Got to take care of everybody involved and make sure you’re okay too.
EJ: And the flip side is not even getting to orgasm, but when Tara would just say, I don’t really enjoy this right now, this is just not something I want to do. That was so hard to hear. How could, what happened? You’re just confused. I get that we have a crazy life, but suddenly it’s something that just doesn’t matter. She would say things like, pretend my vagina’s broken. Pretend it doesn’t work anymore. Or, I wish, but it’s not even something that’s in my mind. That was so hard to hear, because it was, well, where did it go? Where is it? Did we leave it at the hospital?
Annette: So when she was saying that, did it feel like it was about you? Her saying it was gone, did that feel like it was about you?
EJ: It was a mental battle I would have. Obviously I’m a therapist. I’d worked with other couples who had this issue. So I intellectually understood that this happens, and pretty frequently for women at some point in their relationship. I intellectually got it, but my heart didn’t get it. And here’s the other part that’s really hard. I feel like sex drive is similar to hunger. I can’t turn off my hunger. If I haven’t eaten in six hours or a day and a half and I’m hungry, I can’t just decide to not have that anymore. So even though Tara could talk to me about it and I’d get it intellectually, and maybe even get it into my heart, that drive, what do I do with it? And masturbation, if you care about connection with your partner, is only a partial solution.
Grief, Trauma, and Desire Numbness
Annette: It’s so insightful hearing both perspectives, so honestly. Having you both sit in the same room, I get a little nervous. I’m like, no one’s feelings are getting hurt, right? When you’re having the story of, I just don’t feel it anymore, it’s broken, it’s gone, girl, I’ve been there. I totally know that moment. What did that make you feel about not only your partner, but yourself? What was going on inside of you?
Tara: Thank you for asking that, because it’s so important, because people don’t ask each other that, and that’s why you’re alone in it. When EJ and I got better at asking each other that, I realized, it’s massive grief. Just so much profound grief. Because I was high frisky. I could have eight orgasms in 20 minutes. I am that kind of woman. Even in the beginning of our relationship, I was the one saying, let’s go babe, buying little negligees. I loved orgasming, loved sex. Ask EJ, he was the low desire partner in the beginning. So to not feel anything, and to also feel overwhelmed in my nervous system, I had so much grief. But because I’m a caretaker and nurturer, I also felt all this guilt. I didn’t know it was grief. I just thought, oh my God, it’s never going to come back, I’m so anxious, I don’t know what’s going on with my body. I could tell EJ thought I couldn’t stand him. Date night would come and I’d get so anxious. All these complex emotions, but underneath all of it was total grief that something happened to my body and my sexual desire that literally went numb, from 360 to zero. It happened that quickly, and it stayed like that for years.
We just had to get better at talking about it. And the more we could talk about it and be in each other’s grief, I started to feel much safer with EJ. And guess what that uncovered? Massive sexual trauma that I didn’t remember in my body, starting at four years old. Being able to be with each other in that way uncovered more layers of my own sexual abuse. I’d always known I had sexual abuse. I didn’t know the extent of it. And that was what shifted everything. Part of the numbness was trauma stuck. My environment got overwhelming with all these kids. I’d always been able to navigate the trauma I knew when I could just be in my three-bedroom condo with one laundry load a week. And then this environment happens, and all this trauma stored from a young age was what made it numb. So we started doing much deeper work together because of it. It uncovered a lot. I’m not saying everyone who has a low sex drive or is numb has that trauma. But for me it was huge. It’s life-changing now because of it, because I would never have even known.
Annette: Thank you so much for sharing that. That’s very vulnerable. I actually am doing a lot of speaking on sex after sexual assault. I’m a childhood rape and sexual assault survivor. One of the things I teach is how women who have been sexually assaulted often look and have sex after. People have this media-pushed version, which is we don’t want to be touched, we don’t want sex, we don’t have orgasms. There are some people like that, but that is not how the vast majority of us are. Some of us are very sexual. There’s this recapturing of our own sexuality that may happen consciously or not, until something triggers our trauma, which for you could have been a number of things. I tell people, giving birth is traumatic for a lot of women. We’re taught it’s beautiful, but the act itself, and what does your body do to protect you? It numbs out, because it wants to protect you. So it’s really beautiful that you had a partner you could talk to enough to get to that core.
Tara: I know. Because we were therapists, we were compelled to do it. A lot of couples aren’t therapists, they don’t have that. That’s why I feel like sharing our story matters, because so many people just want to give up. Yes, there are people who should not be in certain relationships, I get all that, but we were in it for the long haul, because I knew I loved him. We knew we had blocks. Creating that emotional safety for each other did everything. I can now uncover my best self truly because of this relationship, because he triggers so much stuff. I love sharing our story because it’s so beautiful when you can get through it, and we still get through it every day. But to be able to feel free in a relationship, and now sexually free. Those seven orgasms, that high sex drive, that was all trauma. That was all, this is how men love me, this is how I get my love, and if he doesn’t want sex, something’s bad. And whether it was the birth of the twins or everything after, because the twins both had colic for nine months, that was more traumatic than anything. I would go five days without sleeping. It was awful, nursing every hour, so overwhelming. I’m thankful I didn’t get in the minivan we had to buy and drive to Kentucky to see my twin sister, because I was ready to move out. But we stayed, and here we are. The twins are 12, 10 years later, with our business. I feel grateful for it. But I’m not going to lie, it’s hard to navigate high desire, low desire in a simple way. It’s more complex than that to me.
Annette: Two powerful truths. One about trauma, how it shows up for many women. I have to make sure listeners heard that oftentimes the sex happening post-trauma is, this is how we correct it, here’s how we make it better. Those orgasms mean I’m okay, I’m loved, I’m attractive, I’m not broken, I’m whole, I’m wantable, I’m lovable. And there’s not a lot of information out there for people to know what to look for and how to heal it. So it’s wonderful that you were able to do that in the relationship. And on top of it, the truth about motherhood. Motherhood can really strip us of our sensuality and our sexuality. I was much like you, a very sexual, sensual person, and then I had kids, and suddenly my whole connection with my sexual energy was severed, and all there was was grief and not knowing who I was anymore. And it’s hard for a male partner, or any partner, to understand that piece. How do you explain it, and then how do you fix it?
EJ: That’s been a huge part of it. One of the ideas we work with couples on is that we are there to support our partner in their growth, that we can become our best selves together. Witnessing Tara’s growth, one of the huge things is that she had created this infrastructure all the way to being a 38-year-old woman where she kept life pretty simple, was having a great time, doing her own thing. And then at 37, 38, everything got flipped on its ear. It’s been this 10, 12 years of figuring out who is the new me, from motherhood to relationship to professional. That’s still one of our biggest struggles sometimes, you’re just like, what happened to me, who am I? Sexuality was a place where it played out, but it was global, and it still is in a lot of ways. Even yesterday, with everything you were going through, it’s, who am I and what is this life I’m in now? Because it feels like a mess. And then I feel bad, because I’m like, thank you, I fucked your life, congratulations.
Tara: Thank you for saying that.
Annette: I feel like you and I are sisters. My yesterday was exactly like that. I cried half the day. So how did you get to the place where you’re having the right conversation? My listeners are hearing something that really resonates. I want to point out, not every woman necessarily has rape or sexual assault trauma that might be causing this, but there may be other trauma, such as gritting their teeth for years through sex they didn’t want to have. That is a trauma that can lead to this separation. So many of us have done that, and it causes a trauma. Your body registers it as trauma, and it can do that numbing out. So somehow, magically, yes, you’re both therapists, so my listeners are thinking, well, I’m not a therapist, so I don’t have the tools to get into the conversations they did, which I’m assuming isn’t true. How did you get to those conversations? What are conversation starters that helped get you there so you could figure out how to come together?
Talking Without Blame or Pressure
EJ: At its baseline, we had to talk over and over about what each of us was experiencing without blaming the other person. We just had to do that over and over. It was like reps. And there were certain constructs, like we created the frisky scale. It has to be okay for you to tell me where your level of desire is, and I can tell you where mine is. We do that frequently and become almost desensitized to it. We had a rule that we can check in about our frisky level at any point, and it’s good if you do it at weird times. So we’re walking through Home Goods doing Christmas shopping, and I’m like, where’s your frisky level, Tara? And she’s like, a negative 10. And I was like, okay, I can take a zero, but I can’t take a negative 10, that’s too much. And then Tara would say, you haven’t told me how you’re feeling about the fact that we haven’t had sex in three weeks, you have to tell me. We just had to talk about this over and over.
Tara: The biggest mistake, we would always get into our arguments or that friction right before bed. So we help couples recognize you have to talk about it throughout the day and not right before bed, because getting into bed signifies, is it going to happen, is it not going to happen? That’s where all the anxiety comes in, and then the defensiveness and the avoidance, people going to change in the bathroom because they don’t want their underwear to be seen. We’ve heard crazy stories. For me, I could feel EJ’s avoidance and defensiveness around sex, and I perceived it as selfish ego. I’m like, get over your ego, dude. And when he started opening up that he just feels like I don’t like him and he feels rejected, his was grief and mine was grief, but it wasn’t a shared experience of it. When we could get into that shared experience, that’s when the walls came down. Even when sex still wasn’t happening, at least we were talking about it and creating systems for it. Because 80% of our couples have intimacy issues. And how often do you talk about it? Well, we don’t, we just know it’s not happening, or we fight about it.
EJ: Or if they talk about it, they talk about it in incredibly repetitive ways.
Tara: Reactive.
EJ: If you’re trying to solve the problem with a solution that hasn’t worked 150 times, then stop doing it that way. Stop telling her why it doesn’t make sense to you, and that if she really cared she’d be able to. If that hasn’t worked, stop doing it. Try something else, try empathy. Even though it might be hard, try to really listen to what she’s saying and make sure you’re hearing it correctly, instead of inserting your editorialization of what you’d like her to think instead. That doesn’t work, and men try it over and over. We have a number of couples who struggle with that. It’s not making her feel connected, it’s not making her feel safe. Even if our sex thing isn’t working right now, at least Tara feels safe talking to me about it. That’s some connection. Would she be doing that if she didn’t love me? If she didn’t love me, wouldn’t she just say screw it and not want to talk about it? So if I can create a safe environment for her to talk about it, maybe I’m building toward something.
Tara: In our Relationship Renovation model, we have a six-part intimacy series to help couples ask all of the questions. It starts with, how good are we at even talking about it? How good are we at knowing our own sexual needs? How much are we caretaking the other person? Because another theme is, I already see my partner stressed out, so I don’t want to stress them more by letting them know I’m frisky. That’s compromised intimacy. It should be okay that EJ has a higher desire and I have a lower desire, and I want him to tell me when he’s feeling it, even if I’m not, because otherwise that’s where resentment comes in. People start to caretake each other, and then intimacy becomes a source of, I just didn’t want to stress you out. But now you’re trying to numb your own frisky scale to not stress the other. What do you think that’s going to do for you? Now you feel like you’re losing your own identity and your own sexual desire, and that your desire is not okay. We really support couples in seeing that both can be okay and you never want them to be compromised. EJ can come home and say, girl, I’m a nine, and I can say, and I’m a zero. Cool. Still uncomfortable, sucks, but at least he’s still being himself and I can still be myself.
And I’ll say this, because we talk about it a lot. Most couples wait for a crisis to get any support. It’s either this or we’re done. Couples will be in sexless or very low-intimacy relationships for nine years, that’s what the research shows, before even getting any support. Guess how much resentment and anxiety and tension can build up in nine years. Do not wait for that. You can learn the skills to build safety around physical and emotional intimacy. And for us, yes, did it take me reliving an early sexual trauma experience for EJ to really get it? Yes. But we would have kept working at it had he not seen that. That crisis happened, I was shaking and vomiting and screaming, and he finally was like, oh my God. We don’t want other couples to wait for that moment. That moment happened for us, and thank goodness, because it shifted something for EJ. What would you say it shifted for you?
EJ: That was definitely a watershed moment. I think we were working toward it, because I don’t think somebody has to see anything that cathartic and huge in order to do that. But it certainly changed my perspective, because it was a big piece that made a lot of things make sense. One of the struggles for me was that you had been almost hypersexual early in our relationship, and you’ve always been very open about exes and stuff. So I had all this data of you being this very hypersexual person, and then it disappeared. So it made sense then for the first time. It depersonalized it. It couldn’t just be about, she doesn’t care, she doesn’t want to be with me in that way. There’s something bigger here, which made it easier to be empathetic and understanding.
Tara: But without having to have those moments.
Annette: The words empathy and compassion keep coming up, which is what the person who’s lost their connection to desire wants from the other person, because it’s a loss. Especially if you had it, then you get into the relationship and you lose it. Nobody goes into a relationship wanting that. So when it starts happening, there’s grief, and then fear of, where does this lead? One thing I hear from a lot of men, EJ, that I’d love for you to speak to. A lot of men in relationships with women who no longer really want to have sex become angry. Their take is, now she gatekeeps sex and is controlling me with it. I only get it every once in a while, and it’s a moving target, I’m not sure what earns it. I’m trying to make her happy in all these ways, and when I behave this way she gives me sex, and the next time I behave that way I don’t get the sex. She’s controlling me, she’s gatekeeping sex, and I’m giving her all of these things I’m supposed to give her, whether that’s going to work or taking the garbage out, or whatever they see as the work that should earn sex from their partner. That’s a very common thing I hear from men. Can you speak to that and give them some answers?
Escaping Transactional Sex Thinking
EJ: The real danger there is that sex becomes completely transactional. This story is probably a few thousand years old. We carry our balance sheets, well, if I do this, then you should do this. But it’s particularly poisonous in a sexual relationship. It’s almost natural, because when you come into therapy, often in a heterosexual relationship the man says, I want more physical connection, and the woman says, I can’t do that unless there’s more emotional connection. So you spend a great amount of time in therapy with men learning to speak their emotions and show up in more vulnerable ways. But the man is thinking, okay, eventually I’ll get enough tokens in the bank where I get to cash those in for sex. So what’s the equation? Because that’s how men’s brains work around problem-solving. Okay, you taught me this, I need to be more emotionally present, so what’s the equivalent? Can I get an Excel spreadsheet so I know exactly how much I have to do to get this kind of sex? It’s horrible, because that’s not a healthy sexual relationship, that’s not a healthy relationship in general. The reframe we try to get our couples to do is, this is a system. We want to cultivate the free exchange of love, of expressions of intimacy, across the spectrum. It’s not about earning something. What I had to come to with Tara was that she wasn’t ever gatekeeping it. That may exist within a relationship, but an incredibly high percentage of the time it is not gatekeeping. There’s just not a system of freely opening up, of expressing love, of supporting one another. When those things exist and you’re working on it as an ecosystem together, then things start happening.
Tara: That gatekeeping piece. The low desire partner holds all the control, because it’s when they say when, it’s a go. People don’t talk about what that’s like for the low desire partner to hold all the control. It’s freaking terrible. It’s not a control they want to have. I can see how it looks like gatekeeping. What’s it like to have all the control, that it’ll only happen if you say go? It feels awful. On the surface it looks more like, I don’t want this, I don’t want this, because they don’t recognize that they hold all the power, and it’s not a power they want to have.
Annette: I’ve worked with many couples in this situation, in monogamy and in various relationship dynamics. What it can look like is you both own each other’s sexuality, and get to decide when you each get to enjoy your own sexuality. So if the woman says, I don’t want to have sex, then the man doesn’t get to have sex. I was married for years, and I got to the point where I said, I don’t want to have sex that I don’t want to have, so if you need it, go get it. Because I didn’t want to keep someone from getting what I knew was a very important need. But I’ve worked with couples in monogamous relationships where the woman is anti, he’s not allowed to watch porn, she doesn’t even like it when he masturbates. It’s very much, I don’t want to have sex with you, and if I catch you watching porn, you’re cheating. That’s not that uncommon, from my experience. How does one person get their needs met when they’re locked into a situation where anything they do to try and get a very important need met is off limits?
EJ: You have to clarify that you’re both looking for the same thing. There was never a moment where Tara said, I just never want to be with you sexually again, or I want to minimize that contact for the rest of our relationship. We always had a shared understanding through explicit agreements that we want that connection. We don’t have it now, but we’re going to work toward it together. If there’s a fundamental lack of agreement, if one person says, I really don’t want to have sex, I’m okay not having sex the rest of my life, I don’t want to work toward it, and the other person feels differently, that might be an irreconcilable difference. Or if one person isn’t being honest and says, yeah, I want a sexual relationship, but they actually don’t, you have to be honest with each other. We have a big issue in our relationship around her not wanting to live where we live. If I said, I am never leaving Tucson and you need to realize that, or if I lied and said, yeah, I want to leave, but I didn’t actually, that wouldn’t be fair. So we have to make sure we actually want the same things.
Agreeing on a Shared Sex Goal
Annette: This brings me to the fix. We’ve brought up all the dynamics that anybody listening is going to connect with at least one or two of. It sounds like one of the very first things you have to do, and have clear, tough conversations about, is figure out if you both really want to get a sex life back. That has to be ground zero. So you’re having that conversation. Let’s talk about the steps you can start taking to bring yourselves back into the bedroom and having good sex again. Assuming that conversation happens and you’re both on board, how do we initiate it and where do we move from there?
EJ: Time and place is incredibly important. You can’t have that conversation at 11pm on a Friday night in the bedroom. You have to find a time to say, hey, this is something that’s really important for me, and I hope for you, to talk about. Can we find a time where we’re not activated about it, and we both prepare our central nervous systems for this conversation? We might even come in with some rules or agreements, that if I start to get defensive or feel shut down or blamed, we have to be able to pause it. You take an intentional, well-constructed time, and start it with the hope that this is going to be something you continue to have conversations about.
Tara: Annette, before we got on, you had this structure, and it helps you feel really safe. I loved it. Our Relationship Renovation model is structured. It’s a beginning, middle, and end. When you’re coming into these conversations, intentional time and place, but you want structure so you’re not putzing all over the place. It starts with the first question, what is your experience in our intimate life like? And there’s just listening. It’s a structured conversation, so if it starts to get off track, you can bring it back, because structure is safe. Not rigid structure, but, hey, if it starts to feel overwhelming, we’re going to take a break, we’re going to call our code word, we’re going to come back to it maybe tomorrow. So many couples don’t even know how to talk about it. It’s terrifying going in. When EJ wanted to start having financial meetings, I was like, oh God, no, I don’t want to do it. It’s the same thing. When couples have a structure, and some questions around it, that feels safe. They’re both agreeing, we should talk about this, it’s important, we know it’s been a source of tension, so let’s have that first agreement to do it. They can even come up with their own questions, or there’s tons of stuff out there for initiating the sex conversation. We have tons of resources if people need anything.
Annette: So from there you have the conversation, you know you’re on the same page, you’re going to start having regular conversations. Are there specific things couples can start implementing in their intimate life? Because when we talk about sex, a lot of people here might be thinking we’re going to get down to penis and vagina sex, intercourse. That’s the ultimate goal. But from my perspective, you can start working on a sex life without even getting there.
Tara: Oh, huge. Ours is all sexual safety containers. We have so many couples with so much trauma and tension around intimacy. We say, here’s your safety container, you can just French kiss, no sex, no expectations. We start little.
Safety Containers for Reconnection
Tara: The safety container might be lying naked together at night, but with no expectations of intercourse. Just a ton of safety containers, and every couple is unique. For one couple, they’d had a pillow between them for years because of an infidelity that had happened. Their first step was, we’re taking away the pillow, but we’re still not even going to snuggle, the pillow will just be taken away, for one night, and we’re going to see how that happens. So it’s building up small safety containers, because anxiety can get a hold of us all. It’s, oh God, he or she kissed me, that means they want to have sex. No. If you can support developing safety containers to get your nervous system back to a regulated place, it’s huge. When those big sexual traumas came out that I didn’t know about, I’d never been anxious around sex, I was good at it, and suddenly I was a wreck. I would say, EJ, can you just, and he would massage my neck and shoulders, because I’m super anxious and I don’t want to have sex when I’m anxious and my body’s bracing. Even if we didn’t end up having intercourse, just him relaxing me and making sure my nervous system felt okay was huge. You want to be able to have regulation, and for a lot of couples that might mean safety containers in the beginning, so you don’t feel so overwhelmed. Maybe that’s just French kissing, or lying naked without the pressure of penetration.
Annette: Usually I do three takeaways near the end of a podcast. But instead, I’d like you to walk my listeners through some steps they can take to get back to intimacy. If you were to say, start here tonight and progress this way, of course looking for help if you need it. I’d love for you to take some time right now to do that, so they can see what that progression looked like for you and could look like for them.
EJ: The first step is setting up the conversation, in a time where there’s space, hopefully not a lot of tension, where you say, this is something I would really love for us to be able to talk about and learn how to be more connected in together. It’s that “we” language of not you, I, we. I would really like us to be able to talk together about our intimate life, and it doesn’t have to be right now, but I’m wondering whether that’s something you’d be willing to do. Gaining permission.
Tara: I do this with all my couples, of, what could it look like and feel like if it was what we wanted? It’s this future thinking. We have couples that draw it, that imagine it. What would it feel like in your body? What would it look like? What adjectives would describe it? You’re creating a roadmap for your new chapter, and it is a new chapter. So many people get stuck on, I just want it to be the way it was. That is not happening. We have to get rid of the old story, because it’s never going to exist again. Helping couples get really excited about what that new chapter looks like. We have a whole yes, no, maybe checklist in our intimacy series. Would you ever consider this? Yes, no, maybe. Once you start to look at your own erotic desire and you’re focused on yourself and each other, there’s so much at play. It’s fun and exciting. I want them to go into sex toy shops on little date nights and be like, ooh, that could be fun. Because we’ve been put in boxes by society and culture and religion. Don’t masturbate, you’re a girl. Me touching myself was shameful. So let’s get out of that box. I get couples really excited, because I get really excited.
EJ: What Tara’s talking about is getting some help, if that’s where you’re at. The other big thing is together admitting this is going to be hard and we’re not going to get it right at first. Setting that context, is this something we want to talk about more? Okay, yeah, we do. Let’s know that it’s not going to be easy, we’re going to trip and stumble over each other, and one of us is going to say something that hurts the other person. Let’s be really honest that it’s going to take a second for us to get better at it.
Tara: Paralleled with a sense of adventure. Because if you’re just like, oh, this is going to be hard, that sucks.
EJ: That’s really hard for a couple at the beginning, especially if they’ve been stuck in this for a while. It’s easier when you’re accompanying them in it. But you want to imbue this optimism, even though, how optimistic were we feeling when we were right in the middle of it? It was hard.
Tara: Yes, but hard aligned with freedom. That’s the whole thing. I could actually be free to be myself and explore. If we know that’s what we both want from each other, then the adventure awaits, as Winnie the Pooh would say. The adventure awaits.
Annette: I love that. Those are great starting places. You’ve got to have that base understanding and agreement. And I love the idea of date nights including things like, we’re just going to stop at the sex shop and look, or how about we watch a sexy film together. Putting sexuality back into your life together, even if it isn’t full intercourse at the end of it. You’re adding a little spice and learning about each other.
Tonight’s Steps and Where to Find Help
Tara: And creating new experiences together. Our brain loves that. We get so used to this person that it’s just another French fry under the car seat. When you create new experiences together, your dopamine surges again. That’s why so many couples can have great sex on vacation, because it’s a new experience. So thinking about creating your new intimacy story literally creates new dopamine rushes in your brain, and it starts to create new mapping in a good way. Out with the old, in with the new. You ready to go to a sex toy shop tonight, babe?
EJ: Sure.
Tara: With our twins.
Annette: I can give you some suggestions if you’d like, that’s where I specialize. Also, a fun little fact I’ll drop, when you’re talking about sex with your partner, even if you’re not having it, the brain doesn’t completely know the difference. You’re visualizing it as you talk about it, and it starts building that sexy connection. You two are sherpaing couples through exactly this experience. So tell my listeners everywhere they can find you. You’ve got a podcast as well, so I’d venture to say one of the steps on the way to healing or coming back together sexually is going and listening to your podcast. Let them know everywhere they can find you and get the help they need.
EJ: The easiest is, like you said, the Relationship Renovation podcast. We’ve got 300 episodes all over emotional and physical intimacy, communication, emotional safety. And then our website, relationshiprenovation.com. Tara and I coach couples together, I have a men’s group, and everything is on our website.
Tara: Retreats coming up. The biggest thing, we have a Relationship Renovation at Home manual on Amazon for $18. It has our whole model that we use in office in our coaching, for couples at home who don’t need that extra support. A lot of couples need the objective listener or the coach in the room, but this has the whole six-part intimacy series and communication series. I’d just say don’t jump ahead to the intimacy series, because it builds on itself to create the emotional safety and communication skills to talk about it. It’s another resource we want to put out there, because a lot of couples can’t afford therapists and coaches and all the workshops and retreats. It’s easily accessible, it’s on Amazon, and you could probably get it within a day.
Annette: Perfect. Well, thank you both so much for joining me. Listeners, there is a path back to each other and having great sex again, if that’s what you both want, and there is help out there. Listen to this podcast. If you’re in a couple and you’re listening alone, send it to your partner. It’s a great way to start the conversation. Hey, I was listening to this podcast today, here’s something I want to address. It’s a great starting point. Then head over to Relationship Renovation and find your way back. You’re not alone in this. Thank you so much for sharing your story with me today. It was such a gift to have a couple on and talk about it in this format. I hope to have you on again.
Tara: Thank you. It was fun. And thank you for everything you do, truly.
Annette: You’re welcome. And to my listener, until next time, I’ll see y’all in the locker room. Cheers.