A Letter to the Lower-Desire Partner
Dear Lower-Desire Partner,
I’m betting your partner is telling you that there is something wrong with you. If you only read one sentence, read this: there isn’t anything wrong or broken about you and your level of sexual desire. You are completely OK.
I’ve been the lower-desire partner. I get it! The relationship that I was in started many years ago, but I didn't realize this truth until much more recently. NOTHING WAS BROKEN IN ME! While I never saw a therapist about this struggle, I know I talked about our marriage in general with friends and family. I may not have talked about our sex but I did talk bout feeling like I had no agency, no control in the relationship I was a part of. As far as the sex, I didn’t have any reason to think that there was anything abnormal about my situation, other than my partner telling me something was wrong with me. My mom was also the “lower desire” partner. This was a normal dynamic in my house growing up. (You might be wondering how I knew this… I just did.) She, too, wasn't given the option to have control in the relationship. Who would want to have sex under those conditions? That didn’t cross my mind back then...I just knew it as "normal".
Note, this is my story. It may not be your story.
Looking back, I can see plain as day why my desire plummeted. I was not treated like an adult. My “no” meant nothing. I was in a parent/child dynamic. I had a lot of other stressors in my life too. No wonder. Your situation may seem similar or it may not. Please don’t let the reason you don’t desire as much sex as your partner distract you from the overall message: you are ok. (Now go read Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are, if you haven’t already.)
One component I see in some desire discrepancies, that I’m unsure gets addressed, is how sexual coercion plays out in long-term relationships. I’m not going to go into details here about how sexual coercion looked in my previous marriage but it wasn’t “You do this or I’ll do this”. It was him pouting when I didn’t feel like having sex. It was getting mad because he “has needs”. It was society’s message that if I didn’t meet his needs he’d go elsewhere. (He never said that himself but he did make jokes about not letting your man “leave the house loaded”.) It’s this idea that in long-term relationships, sex is a given. Who cares if it’s mutually desired? Just do it. The constant comments, the pressure, and the veiled threats through "jokes" wore me down. I paid for peace in the house with my body.
My hope is that some people seek support because they really want to enjoy sex with their partner and that there isn’t coercion happening like there was in my relationship. I really do. But see, I used to want to enjoy sex too, inside the coercion. I didn’t understand why it was so hard for me. Why couldn’t I just want to do it? Today I know that it makes complete sense why I didn’t desire sex with my partner! I wasn’t being treated as a real fucking adult human being with autonomy. I was being treated as an object, a dispensary, for his “needs”. He was likely using sex to co-regulate, not having the emotional maturity to explore other ways of connecting. (I was also lacking the emotional maturity to make different choices, like leaving the relationship or advocating for myself above the needs of others.) He certainly didn’t understand what it was like to not want to be part of something that included letting my body be used when I didn’t want to be there. I stopped saying “no.” It was easier to say “yes.” (That’s the coercion.) But guess what? If it’s not safe to say “no,” if my “no” isn’t encouraged or appreciated, then I can’t really say “yes,” can I? (If you are reading this and still unsure: if you can’t say “no,” your “yes” isn’t real.)
I wasn’t having sex. Sex was being had to my body.
Was it always like this? No. Nothing is ALWAYS. But it was the majority of our sex… sex that was being done TO me, not WITH me.
My worth was sex. It was years later that I came to understand that I have worth just for being a human and that being a quality partner is a lot more involved than making myself available for sex.
Fast forward a few decades. We divorced when I was 38 years old. Long story short (post-divorce):
I started working on my sexuality as I wanted to enjoy partnered sex. I wanted to orgasm easier. (Reach out if you’d like to learn more about the path I chose.)
I end up becoming a platonic intimacy professional and eventually an erotic intimacy professional. Part of the training was learning how to identify and protect my and my clients’ boundaries.
I finally read Come As You Are during the pandemic and it was then that I really understood that I’m not broken. Nothing is wrong with me. Knowing about responsive desire was a game changer for me.
It was also during the pandemic that I ran across Nat from alwaysmending.com on TikTok and learned the phrase “marital coercion”. I now had words for my previous experience.
I started to believe that I’m valuable as a partner even without sex being on the table.
Here’s what I’d like you to consider:
Do I want to have sex with my partner? Do I want it for myself or do I want it for my partner? That’s an important distinction. (Asexuality is real.)
Is the sex being offered the sex that I want? Do I even know what the sex that I want looks and feels like?
Do I have a non-sexual intimate relationship with my partner? Are we able to connect and share intimately in other ways in our relationship or is this the only time we feel close?
In my current relationship, am I the lower-desire partner?
I don’t know. I haven’t been labeled. My partner and I have sex when we both want to have sex. We use sex as one way to connect among many. I know expectations of sex are a real boner killer for me, as you can imagine. We don’t do “sex dates” but we do have “date nights” where we plan to connect in whatever ways feel good to both of us at that time. We can’t know how we are going to feel at any given moment. “What do I want right now?” is a question I ask myself over and over again throughout every day, including when I’m laying in bed, cuddled up with my partner. We both appreciate knowing when the other is a no to sex, or any other request or invitation. We treat each other as equal, autonomous adults. Why would I want to have sex with someone who doesn’t want to?
Guess what? I’m not broken and neither are you. Find support. Make sure that support understands that this isn’t a simple issue nor is it likely ever just about sex.
Warmly,
Additional Support for Professionals
I recently attended a fantastic webinar on working with desire discrepancy couples from the Institute for Relational Intimacy with Martha Kauppi. I highly recommend her content to professionals. Highly. I really can’t say enough about how pleased I was with the content on this specific topic, as it is so very personal to me. Martha also offers lots of free resources for professionals and couples. Go check it out!
