Dear Dr. K,

My husband and I have sex regularly, but our sex life is very one-sided. For me, sexual intimacy starts with feeling loving toward my husband. For my husband, a good sex life means having sex frequently. Period.

When I feel loved, my sexual desire kicks in. If he doesn’t show me he loves me, it’s harder for me to get in touch with my sex drive.

This also makes it challenging to enjoy sex with him in the long run. I try to talk about it with him, but he seems to get angry and withdraws. What do I do? Signed: In Love With Love

Dear In Love With Love,

Your issue is so common it appears to be more the norm than otherwise. Culturally, one meme we often hear is “Women need intimacy to want sex and men want sex in order to feel intimate.”

Men and women have an equally strong interest in intense, passionate, pleasurable arousal with someone they love and feel safe with. However, for some couples, this appears to be asking too much.

We might do well to stop and consider what each of you hopes to get from the physical aspect of your relationship.

Sex As Masturbatory Aid

As sad as it is to say, for many partners, one or both use sex as an avenue for orgasm and little else. Not once in a while or when they are too tired to want anything but a “quickie.” All the time. Sometimes, each person has difficulty getting sexually aroused enough to experience much pleasure from sex itself. Nevertheless, unless both people agree that they will use the other’s body for this outcome, it usually ends up with the sex being one-sided.

This situation worsens when partners don’t like each other very much but prefer to stay together rather than separate or divorce. When you don’t like a person, the idea of voluntarily giving them pleasure without an ulterior motive is unappealing. Each person gets selfish and wants as much as they can get while giving as little as they can get away with.

Their sex is perfunctory. Oral sex is used for lubrication to “do it,” or to cause erections for penetration. Or not, and sex is painful, or the man loses his erection after a while because he’s genuinely not aroused.

If the woman is lucky, she may be in the minority of women who can orgasm quickly solely with intercourse. Her husband may follow, and both can enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep. This happens after the bio act of vasocongestion (blood in the pelvis) and myotonia (muscle tension) are relieved by the spasms of contractions that orgasm brings.

If this all sounds technical and boring, it is.

For most of these couples, they rely on a vivid imagination or memories from a particularly arousing porn clip to reach enough arousal to bring release. They do to each other what arouses them to do and little else.

They wouldn’t share these fantasies because, well, it’s too intimate. After all, it’s only sex.

Sex As Power

In other couples, sex serves each of them as a power play. One is the higher desire partner, and the other has a lower desire level. It’s positional. It is almost impossible for couples to constantly want the same amount of sex at the same time for 50 years.

Sex isn’t used to express love and tenderness between these two. It is used to punish, withhold, force, or deprive.

Sometimes one will rape the other in their sleep. I call it rape, even if the person being woken up in the act may not particularly mind.

You can’t consent to having sex if you are unconscious. We call having sex with a sleeping partner or any partner incapable of giving consent rape: If a reader is still confused by what consent is, watch this video.

It is often a true miracle if the sex is mutually satisfying in these sorts of hostile environments, but I’ve treated couples in a couples therapy retreat where that was the case. They honestly had a very stressful marriage but a very positive sex life. Remarkably, both reported it as highly satisfying. It’s a powerful bond that can make the most miserable couple reluctant to consider divorce.

Sex as Validation

In some relationships, “getting” sex means that you are a desirable person. Wanting to have regular sex with a partner, regardless of how well or terrible you act in everyday life, becomes a sign that you are lovable. Even if this person acts selfishly and doesn’t pay any attention to how they dress or act, these folks want to be considered sexually desirable people. “Love me for me” is called “unconditional positive regard,” and this regard ends when a child is around 12 months old or so.

After that, if you act horribly toward someone, smell, don’t brush your teeth, don’t pick up after yourself, don’t help keep your home clean, or raise your own children, they will become less into you. They will feel ripped off, so they will end up feeling less desire for you. They won’t find you the kind of person they want to open up to and be vulnerable with.

When your partner does have sex with you, you don’t feel like you should have to learn about what pleases them sexually. You do what pleases you. If your partner asks you to stop a particular behavior, you feel it as a personal affront. You are no longer being validated as inherently lovable. You might ignore them or get mad. Your partner should like what you like to do to them; if they don’t, it hurts your feelings.

The “let me do what I want to you and pretend you like it” is an immature approach to being someone’s partner. No one likes to be bossed sexually. If you are told you are “too demanding” sexually, you may have a partner like this who considers sex as a personal avenue to feeling higher self-esteem. They don’t want to learn what you like because that feels like a “demand.”

If you were 5 years old and someone else treated you this way when you played, you would stop playing with them. If you said, “Let’s play this game,” or “Let’s do it this way,” and they always said no, you might look for a more willing playmate. No one likes someone to insist that there is only one way to play the game, and it’s their way. Even S/M partners have to agree about how the game will be played.

Many people continue to have sex with a selfish person who demands sex as an avenue for feeling good about themselves. But they aren’t inherently desirable because of their immaturity, so the person who feels put upon to validate the other by having sex with them becomes less emotionally involved. They become unenthusiastic. They provide less unconditional validation than their partner demands. And the more their partner demands this “act like you like it” posture, the less motivated their partner is to “act” sexually in any way at all.

 …if you act poorly when someone doesn’t want sex with you, you likely have the answer as to why they don’t.

Sex As Child’s Play

Sex is not child’s play, but sometimes couples are childish about sex. One or both are naive or have been negatively conditioned to find even being naked unacceptable. With these couples, sex requires some mind-altering substance for the partner’s anxiety to reduce enough to allow some level of physicality.

I’ve had cases where, when the reluctant partner stops the mind-altering substance, they stop wanting to have sex.

Over the long term, very naive or immature partners can grow in comfort with one another, and life experience makes sex more satisfying for both of them. However, the satisfaction level is limited by each person’s capacity to introduce novelty into their sexual relationship unilaterally. That is often challenging for couples who have not taken the time to develop sexual sophistication. What do I mean by this?

Many of these couples haven’t settled on words for basic sexual anatomy that they can comfortably use together. If you can’t label something, it’s tough to talk about it. And couples who don’t talk about the quality or enjoyment they get from sex find it very challenging to have a great sex life.

And for others, even if they could talk about it, they wouldn’t know what to say because they haven’t actually explored what they like sexually. They don’t self-pleasure or allow their imaginations to go wild with sexual fantasies. Some go out of their way to avoid reading even great books about basic sexual information.

Sex as “You’re Broken”

There have always been cultures that valued sexual relations between intimates.

That’s been missing in Western culture for a very long time.

The dominant paradigm in many cultures now is “sex as a commodity.” Women are most often considered the commodity. Within this stereotypically gendered frame, sex is considered the trade-off men make when they agree to marry.

In my lifetime, it was legal to force your wife to have sex against her will. There was not a “thing” called marital rape. Marriage entitled a man to have access to his wife’s body whenever he wanted it, whether she wanted to or not.

From this idea sprang forth the notion that men like sex more and have to push women into it. No, men as a group don’t have a higher sexual desire than women. But there are many reasons why a woman refuses sex with her husband, and you are pointing out one of them: You have needs of your own.

Sex is not an entitlement. It’s not a “thing” at all.

The fact that you want sex within the context of an emotionally satisfying relationship is often seen as prissy and withholding. It sounds as if you expect sex to be a mutual act of voluntary pleasuring within the context of a loving relationship.

Unfortunately, this normal expectation is often framed as a power dynamic (see above). In this case, it can become an “I won’t if you won’t” stand-off, as in, “I will not express my fondness and admiration for you unless you allow me to have sex with your body.”

Couples can often complicate this dynamic by claiming that the lower-desire partner is “broken” or has “low sexual desire.” All sorts of remedies are chased after, from sex books to hormonal injections, to fix this malaise.

Don’t get me wrong—there are various maladies of the body that should be examined and ruled out. But often, the “medical problem” comes down to an exhausted, overworked couple with deep resentment.

Why You Might Not Want to Have Sex

Use this handy checklist as a starting point for discussion.

I don’t want sex because:

  • “I’m dog tired/hungry/in pain. I prefer to try to take care of myself instead of giving to one other person today.”
  • “I’m resentful because I feel like you don’t treat me like an equal and do your fair share.”
  • “You aren’t a very considerate/passionate/skilled lover, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings by telling you that. If I did, I’d have to know what I prefer and then talk to you with sexual language I may not have. So I’ll say, ‘I’m not in the mood’ or ‘I have low sexual desire.'”
  • “I would love to have great sex, but I have conditions. If I tell you about those conditions, and you get angry, well, the heck with it.”
  • “Your hygiene is poor.”
  • “The thrill is gone. There’s no mystery, excitement, or surprise in our marriage.”
  • “You/I am a very unhappy person. It’s tough to be living together, nevermind intimate. Your/my bad mood kills desire.”
  • “I feel like saying ‘yes’ in order to keep you from ruining my day/night/week with how upset you get at being refused. So I’ll have pity sex. Will that work?”
  • “I feel coerced and it doesn’t leave me feeling sexy.”

This last one is worth saying more about. I have had situations over a couples therapy retreat where one partner bullies, insults, torments, whines, threatens, gives their partner the silent treatment, and generally acts terribly unpleasant when their partner expresses disinterest in sharing their bodies with them. For some bizarre reason, the harassing partner wants to be sexual and believes that this is a viable avenue to coax their less-than-enthusiastic partner.

Sex is not an entitlement. It’s not a “thing” at all. It’s a dance. Sex is a collaborative and cooperative way to express how you feel about someone. Unfortunately, if you act poorly when someone doesn’t want sex with you, you likely have the answer as to why they don’t.

If they NEVER want to have sex with you, talk to them about why. The answer shouldn’t be, “I have low sexual desire.” Men and women are not broken if they do not want to show affection. This includes expressing fondness, admiration, closeness, or sexual arousal. They are communicating with you.

If you do not feel safe and nourished, there is a good chance you won’t want to have sex. You need to feel cared about, listened to, and cherished. After all, you are a human being.

If you consider sex to be a male entitlement, or your partner does, you need to remove the frame of “sex as a thing.” If you sexually insult your partner or their bodies, they will not want to be sexually intimate with you. Humans need to feel like equals, with equal access to free time, have their dreams valued, and be listened to when they are mad, sad, afraid, ashamed, or proud and happy.

My husband wants sex but not intimacy. Here’s what to do:

Begin by talking to your husband about what I’ve written here. Discuss how sexual expression is contextual for you, like it is with a large percentage of women. Talk explicitly about your conditions for good sex, and don’t limit it to sexual interactions. Open it up to the greater way you treat the other.

Explain that you are not setting up conditions where he only “gets sex” when he’s “nice to you.” Sex is not a candy bar, and you are not a slot machine where he puts in his good behavior, and you give him sex. No. You are in a relationship with him, and sex is a way that each of you expresses how you feel about the other. And right now, you aren’t happy about how he treats you. You won’t “withhold” sex from him until he “acts right.” This is the wrong frame because your body isn’t his right to access. You are a whole person, and you don’t believe you are being treated fairly. You won’t keep engaging in sex the way you have because you are growing more resentful of him and his behavior.

He shows you love, attention, and affection because he loves you. And you return by loving him even more, and your love spills over to hugging, kissing, and, well, you know where that goes…