It’s nine o’clock. The kids are finally asleep, or the work email is finally closed, or the dishwasher is finally running. You sit down on the couch. Your partner slides over and rests a hand on your leg.
Your whole body tightens.
Not because you don’t love them. Because since six this morning you’ve been needed, leaned on, climbed on, handed things, asked things and hugged goodbye, and this is one more pair of hands.
If you know that feeling, you’re touched out. It’s one of the most common things I hear in my office, and almost nobody says it out loud, because it sounds like a verdict on the relationship. It isn’t.
Touched out means your body is done for the day
Being touched out is a real, physical sense of overload. You’ve had all the contact you can take, and even gentle, loving touch starts to feel like one more demand.
It shows up most with parents of small kids, caregivers, people in jobs that involve being physically close to others, and anyone who is already the person everybody else leans on. But you don’t need a baby on your hip to get there. A day of being “on” for everyone is enough.
Notice what it’s not saying. It isn’t “I don’t love you.” It isn’t “I don’t find you attractive.” It’s “I have nothing left to give my skin.”
It’s not the same as low desire, but it can turn into it
Here’s the part that’s easy to miss. Being touched out and having low desire can feel identical from the inside. You flinch, you pull away, you say you’re tired.
But they’re different problems, and they need different fixes.
Low desire is about whether sex pulls at you at all. Being touched out is about whether your body can tolerate one more thing right now. A lot of people discover that when they get real rest, space and a feeling of choice, their interest is still there. It was buried under overload.
The trouble starts when the pulling away becomes a pattern. Your partner reaches, you stiffen, they feel it, and next time they reach less. You start bracing for the reach. Sooner or later neither of you is touching at all, and now you have a gap that looks a lot like a sex problem. (If you want to understand how desire works underneath all this, I wrote about where desire actually comes from.)
Why “just relax” makes it worse
When you’re touched out, the usual advice makes things worse.
“Just relax into it” turns touch into one more thing you’re supposed to perform. “Just give it a try” teaches your body that saying no gets ignored. And if you go along with touch you don’t want, even to be kind, your body learns something: touch is where I lose my say.
That’s a short road to dreading touch altogether, including the kind you’d normally love.
This also usually has a second layer. Much of what drains you is the invisible work of running a household, remembering everything and managing everyone else’s needs. If that sounds like your days, the mental load is almost certainly part of why your body has nothing left by night.
If you’re the partner who keeps getting pulled away from
This one hurts, so let me say it plainly. It feels like rejection. Of course it does. You reach for the person you love and they flinch.
Here’s what’s usually true: the flinch is about the day they’ve had, not about you. That doesn’t mean your feelings don’t count. They do. It means that if you take every pulled-away moment as a verdict, you’ll start reaching less, and the distance grows.
What helps is the opposite of what feels natural. Reach for them in ways that ask nothing: a hand on the shoulder in passing, sitting near them with no agenda, asking “what would feel okay tonight?” and meaning it. The goal isn’t to stop wanting them. It’s to stop making touch a test.
Four things to try this week
There’s no quick fix here, and I’d be lying if I said there was. But these four things move people.
1. Give the “no” a kind, ready-made script. Agree on a phrase ahead of time, outside the moment. Something like “My body’s done for tonight, and it has nothing to do with you. Can I have a rain check on touch?” A no that comes with a warm note attached lands completely differently than a flinch.
2. Get real, alone, off-duty time before the evening. Not scrolling, not catching up on tasks. Ten or twenty minutes where nobody needs anything from you. A walk, a shower, a closed door. Your body needs the contrast between being needed and not being needed before it can want contact again.
3. Let the touched-out partner steer. For five minutes, the person who’s overloaded decides what touch happens, where, and when it stops. A foot rub. Head resting on a shoulder. Holding hands. No sex expected, no “it should lead somewhere.” Touch that you control feels different in the body than touch that happens to you.
4. Say the real thing, out loud, once. “I’m not avoiding you. I’m overloaded, and I don’t know how to say it.” Most couples never have that sentence. They have the flinch and the silence, and each person writes their own story about what it means.
If you’ve been reading this thinking “yes, but we’ve never agreed to any of these things,” that’s fine. Any of these is something you and your partner decide together. What works for another couple is not the rule for yours.
When it’s more than being worn out
Being touched out usually eases when your load does. But if touch has become distressing in a way that doesn’t ease with rest, if it comes with other big changes in mood or body, or if touch brings up memories or a sense of being unsafe, please don’t just push through. Talk with a doctor or a therapist who works with this. That’s not a failure. It’s information, and you deserve support with it.
You don’t have to keep managing this quietly
Being touched out is not a flaw in you, and it’s not a flaw in your relationship. It’s what happens to a body that has been on duty all day with no off switch. And it’s very fixable once you and your partner stop reading it as a verdict and start treating it as a signal.
If you want to see where the two of you stand, take the sex life quiz. And if you suspect this is part of a bigger gap between how much each of you wants, the desire discrepancy resources are a good next stop.
Wherever you are right now, there’s a place to start.
Mental Load and Sex Drive: Why Chores Are Killing Your Desire (and Neither of You Is the Problem)
If you’re wondering how the mental load and sex drive could possibly be connected, here’s a scene I see in my office all the time.
One partner keeps saying, “I really want to work on our sex life.” The other partner is standing in the kitchen at nine at night, still holding the dentist appointment, the permission slip, the birthday gift, and the question of what’s for dinner tomorrow. Sex is not on their mind. If it crosses their mind at all, it feels like one more thing on the list.
If that’s your house, I want to say this first: nobody here is the problem. Not the one who’s tired, and not the one who keeps reaching.
You can both be doing your best and still be stuck
Here’s what makes this so hard to talk about. Both of you are telling the truth.
If you’re the one holding the list, you notice everything. You remember the oil change and the shoes before school starts. Asking for help feels like its own job, and then you have to check whether it got done. You don’t want to be the manager. You don’t like who that turns you into.
If you’re the one who’s been trying, you do help. You’ve spent a whole weekend cleaning out the garage and felt good about it. You’ve done what you know to do. And somehow your partner is still unhappy. They expect you to know what needs doing, and you don’t always see it. Being handed a list can feel like being managed in your own home. And plenty of what you do never gets noticed at all.
These two experiences feed each other. The more one of you manages, the more the other feels managed. The more one of you feels managed, the less they see, and the more the first one has to carry.
You can see this in the numbers. In a 2024 Harris Poll of 2,005 U.S. parents, the partner carrying more said they handled 75% of the mental load. Their partner said they handled 56%. That adds up to 131% of one household. Neither of you is lying. You’re just not looking at the same thing.
How the mental load blocks sex drive (even when nobody’s being lazy)
Let’s start with the part that surprises people. Any bad feeling toward your partner can block desire. Resentment is one of the strongest. It doesn’t have to be a big fight. A steady background feeling of “I’m doing this alone” is enough.
It’s partly exhaustion, of course. And it an certainly be related to being touched out. But exhaustion isn’t the whole story. A 2022 study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that women who carried a lopsided share of household labor, when partnered with men, reported lower sexual desire for their partner. (Most of the research so far is on women partnered with men, so I’m careful not to claim more than that.) What I see in my practice goes further than tiredness. It’s what happens in your head about your partner. Two things show up again and again:
It feels unfair. You can’t want to be close to someone while you’re keeping score against them.
You start to experience your partner as one more person you’re taking care of. Desire doesn’t thrive when you feel like their manager, or their mother.
Then there’s the feeling that gets less attention: not feeling heard or helped. When you’ve said it a dozen times and nothing has changed, the problem stops being the dishes. It’s “I’m alone in this, and I’m not sure you see me.” Nobody wants sex from that place.
If you’re the partner who wants more sex, here’s what’s easy to miss
I’ll be direct, because I think you’d want me to be.
If you’re the higher desire partner, it’s easy to think chores and sex are two separate subjects. You want to work on sex, and the chores feel like a distraction, or an excuse. I understand why. You’re hurting too.
But for your partner, they’re one subject. It isn’t only the exhaustion of holding it all. It’s the resentment, and the loneliness of carrying the burden even though you want to help. Pushing for sex while the load stays lopsided tends to make the load feel heavier. That makes it feel like you aren’t seeing what’s going on.
The good news is that this is one of the more workable blockers. If you want more sex, one of the best things you can do is make the household load visible and shared, and make it easy to do your part. Not as a trade (“I’ll do the dishes and you owe me”). As a way to be a real partner. If you want to understand your own side of this, it’s worth reading the common mistakes of the higher desire partner and what it’s like when a woman wants sex more than her male partner.
Why the list you already tried didn’t work
I think of a couple I work with, and I’ve changed the details so they can’t be identified. He keeps wanting to work on their sex life. She’s holding the entire household, and it’s a serious blocker for her. He genuinely wants to help. He also has ADD, and no solution they tried worked. Not until now.
In my experience, a list alone fails for two reasons. First, it holds the tasks but none of the things that make it easy to work together: who agreed to do what, what still needs a decision, how to take something off each other’s plate. Second, a list that lives in someone else’s head, or somewhere you never look, doesn’t help the person who needs it most. What he needed was a way to see the list and an easy way to check in and get things done. Trying harder wasn’t going to fix that. A system built around those two things is what finally worked for them, and they use Visible Labor.
That second part matters whether or not ADHD is in your house. Anyone can lose track of a list they don’t look at. What helps is a way to see it without asking, plus a low-effort way to check in.
Four things to try this week
There’s no quick fix here, and you don’t need an app to start. These help whatever tools you use.
Get it all out of one person’s head. Sit down together and write down everything that needs to happen in the house, including the invisible stuff: scheduling, remembering, deciding. The goal isn’t to assign blame. It’s to see what’s actually there.
Hand over whole tasks, not steps. If you do “the dishes” but your partner still has to notice the sink is full and remind you, they’re still carrying the hard part. Own a task from noticing to done. (And if you’re the one handing it over, agree on what “done” looks like, then let it be done.)
Meet for fifteen minutes, once a week. Start with what got done, so you begin from what’s working. Then what needs deciding. Then stop. A short, predictable meeting beats a “we need to talk” ambush.
Say thank you for the specific thing. Not “thanks for everything,” which never quite lands, but the actual thing they did on Tuesday that they didn’t think you noticed. For the partner who has been trying, being seen can change a lot.
If you’re looking for something that holds the house and the conversation
I kept saying in session, for years, “I wish there was a tool for this.” Eventually I stopped wishing and built one.
Visible Labor™ is a household app built by a couples therapist (me). It does the practical part: you both see everything in one place, you can add a task by typing, talking or texting it, and you get reminders in a way each of you chooses. It also does the part I couldn’t find anywhere else. There’s a fifteen-minute weekly meeting that builds its own agenda. There’s a way to say “today’s a hard one” without having to explain. You can ask your partner for one small favor a day, and they can say “not today.” And you can thank them for the specific thing they did. There’s no scoreboard, and it never tells one of you that you’ve done less than the other.
It’s $97 a year for the two of you, not per person. If you’d rather start small, it’s $12 a month. And if you’d like to see it before deciding, there’s a three-minute walkthrough on the page.
It isn’t magic, and it won’t do the work for you. But if you’ve tried the list, the whiteboard and the color-coded app, and you’re still having the same argument, it may be what you’re missing.
And don’t skip the sex part
Sharing the load makes room for desire. It doesn’t automatically bring it back. Once the household stops being the thing standing between you, the next step is usually working on how the two of you approach sex itself, with less pressure and more ease.
Should You Leave a Sexless Marriage — Or Cheat? Here’s What I’d Say Instead
I didn’t think it was a controversial thing to say: don’t accept sex that your partner very obviously doesn’t want.
But apparently that poked the manosphere or something, because boy, were there a lot of comments. They surprised me, and honestly, I’d have to say they disheartened me.
The three answers I kept hearing
There was a lot of “just leave.” There was a lot of “get a side piece” — or more than one. And there was a whole theme of “see, it’s bait and switch. They’re fine until they get the ring.”
All of those comments were from men. By the way, none of the higher-desire women were saying “just leave.”
Not everybody reacted that way. Plenty of people reached out with “What do we do? How do we fix it? Could you help?” That’s all great. But I wanted to speak to the other group.
Why “just leave” and “just cheat” are entitled answers
What I’d say to those folks is: it’s entitled. The idea that your only two options are to leave over sex or to cheat — that’s entitlement.
It’s not a transaction. It is not an entitlement.
It is important. I’m a sex therapist because I believe sex is important, and it’s okay that it matters to you. It’s absolutely okay to advocate for your needs. But come to your partner and try to work it out. Talk to them.
Is it a “bait and switch”? No — but something real did change
I want to take that one seriously, because the people saying it aren’t imagining the change. Something is different from how it was.
But it isn’t a trap, and nobody sprang it on you. Circumstances change as we age. They change as we live with the same person for years. Bodies change, stress changes, health changes, what a day demands of us changes. That’s not somebody withdrawing what they promised — it’s a real shift, and it’s one you have to address.
Here’s the part most people don’t know: it is completely normal to accumulate more obstacles over time, and it is completely normal for desire to become more responsive rather than spontaneous. Early on, wanting it showed up on its own. Later, wanting it shows up in response to the right conditions — and if those conditions have quietly disappeared, so has the desire.
That’s not a character flaw and it’s not a con. It’s information about what needs to change.
When leaving a sexless marriage actually does make sense
Now, it is possible to leave over sex. There are stages where that makes sense.
You’re just dating. You’re seeing more than one person. It’s early, you’re not that invested — why not move on? (Don’t cheat. But move on.)
And even at the end of a very long committed relationship, you might get to the point where you realize this is a deal breaker for you, and you decide to end it. That’s a legitimate choice. In my view, it should come after you’ve exhausted every possibility of trying to make it work — not before you’ve really tried.
It’s the middle I care about. And most people asking “should I leave a sexless marriage?” are squarely in the middle.
In the middle, it’s a shared problem
In the middle, it’s so important to actually communicate and work on it together.
I always start from the premise that the lower-desire person is up against some legitimate obstacles. What are those? And more importantly — how do I contribute to them?
That second question is the one that changes things. Seeing this as the lower-desire person’s fault or failing is not going to help you fix it. Understanding that it’s co-created, and that you have a role in it too, is a huge part of the work. From there, you explore together what it’s going to take to make this better.
What I’m not saying
I’m not talking about settling. I’m not talking about waiting around until they’re interested. I’m not talking about accepting the status quo. I’m not talking about living out your life together like roommates.
I’m talking about working on it as a team, and seeing it as a shared problem.
What the couples who get through this have in common
The people saying “just leave,” “just cheat” — they don’t understand.
The people I work with are committed. They love this person. They value everything that’s great about the relationship. They’re invested and they want it to work. They don’t want to leave. They certainly don’t want to cheat.
They want to figure out a way to work on it.
Common questions about mismatched desire
Is it ever okay to end a relationship over sex?
Yes. Early on, when you’re not that invested, moving on is a perfectly reasonable choice. And at the far end of a long relationship, you may decide this is a deal breaker for you. What I’d ask is that it comes after you’ve genuinely tried — not as your first move.
Is cheating ever justified in a sexless marriage?
No. If sex matters to you enough to go outside the relationship, it matters enough to have a hard conversation inside it. Cheating doesn’t solve the problem; it adds a second one.
How do I bring this up without it turning into a fight?
Lead with curiosity instead of a complaint. “What gets in the way for you?” goes somewhere. “Why don’t you ever want me?” doesn’t.
If you’re the higher-desire partner and you’re tired of having the same painful conversation, you don’t have to figure this out alone. Learn more about how my course could help.
You’ve done the math on how long it’s been. You’ve tried initiating and been turned down, and you’ve tried not initiating to see if he’d come to you, and he didn’t (and maybe you’ve fallen into more of the common mistakes for any higher desire partner). You’ve had the conversation where he says he’s just tired, or stressed, or that it’s not about you — and you’ve walked away from that conversation feeling worse, because if it’s not about you, then why isn’t anything changing?
The story usually sounds like: I’ve gained weight. I’m not attractive anymore. I’m too much. I’m too needy. Something is wrong with me. And every single time he pulls away, the story gets a little more evidence. It calcifies. Eventually you stop reaching for him at all, not because you stopped wanting him, but because you can’t take one more piece of proof.
I want to hand you a different sentence. It’s the one I say to women in my office, and I watch their shoulders drop when they hear it:
The problem isn’t that he doesn’t want you. The problem is that there are invisible roadblocks in the way of his desire.
Not “he’s not attracted to you.” Not “he’s fallen out of love.” Roadblocks. Things sitting between him and his own wanting — things he usually can’t name either, which is why his explanations never quite satisfy you.
Here’s why that distinction matters so much: you cannot fix “something is wrong with me.” There’s no action step. You just carry it. But roadblocks? Roadblocks can be identified. And once they’re identified, they can be moved.
Let me show you the ones I see most.
1. Pressure
When you’ve been the one pursuing and he’s been the one pulling back, pressure builds into the relationship itself. And here’s the part that’s so unfair: you don’t have to say a word for him to feel it.
He feels it when you come to bed at the same time he does. He feels it in a hand on his back. He feels it in the silence after a night where nothing happened. The pressure isn’t something you’re doing — it’s something the dynamic is generating.
And pressure is one of the most reliable desire-killers there is. The more you want it, the more he experiences sex as something he’s supposed to produce. Desire doesn’t survive obligation. Nobody’s does.
2. Performance anxiety
For men, arousal is visible in a way that feels merciless. There’s no hiding it and no faking it. An erection is treated — by both people, usually — as a scoreboard.
So he walks into any potentially sexual moment carrying a question: what if my body doesn’t cooperate? And that question is enough, all by itself, to make sure it doesn’t. Anxiety and arousal don’t share a room well.
Then it compounds. It happens once, so he’s more anxious the next time, so it’s more likely to happen again. And if you’re watching for it too — and it’s very hard not to watch for it — he can feel that. Now there are two people in the bed monitoring his body, and not one person in the bed enjoying it.
3. The belief that desire is supposed to show up first
This one is enormous, and almost nobody knows about it.
A lot of people have what’s called reactive desire — meaning they don’t feel horny in advance. They feel desire after something sexual has already started, once their body has had a chance to warm up. Their wanting is a response, not a starting gun.
But most of us were raised on the other model: that real desire arrives spontaneously, out of nowhere, and if it doesn’t, you’re not into it.
So he waits to feel in the mood. And with reactive desire, that mood is never going to arrive on its own — it only shows up after he’s already engaged. He experiences that as “I guess I just don’t want sex anymore.” You experience it as rejection. And you’re both wrong, because you’re both measuring at the wrong moment.
4. The pursuer–distancer cycle
The more you pursue, the more he distances. The more he distances, the more anxious you get, and the harder you pursue.
Neither of you chose this. Nobody sat down and decided to play these roles. But once the loop starts, it feeds itself, and it gets more entrenched every month it runs. Your pursuing is a completely reasonable response to feeling shut out. His distancing is a completely reasonable response to feeling pressured. You are two reasonable people building something neither of you wants.
(And to be clear — this loop isn’t about gender. I see it with the man wanting more, and I see it in same-sex couples. It’s about the positions, not the people in them.)
5. Shame
He has absorbed the same message everyone else has: that men always want sex, that a man who doesn’t is broken, that low desire is a failure of masculinity.
So when his desire goes quiet, he doesn’t think huh, something’s in the way. He thinks something is fundamentally wrong with me.
And shame makes people hide. It’s why he changes the subject. It’s why he goes to bed after you’re already asleep. It’s why he can’t give you a straight answer about what’s going on — because looking at it directly means facing something he’s terrified is true about him.
He’s not avoiding you. He’s avoiding the evidence.
What changes when you can see them
Notice what happens to the problem once these five things are on the table.
It becomes a set of specific, nameable conditions that are suppressing desire in your relationship — and conditions are workable. That’s the whole shift. You go from what is wrong with me to what is in the way, and only one of those questions has an answer you can actually do something with.
This is not about fixing him. It’s not about you becoming thinner, or sexier, or less needy, or more patient. Those aren’t the problem, and chasing them has never once solved this for anyone.
It’s about the two of you turning toward the roadblocks together and starting to move them.
If this is you
If you’re the one who wants more, and you’ve spent years quietly doubting yourself — you can put that down. You’re not too much. He’s not broken. There are roadblocks in the way, and now you know what they are.
The next question is how to actually move them, and that’s harder than seeing them. It usually takes some structure, and it almost always takes both of you.
That’s the work I do with couples every day, and it’s why I do it — because I’ve watched this exact situation turn around more times than I can count.
But there is one version of desire discrepancy that I have been talking about more lately: when the woman wants sex more than the man.
This situation doesn’t surprise me because I’ve seen it in my practice for years. In fact, I’d estimate that in somewhere between a third and half of the heterosexual couples I work with, the woman is the higher desire partner.
And yet, it still seems to surprise a lot of people.
What If You’re a Woman Who Wants Sex More Than Your Husband?
We have been handed a very persistent story about heterosexual relationships. Men want sex. They’re always ready to go. They’re the ones pursuing, initiating, and hoping something will happen.
Women, meanwhile, supposedly need more time. They need to warm up. They need to feel emotionally connected. They are the ones who say no, while their male partners are left wanting more.
Except relationships don’t reliably work that way.
Plenty of women want sex more often than their male partners. Plenty of men struggle with desire, initiation, sexual confidence, or simply being willing to engage sexually when desire isn’t already present.
When Every Little Bit of Affection Makes You Hopeful
Maybe you know this moment.
You’re sitting together on the couch and he puts his arm around you. Or he kisses you goodnight and the kiss seems just a little different. Maybe he reaches for you in bed.
And you feel that surge.
Maybe tonight.
Maybe he’s interested.
Maybe this is finally going somewhere.
For a moment, you let yourself hope.
Then nothing happens.
He picks up his phone. He rolls over. He falls asleep. The affectionate moment really was just an affectionate moment.
And now you’re lying there in the dark feeling almost foolish for having gotten your hopes up.
Then comes the crash.
Maybe you feel rejected. Maybe you’re hurt or angry. Maybe you’re devastated. Or maybe there is a growing sense of despair and resignation underneath all of it.
Why did I think this time would be different?
Why does he never seem to want me?
Is this just what our relationship is going to be like now?
Why Sexual Rejection Can Hurt So Much
When you’re the higher desire partner, it can become very difficult to experience affection as simply affection.
You aren’t necessarily trying to turn every hug or kiss into sex. But you’ve been missing sexual intimacy, perhaps for a long time. So when your partner reaches for you, your brain notices the possibility.
Could this be the beginning of something?
That little surge of hope makes perfect sense.
Unfortunately, when nothing happens afterward, you’re not just returning to where you started. You may experience it as another rejection.
And when this happens over and over again, the cycle of hope and disappointment can become incredibly painful.
That Little Surge of Hope Actually Tells Me Something Important
There’s another way I want you to think about that surge, though.
Imagine a woman who has completely resigned herself to living like roommates with her partner. She has given up on sexual intimacy ever getting better. She no longer believes anything is going to change.
Eventually, she probably stops feeling that surge.
She doesn’t interpret the kiss as a possibility anymore. She doesn’t wonder whether tonight might be different. She doesn’t get her hopes up because she has stopped expecting anything.
She may simply go numb.
So if you still feel that little flutter when your partner reaches for you, I don’t think it means you’re naive.
I think it means you haven’t given up.
Some part of you still wants this relationship to include erotic connection. You still want your partner. You still want sex to be something the two of you share.
Yes, that hope can make the disappointment hurt more. But the fact that hope is still there is also a very good sign.
His Lower Sex Drive Doesn’t Necessarily Mean He Doesn’t Want You
One of the most painful conclusions a higher desire woman can reach is that her partner’s lack of sexual initiation must say something about her.
Maybe I’m not attractive anymore.
Maybe he isn’t in love with me.
Maybe he would want sex if I looked different.
Maybe he’s interested in someone else.
Maybe there is something fundamentally wrong with our relationship.
Those explanations can feel incredibly convincing, especially when you’re hurting. But his lower desire does not automatically mean any of those things.
Male sexual desire is much more complicated than our stereotypes suggest.
Men can experience stress, pressure, anxiety, sexual performance concerns, health changes, relationship tension, shame, exhaustion, body image concerns, and many of the same obstacles to desire that women experience.
And there is another factor that I think is especially important: men can experience reactive or responsive desire, too.
Men Don’t Always Walk Around Ready for Sex
We tend to talk about responsive desire as though it is primarily a women’s issue. But some men don’t experience much spontaneous desire either.
They aren’t necessarily walking around feeling horny and looking for an opportunity to have sex.
Their desire may need something to activate it.
That creates a problem if both partners assume that sex should only begin when someone is already spontaneously interested. If your male partner thinks, If I wanted sex, I’d feel horny right now, he may interpret the absence of spontaneous desire as evidence that he simply doesn’t want sex.
Meanwhile, you may interpret exactly the same thing as evidence that he doesn’t want you.
Neither conclusion is necessarily true.
Pressure Can Make a Libido Mismatch Worse
Unfortunately, once a couple becomes distressed about sex, the distress itself can start making sexual connection harder.
The higher desire partner becomes increasingly hurt and vigilant. The lower desire partner becomes increasingly aware that sex is a problem.
Now every affectionate interaction can feel loaded.
A kiss isn’t just a kiss anymore. Is this going to lead somewhere? Is she hoping I’ll initiate? If I cuddle with her, will she think I want sex? If I don’t follow through, will she be hurt? If she initiates and I don’t want it, will we have another painful conversation?
Something that should feel playful, connecting, and pleasurable starts carrying an enormous amount of emotional weight.
And pressure is not particularly good for desire.
You Don’t Have to Settle for Being Roommates
If you recognize yourself in this cycle, especially if you’ve been feeling rejected, resentful, lonely, or increasingly hopeless, I don’t want you to conclude that the only options are pressuring your partner for more sex or resigning yourself to a sexless relationship, where a marriage feels like roommates.
There is another way forward.
The work isn’t simply about convincing him to want more sex. It is about understanding what is actually getting in the way of desire and intimacy between the two of you.
What obstacles is he up against? What has sex come to mean in your relationship? Where has pressure crept in? What assumptions are each of you making about desire? And how could you create sexual experiences that are easier to approach without either person feeling obligated, inadequate, rejected, or pressured?
When you start addressing those questions, the entire arena can change.
Sex doesn’t have to be the place where one person pursues and the other avoids, while both of you end up feeling terrible.
It can become playful and light again. It can be something you approach together rather than a problem sitting between you.
And if you’re still experiencing that little surge of hope when he reaches for you, pay attention to it.
Because underneath the disappointment, it may be telling you something important.
You’re still hoping for connection. You’re still wanting each other to find your way back to intimacy. And you haven’t given up yet.
Is It Gaslighting? How to Tell the Difference Between Healthy Communication and Manipulation
One of the questions I hear most often from clients and students is this:
“If you teach us to question our interpretations of what happened, doesn’t that open the door to gaslighting?”
It’s an important question because it gets to the heart of what makes communication healthy and what makes it unsafe.
I spend a lot of time teaching couples that our perceptions are not always objective truth. That doesn’t mean our experiences aren’t real. It means our brains are constantly filtering information, filling in gaps, and creating meaning from incomplete data. Understanding that process can transform the way couples communicate.
But it also raises an understandable concern. If we’re encouraged to question our own interpretations, couldn’t a manipulative partner simply convince us we’re wrong?
The answer is yes.
That’s why healthy communication depends on something much bigger than communication skills alone. It depends on both people acting in good faith.
Why Your Brain Doesn’t Experience Reality Exactly as It Happened
Neuroscience has shown that our brains simply cannot process every piece of information we encounter. Instead, they filter enormous amounts of input before it ever reaches conscious awareness.
Then our minds interpret what remains.
We assign meaning. We create stories. We make assumptions about another person’s intentions. Most of this happens so quickly that we don’t even notice it.
The result is that two people can experience exactly the same interaction and walk away with very different memories of what happened.
That doesn’t necessarily mean either person is lying.
It means they’re human.
When couples understand this, it creates room for curiosity instead of certainty. Rather than insisting, “This is exactly what happened,” we can begin saying something much more accurate:
“This is how I experienced it.”
That subtle shift makes all the difference.
Questioning Your Interpretation Isn’t the Same as Doubting Yourself
Learning to examine your own interpretation is actually a sign of psychological flexibility.
It creates space to ask questions like:
“What did I actually observe?”
“What assumptions did I make?”
“What might my partner have intended?”
Even if it turns out your interpretation wasn’t completely accurate, your emotional experience still deserves care. If you believed your partner insulted you, then you genuinely experienced hurt. That matters.
Healthy couples don’t argue about whether someone’s feelings are “allowed.” They become curious about how those feelings developed.
When This Process Becomes Unsafe
Everything changes if one partner is not participating honestly.
The communication process I teach only works when both people are committed to discovering the truth together.
If one person is manipulating, protecting themselves, or trying to control the narrative, questioning your interpretation can become dangerous instead of healing.
So how can you tell the difference?
Here are four signs that your partner is approaching these conversations in good faith.
1. They Can Admit They Might Be Wrong
Every human brain filters and interprets reality.
No one is exempt.
A healthy partner understands this. Even when they’re convinced they remember something correctly, they leave room for the possibility that they may have missed something.
They might say:
“This feels completely true to me, but I’m willing to explore whether I’m remembering it accurately.”
That openness creates safety.
A partner who refuses to entertain any possibility that they could be mistaken will usually become defensive, argumentative, and convinced they know your experience better than you do.
2. They Are Curious About Your Experience
Once someone accepts that they may not have the whole picture, genuine curiosity naturally follows.
You can usually feel the difference.
A curious partner wants to understand your experience, even if it doesn’t match their own. They ask questions. They listen. They try to imagine what it was like to be you.
Suppose you believed your partner insulted you because you misheard a word.
Even if that misunderstanding eventually becomes clear, your hurt was still real.
If instead they spend the conversation trying to prove your memory wrong or dismantle your story piece by piece, that’s a significant warning sign.
The goal isn’t to win the argument.
The goal is to understand each other.
3. They Take Responsibility for Their Part
No relationship improves unless both people are willing to acknowledge where they’ve contributed to the problem.
That means admitting mistakes.
It means saying, “You’re right. I was defensive.”
Or, “I avoided telling you because I knew it would upset you.”
Or even, “I was trying to hurt you.”
The late therapist David Schnarch used to say, “Only the best in you can talk about the worst.”
Real integrity means being willing to own the parts of yourself you’re least proud of.
Without accountability, conversations become exercises in self-protection instead of opportunities for healing.
4. They Are Willing to Change Their Behavior
Healthy relationships don’t require one partner to change everything about themselves.
But they do require openness to influence.
If your partner learns that a certain phrase is deeply painful for you, they should be willing to consider using different words.
If they discover that a particular behavior consistently hurts you, they should be open to adjusting it.
Not because they’re being controlled.
Because they care.
A partner who refuses to consider your experience or make any adjustments is communicating something important about their priorities.
How These Signs Compare to Gaslighting
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which someone repeatedly causes another person to doubt their own memories, perceptions, or judgment. The goal is often to gain power, avoid accountability, or maintain control.
Rather than occurring as a single disagreement, gaslighting is usually a repeated pattern.
Here is how common gaslighting behaviors contrast with healthy communication.
Someone who gaslights often flatly denies events that occurred, even when evidence suggests otherwise. A healthy partner recognizes that memory is imperfect and remains open to discussing different perspectives.
A gaslighting partner shifts blame by insisting their harmful behavior was entirely your fault. A healthy partner takes responsibility for their own actions, regardless of what happened beforehand.
Gaslighting frequently includes dismissing emotions by telling someone they are “too sensitive,” “crazy,” or “overreacting.” A caring partner may disagree with your interpretation, but they still validate that your emotional experience is real.
Finally, someone who gaslights often rewrites history to protect themselves, refusing to acknowledge contradictions or mistakes. A trustworthy partner values honesty more than appearing right.
Healthy Communication Requires Good Faith
The communication skills I teach are incredibly powerful.
They help couples slow down, question assumptions, and develop deeper empathy for one another.
But these skills only work inside a relationship where both people are committed to honesty, curiosity, accountability, and care. If your relationship or sex life is dominated by negativity, you may need more support to get to a place where you seek empathy and understanding instead of blame.
If your partner consistently dismisses your experience, refuses responsibility, rewrites history, or undermines your confidence in your own perceptions, you are no longer engaging in healthy exploration.
You’re dealing with manipulation.
Questioning your interpretations should help you understand reality more clearly, not make you lose trust in yourself.
Healthy relationships create more clarity, more safety, and more connection. They never require you to abandon your own reality.
