Desire can be an illusive thing sometimes in a relationship/marriage. You may want to be intimate, but that doesn’t change things, if you’re just not feeling it.
One of the main issues that I see affect desire is poor communication. If a couple has been fighting , it creates a distance between the individuals that can make it hard to want to be intimate. If they haven’t learned how to repair after a rupture, resentment often builds up over time, to the point where most couples don’t know how to reach each other anymore.
Desire can often become an issue anytime a couple is unable to be intimate for a prolonged period of time, which could be a couple of weeks for some, or a few months for others. These breaks often throw a couple out of their routine. In addition, many people see their sexual appetite lessen the longer they abstain from intimacy. I see this during or after pregnancy, in the first few years of having a child, or after a prolonged illness. This can also occur when an elderly parent comes to stay in the home, or when an adult child moves back into the home.
Another common time I see desire drop away is when there’s been physical pain with sex. If something hurts, you’re not going to have much desire to do it again. Many will often push through the pain, which unfortunately has the tendency to make one’s lack of interest in sex worse, especially in women.
Sometimes when there is a desire discrepancy in the couple, the partner with the higher desire is always asking for their needs to be met, which makes the lower desire partner the gatekeeper. This is terrible for both partners, because the one always saying ’no’ often feels guilty and begins to push away from any form of affection, in order to avoid saying ‘no.’ As affection disappears, there becomes even less opportunity for the couple to be successful in intimacy, because affection is often what leads up to it.
For couples where one of them has had a prolonged illness, there can be a couple of factors getting in the way of intimacy. The partner who has been ill may feel betrayed by their body, so being intimate no longer feels safe. If there have been significant changes in the physical appearance of their body, they may no longer feel confident or safe enough to feel sexual. For the caretaker, it can be hard for them to move out of this role; they may also have fear around accidentally hurting their partner.
Financial struggles create another instance where intimacy can fall away in a relationship. Money represents safety and security for most, so when finances become strained, the fear often kills the libido.
The therapists at Austin Concierge Therapy understand how to work with all of these scenarios and more. Our goal is to help couples regain their intimacy, through rebuilding attachment, communication, and connection.
