Your partner has a different sex drive. What should you do?

There is nothing as frustrating as making sexual advances to your partner and they push you away. It makes you feel rejected. That is what Margaret faced. After a few advances and being turned away by her husband, she got annoyed and promised herself never to be intimate with him. It was four months of being sexless in the marriage when the couple came to the Sexology Clinic to seek help.

“I want to be very clear here,” Jared, Margaret’s husband, said sternly, “either you open the server or pack your things and leave my house.” I learnt that opening server, in this context, meant allowing sex to happen. 

“It is not your house, I contributed money to build it, so you can as well be the one to leave,” Margaret answered back visibly agitated.

I stepped in to cool the tempers and pleaded that we got a solution to the problem. The couple had been married for 17 years. They were both in their mid-40s and had three children. 

According to Jared, there were days he was stressed and did not feel like having sex and yet Margaret wanted it. When that season passed he was back to himself and wanted to resume their bedroom routines, but Margaret could hear none of it.

“We need to be clear here,” Margaret says, “now and again I give in to sex for his sake even if I have no desire and when it is my turn to ask he pushes me away. I highly suspect that he is having an affair.”

After a full assessment, I concluded that this couple was facing the reality of discrepancy in sexual desire which afflicts many long-term relationships. Many happy marriages, for example, face this problem at one point or another and it is how best they manage it that makes the marriage continue happily or otherwise.

For one, couples should know that at some point sexual boredom sets in. The longer the relationship the higher the tendency to feel less sexual with your partner. This reality becomes common if couples do not strive to gain more knowledge and diversify their sexual practices. Early on in a relationship, many couples develop a routine but soon the ritual becomes less, and less exciting and new things must be added to it to maintain a satisfying experience.

The other thing is that when one partner feels more sexual than the other, the tendency is to label the lower-desire partner as the one with a problem. That marks the beginning of a conflict. It is important to note that you may be having similar levels of desire but that the timings may not be synchronised so that when your libido is high that of your partner is low and vice versa. In other cases, people shut their feelings because they felt rejected when their desire was high and so they revenge by similarly rebuffing their partners. In all this, there is a power play, with each person trying to arm-twist the other. The solution is to be conscious of the possibilities of natural discrepancies in sexual desire and go easy with your partner.

“One thing I do not understand is why my husband would lack desire for sex,” Margaret said, “from what I know men always want sex and this for me is something very unusual and points to infidelity.”

Well, that is an age-old misconception. Men, just like women, do suffer from desire problems which can worsen with age. Sometimes this is due to other medical, psychological or relationship problems. Other times it just happens and there can be times of lows and times of highs. 

Knowing that desire discrepancy and sexual boredom do catch up in long-term relationships is the first solution to this problem. The second solution is to do what Margaret so well described: ‘there are times when you intentionally have sex with your partner even though you have no desire.’ Incidentally being open to this makes waning desire come back.  What this means is that couples should be free to have sex spontaneously but at the same time have days and times when they plan to proactively be sexual even if there is no desire.  

Further, couples should have realistic sex expectations. When you choose to proactively be sexual, desire notwithstanding, orgasm will not always happen. Similarly, erections may be weaker than usual, or ejaculation can happen prematurely. Whatever the case, you will have excited your body and the next day things are likely to work better. A positive talk after a less favourable encounter and a promise for a better future does help. You should therefore desist from hauling hurtful words at your partner after such an encounter. A thank you note is still valid for a better tomorrow.

“So, with the doctor’s explanations will you now open the server?” Jared asked looking straight into Margaret’s eyes. She smiled as she nodded in affirmation.