The most common sex problem I deal with by
In fact, from my clinical experience and given the nature of modern life, I would suggest that it’s amazing that two human beings in a long term relationship occasionally have matching sexual desires!
As Peter De Vries eludes to, sex early in a relationship is driven by powerful DNA-driven-species-survival-ensuring emotional and hormonal forces. Which were only built to last long enough to ensure sex/pregnancy occurred. Then the forces wane … always.
And then we went and screwed it all up by inventing marriage, contraception and much greater longevity. Hey, when God set this up, her subjects were reaching a median ripe old age of 28.3 years of age – with 39.2% of them being eaten by sabre-tooth tigers prior to the age of 12.7 (remembering that 82.7% of all statistics are made up).
While Woody Allen quipped that his brain is his second favourite organ, in truth, it is the most important sex organ.
Desire decline is complex. While Woody Allen quipped that his brain is his second favourite organ, in truth, it is the most important sex organ. All physical sensations (visual, touch, smell) that lead up to sex are processed by the brain. The problem is that your brain is also processing enormous amounts of other data – of no sexual interest – that’s competing hard with sexual inclinations.
Neurochemicals that play a role like the love hormone oxytocin and dopamine act on your brain. Adrenaline, and its brain brother nor-adrenalin, in lower
And then there is alcohol – which Shakespeare adroitly pointed out, ‘addeth to the desire but taketh away from the performance’ (actually the original quote is ‘it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance’, I prefer my misremembered version). My point is that with all these factors impacting one’s desire, it’s amazing that two’s desires ever align! Particularly when you add in the demands of modern living … and don’t even talk about having children in the picture.
Men tend to have the higher desire as they often see sex as the solution to the stress of modern living (while women often see sex as another demand of modern living). Moreover, men have 10-20 times the testosterone – the hormonal driver of libido!
The biggest problem with SDD is when it overflows and infects the greater relationship. This occurs when couples forget that SDD is normal and they start to pathologize it. This is when a couple begin to see SDD as meaning that something is going desperately ‘wrong’ in their relationship. Their partner no longer finds them attractive / the love is gone / he/she’s having an affair – all cataclysmic interpretations of this normal evolution in any relationship that lasts longer than six months.
So, when SDD comes a’knock’in, and it will, don’t blame your partner or yourself. Have a chat about how this inevitable phase has arrived and how the most important thing to do is to see it as perfectly normal. It means nothing more than you are both human.
Then, it’s time for a frank discussion around what each partner would want to increase their interest in sex. I find that all couples really need to do is have this discussion and LISTEN CAREFULLY to their partner. It is not brain surgery. This is an inevitable transition from a relationship driven by DNA to a conscious relationship driven by two people, both committed to meeting the other’s needs.
The biggest impediment to improve this problem, bar nothing, is the reluctance of one or both partners to accept that a shift has arrived from an arrangement that was effortlessly DNA driven, to one that takes effort.
When we talk about building a good relationship through working at it, this is precisely what it looks like.