Help! My Sex Drive Doesn’t Match My Partners
One of the most common challenges couples face in relationships is having different levels of desire. When one partner has a higher sex drive than the other it can lead to friction and tension if not addressed in a judgment-free setting. In fact, experts say this kind of libido mismatch is totally normal and not a deal breaker for relationships.
Experts say you can gauge if you have healthy libido not by comparing yourself to your partner (or others) but instead by reflecting on your past experiences. A major red flag that your sex drive is suffering is when there is a huge dip in libido or desire from one month to the next or from one relationship to the next that leaves you feeling out of tune with how you normally think about sex. At that point, it might be worth seeing a couples therapist, sexologist, or a doctor to help evaluate the cause. Sexologist and Family Therapist Dr. Joy Berkheimer explains “There can be a shift in how safe you feel from one person to another, a shift in your health that needs to be checked out right away or a sudden stress or trauma not related to either, but that is being ignored and manifested in your body nonetheless.”
You can manage mismatched sex drives by:
Expressing What Turns You On: Be honest with your partner about your desires, including the ones you came to the relationship with and new ideas that evolve over time. Normalizing communicating openly about curiosities, insecurities, and what excites you keeps the information door swinging both ways. You can learn your partner’s ultimate arousal language and take quizzes like the erotic blueprints by Missjaiya available here.
Airing Out Any Issues: Clearing out feelings and frustrations, that have nothing to do with sex, but that do connect with how much you respect and trust your partner, should be tended to regularly so that resentments are harbored and possibly shut you down sexually, stop you from initiating or responding during intimate moments.
Building Desire: Engage in desire-building activities in between such as erotic massages, allowing your partner to be lit up by being the receiver of a touch session leaving them satisfied but anticipating more.
Redefining Intimacy: Show them other ways they are intensely loved. Work out a new love language that the two of you can speak sensually to each other.
Most importantly, whatever side of the libido scale you may be on, lead with empathy and cultivate a sense of curiosity. You can discuss ideas like quality over quantity, compromise on frequency or the type of intimacy you want to experience, and what unconscious meanings they may associate between sexual desire and love. Dr. Joy says you can “Help them understand it’s not about them (if it’s not). If it is about your relationship, be honest about that and give them an opportunity to work with you on this. If they are grieving the loss of how it was, give them space to have that grief and time to come back to you to figure out together how you can find a new way of intimacy that is still enjoyable.”
