by Joe Kort, MSW copyright
2004
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Jerry and Linda came to me to help them
with their marital problems. He felt that she had tricked
him into marrying her by “pretending” to have a high sex
drive, and believed that Linda was now withholding sex in an
effort to punish him for problems in their marriage.
Linda had a different story and said
that she herself felt tricked. In the beginning, Jerry had
turned her on “beyond belief,” more than ever before in her
whole life. But after they married, she felt that he had
stopped trying to arouse her and became selfish about his
own sexual needs.
This is a common scenario among the
heterosexual couples I see in my office—as it also is with
gay and lesbian couples. The reality is that partners’ sex
drives rarely match. Every couple has some sexual
discrepancy, based on their different baseline sex drives.
In other words, whatever your sex drive is, that’s normal
for you—unless your sexual love map suffered some trauma.
Factors like sexual abuse and sexual addiction can trump a
person’s normative libido. But otherwise, what’s unique to
you is, for you, normal.
But when love is young and fresh and
you’re infatuated with your partner, you feel high on
internal chemicals like PEA
which increase your libido. So the people with lower sex
drives can usually keep up with their partners. For a while,
you both feel like you’ve died and gone to heaven, because
you’re both getting your needs met. The person with the
higher sex drive (high-testosterone or “high–T,” for short)
think they’ve found someone who can keep up with them.
Meanwhile, the partner with less of a drive (low-T) believe
they’ve found someone who can raise their libido and move
them to be more highly motivated.
Research finds that testosterone is
linked to sex drive. In
The Truth About Love,
Pat Love
writes that
“Scientists have known for decades
that male sex drive is correlated with testosterone . .
. a hormone produced in the testes and adrenals. While
testosterone has been conclusively shown to highly
correlate with male libido, it was long dismissed as a
facto in the sex drive of women. Then in the early
1990’s, Dr. Barbara Sherwin, a researcher at McGill
University in Montreal, published her classic study
showing that women who received a testosterone treatment
reported a greater upsurge in sexual arousal, more
lustful fantasies, a stronger desire for sex, more
frequent intercourse, and higher rates of orgasm.”
Because opposites attract, Dr. Love
goes on to explain, it’s highly likely for high-T and low-T
people to become drawn to each other. During their
infatuation stage, they are matched with the help of
nature’s “time-limited plan,” in her words—the temporary
period of romantic love that bonds two people together. But
when it drops them off in the second stage of love,
the power struggle, the second
stage of any relationship, people revert to their normal
baseline libidos.
Couples often compare this second stage
unfavorably to their first stage of romantic love. Because
few people know about these physiological changes, they
blame the problem on their partner. “You turned me on in the
beginning,” says the low-T partner. “Why aren’t you turning
me on now?”
“You liked the things we did in the
beginning,” counters the high-T partner, “but now you’re
holding out on me!” Many couples see this as the beginning
of the end, but such is not the case. The truth is, both the
low-T and high-T person need to learn to cooperate with one
another and understand where the other is coming from. From
The Truth About Love, here are some “Tips for the
Lagging Libido.”
1. Ask not only what is best for
you, but also what is best for the relationship.
Pat Love says is that it’s unfair to be in a
relationship and not engage in sexual activity, if that’s
what your partner wants. Dr. Love says, “It isn’t fair to
say to a partner, ‘I won’t be sexual with you, and you
better not go get it somewhere else either’.” That’s a
non-relational way of addressing the sexual issues.
2. Be a consumer activist for your
sexual health.
Learn whatever you can about what you can do for your
body and your personal chemistry to let yourself find
pleasure in your sexual self.
3. Do what it takes to maintain a
positive attitude about sex.
4. Make sex a priority.
Make it a priority that is, once you determine that sex
is important to you and your relationship. At the beginning
of therapy, couples are often not ready to do this, even if
they want to. To make sex a priority, you must each feel
safe and trusting of the other.
5. Understand that low desire is
often no reflection on your relationship.
6. Understand that high sex drive
can be normal for women, as well as men.
7. Accept the differences between
you and your partner.
8. Communicate your sexual needs.
9. Be willing to give as well as
receive.
And one additional tip I can add:
10. Leave out judgments about your
partner.
So very often I see couples judging each other
negatively, simply because they have different sexual needs
and desires. They usually fare much better once they both
recognize their differences and accept that each has his/her
own unique idea of what sex is. Then they’re willing to make
changes as a couple.
