This is especially true when it has been a longstanding difference, rather than a temporary or transient situation (e.g., due to a stretch of work stress or the birth of a baby). Couples where both partners initiate sex about equally tend to be happier than those couples where one partner does most of the initiating. Those couples where it was always one partner tended to be the least happy—not just in their sex life, but in their relationship overall. So it’s important to address these initiation imbalances if they are casting a long shadow on other parts of your sex life or relationship. “In around 60 percent www.cupid-feel.org of the couples that I see in my clinical practice, it is the women who have a higher sex drive,” sex therapist Gila Shapiro said. In an ideal world, each couple would be made up of two partners with identical sex drives.
Biological Factors That Affect Sex Drive
The goal isn’t to convince your partner to change to match you perfectly. It’s to better understand each other’s needs and find ways to bridge the gap. Different sexual needs often create emotional ripple effects.
What do you do when you and your partner have mismatched sex drives? When you want more sex than your partner (or less sex than your partner), you end up with hurt feelings. The person who wants more sex often feels rejected and angry while the person who wants less sex often feels pressured and resentful. What you’ve been doing hasn’t been working or you wouldn’t be here right now! What you need is a new perspective and a new approach, so here are my top five tips to create the intimacy you’ve been craving if you and your partner have different sex drives. If you are struggling to have this conversation with your partner, couples therapy may be a good avenue to explore.
- Find what’s blocking your desire and choose one small shift to try this week.
- This phenomenon, known as the mismatch effect, highlights how partners with significantly different levels of sexual desire can experience tension and frustration.
- Ask genuine questions and listen to understand rather than defend.
Explore Underlying Factors
Most mismatched libidos couples find that impatience can lead to frustration and exacerbate the issue. Honesty is key in discussing mismatched libidos, but it’s equally important to be sensitive to your partner’s feelings. Share your true feelings and desires, but do so in a way that is considerate and empathetic. This can happen with sex, but also with anything else where partners have different desired frequencies, like going out to eat.
Mismatched Libidos? How To Manage Different Sex Drives
Often a pattern emerges of one partner asking for sex and then feeling rejected, which can cause a further divide. My recommendation for a sexually incompatible marriage is for the partner with the higher sex drive to cultivate a steady masturbation practice to take the pressure off of the lower-drive partner. This takes the guesswork out of “when are we going to have sex?