Woman in a Sexless Marriage? Start Talking About What You Want.
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A companion piece to Sexless Marriage: What Happens When Men Talk About Their Feelings
In Short:
In a sexless marriage, it's easy for a woman to become fluent in what she doesn't want: sex that feels like a chore, unwanted touch, pressure, or intimacy that doesn't feel good anymore. But knowing what you don't want is only the beginning. Rebuilding sexual intimacy starts with discovering what you do want — and finding the words to communicate it.
Speaking about desire isn't just about naming what turns you on. It's also how you ask for support, to be heard, and speak up for the conditions your desire actually needs to survive. Ultimately, your voice is an important part of sexless marriage recovery and your power to shape the experience of your relationship and sex life to work for you.
Reading time: 9 minutes
This is especially true for women living in a sexless marriage: after months or years of pressure around frequency of sex, conversations about sexual intimacy can become almost entirely focused on what's wrong:
I don't want sex.
I don't miss it.
I don't want to be touched that way.
I don't know why I don't want him anymore.
I hear versions of these sentences constantly — from clients, from women in my audiences, from women who corner me at parties the moment they learn what I do for a living.
Notice what all four of these actually have in common. Every one of them is a statement about absence. Not wanting. Not missing. Not this. Not anymore. Ask a woman how her sex life is, and more often than not, she'll hand you a precise, articulate list without missing a beat: she knows exactly what she doesn't want, doesn't feel and doesn't miss.
Now ask that same woman what she does want — what would actually turn her on, what desire even feels like in her body when it's present — and watch what happens to that fluency.
It disappears.
She hesitates. She deflects. She says "I don't know" — and she means it.
This isn't a coincidence, and it isn't happening to just a handful of women. It's happening to most of us, in strikingly similar language, for a very specific reason: we have never been given the self-insight, the language, or the practiced muscle to identify and voice desire — only to name the consequences of its absence.
We are extraordinarily well trained in stating what's wrong. We are almost entirely untrained in naming what we want.
And that gap costs far more than good sex. It costs power. Because power doesn't start with being able to say what's broken. It starts with being able to say, clearly and specifically, what you want — and to assert your need thereafter in the face of pushback. Without this skill, you're left forever managing the problem — never actually moving toward anything.
And what happens when women build the capacity to ask for what they want — in their lives, but especially in sex?
Over the years, I've watched what happens.
Women soften. They get curious about their own bodies instead of critical of them. They get clearer about what they actually want — sensually, emotionally, sexually — and practically, outside the bedroom. They stop performing sex and start locating their own desire. And they start asking for it.
And, without exception, they become more powerful. Not louder. Not more demanding. Just more in ownership of who she is. And more in her power to shape the experience of sex, career, relationship, and life around her to work for her.
When a woman learns to name what she wants and ask for it, she comes truly capable of shaping the experiences of life, relationships — and sex — to work for her.
When a Woman’s Low Libido Tells the Truth for Her
Without realizing it, a woman’s lack of desire is telling the truth about something she hasn’t been able — or hasn’t felt brave enough — to say directly.
Many women learn, sometimes over an entire lifetime, that certain truths aren't safe or welcome to say out loud. I feel unsupported. I feel distant from you. I need more help than I'm getting. I need there to be room in this bedroom for what I want, not just what you want.
These are enormous things to say directly. They risk conflict. They risk disappointing someone. They risk being told she's asking for too much — or being met with silence, which can be worse.
So instead of saying it, her body says it for her. Quietly. Without a single argument. Her libido simply disappears.
Low libido becomes the one form of protest that doesn't require confrontation. It's not weakness, and it isn't dysfunction. It's honesty, routed through the one channel that felt safe enough to carry it — because she wasn't willing, or wasn't yet able, to carry it in words.
This is, at its core, the same truth I write about in When Low Libido Is Simply Common Sense — that her body is often doing exactly what it should, given the circumstances. But I want to go a layer deeper here. It's not only that her low libido makes sense. It's that her low libido is saying something specific on her behalf — something she hasn't yet found the words, or the safety, to say herself.
Her lack of desire might be quietly saying: "I feel unsupported, and I don't know how to ask for help without it becoming a fight."
Or: "I feel distant from you, and I don't know how to say that without sounding like I'm accusing you of something."
Or: "There's no room here for what I actually want, so at some point I stopped bringing anything to the table at all."
In this way, a woman’s libido is a powerful truth-teller.
It has a way to tell our truth louder and more clearly than what we’re able to tell it ourselves.
This is why the work is rarely about "fixing" her libido directly — cranking some internal dial back up through more effort, more scheduling, more trying. The real work is asking: what is this desire trying to tell the truth about? And then finding the courage to say that underlying truth out loud, in words, instead of leaving her body to keep carrying it alone.
Because when she finally speaks the truth her desire has been telling for her — I feel unsupported. I feel far from you. I need this to change — something shifts. Not always immediately, and not without some discomfort along the way. But too often, desire itself begins to return, simply because the thing it was protecting her from having to say has finally been said.
Loss of sexual desire is neither a malfunction nor a disease. It is a source of information.
Low sexual desire isn't automatically a malfunction or disease. In most sexless marriages, it is important information about what is happening (or missing) in the woman's life, relationship, body, or sexual experience.
And when a woman starts listening to that information — when she starts putting words to what she wants, what she needs, what feels good, what she's curious about, and what she cannot be without — she begins to come back into relationship with herself, which then can change the relationship with her partner.
That point of truth-telling is where desire can begin to change.
Focusing on What You Don't Want Keeps You Stuck
In a sexless marriage, conversations about sexual intimacy can become almost entirely focused on what isn't happening.
It’s not that what you don’t want is not worth naming. It’s important information about things you want to avoid and your boundaries. But it’s only the beginning.
I don't want sex to feel like a chore.
I don't want to be touched like that.
I don't want touch to always lead somewhere.
This is reactionary language — it is what gets said in response to what is being offered. When uttered, it stops the conversation. Nothing changes. Once you’ve named what you don’t want, the conversation has nowhere to go.
Focusing only on what you don't want is disempowering — because it keeps you oriented toward what's missing, what's wrong and what needs to stop. It's a conversation entirely about absence. And absence, by definition, doesn't move you anywhere. It just confirms its emptiness.
Yet when you shift the conversation — even slightly — toward desire, something different happens.
Instead of "This is what don't I want," it could be:
This is what would feel better to me right now …
This is what am I curious about …
This is something that I would like to try instead …
This is something I am wondering about instead …
The next natural thing to follow in the conversation is the discussion about getting that.
Talking about what you desire literally begins to move you toward creating it. It orients your attention, your body and your nervous system toward possibility instead of protection. It gives you practice using a muscle most women have never been taught to use at all: your own voice, in service of your own pleasure.
And it gives your partner something to actually work with, instead of an ever-growing list of landmines to avoid.
I go deeper into why your voice about your desire is the one skill nearly every woman who does enjoy sex has in common in my blog article Do Women Like Sex? Believe me, it isn't a body type, a personality, or luck that women who enjoy sex have. It's the willingness to keep finding words for what's true, and to say them out loud — because that allows you to have the experience of sex that works for you.
From “I Don’t Want” to “I Want”
Underneath every complaint and dislike, there is something you do want — and we know that, because you’re saying that you’re not getting it.
So let’s start with what you do not want and reverse-engineer to arrive at your desire:
Maybe you don’t want to have sex at this moment or tonight — but you do want to feel close. What might that closeness look like? Cuddling on the couch. Holding hands. Laying naked on the bed caressing each other, with no goal whatsoever.
Maybe you don’t want to be touched with the expectation that it will lead somewhere — but you do want to be held. What would that look like?
Maybe you don’t want the kind of sex you’ve been having — but you are curious about what might actually feel good.
Maybe you don’t want to initiate — but you do want to feel desired. What would that look like?
When you begin talking about what you want, something shifts. You are no longer only describing the absence. You are beginning to imagine an experience that could exist.
Imagination becomes language. And language can become a conversation — and a conversation can become an experiment.
And an experiment can create something new.
Talking about desire can literally move you toward creating it.
And it can sound like:
I am not ready for moving to undressing yet; it would feel better to me to continue kissing on the couch here.
I don’t know specifically what I want next, but I curious about slowing down and exploring our touch even slower right now. What would it feel like to really slow down?
I don’t like when you grab me out of nowhere from behind in the kitchen. What I would like to try instead is that you take a moment to notice that I am available, turned my body towards you, looked into my eyes, and slowly kissed me instead.
Desire is more than a feeling. It is information. It is direction. It is agency in motion. It becomes a way of orienting yourself toward the experience you want to create — not just in sexual intimacy, but in your relationship and in your life.
You can’t shape an experience to work for you around a desire you can’t name. And you can’t move toward something you never allow yourself to imagine.
This is what makes talking about sexual intimacy so powerful for women. It isn't simply about becoming better at communicating with a partner. First and foremost, it is about becoming more connected to yourself — and your agency. You become the creator of experiences in your life, not just a mere responder to what comes your way.
And that is where your power begins.
Read more about how to reverse engineer resentments and “don’t wants” in my older blog post Unmet Needs Lead to Resentment. This Can Help.
Sexual Desire Starts Well Before the Bedroom
There's a moment I see over and over in my work with couples.
They're in bed. The man turns to the woman, sincerely, gently:
“What do you want?”
It sounds like the right question. But by the time they are in the bedroom, it may already be impossible for her to answer. Because what she needs in order to want sex starts long before she gets into bed.
Desire doesn't get built in that moment. It gets built long before it — and it's your job as a woman to start building it, not his job to extract it.
I know that this sentence might land uncomfortably. It sounds like I am putting the responsibility on you, the woman, and in a way, I am — not the responsibility for pleasing him, but the responsibility for you and your needs and desires being known.
Here's the truth: a man cannot read a map you haven’t drawn himyet. He cannot navigate to a place you’ve never named. And the pattern of waiting — waiting to be asked, waiting to be figured out, waiting for him to somehow intuit what would feel good — keeps a woman in a passive role in her own experience.
It also, unintentionally, sets him up to fail. He wants to be the one who gets it right for her. But he cannot get right what was never said out loud.
This is why the conversation has to start with you — and it has to start long before the bedroom.
You know you need to feel emotionally close to him to open up sexually.
And that is related to feeling supported around the mental load rather than like you’re carrying the entire household on your back.
There are needs and desires you need to ask for around that.
You know that you need time to come down from the day.
And that is related to receiving affection and touch that doesn't automatically become a bid for sex.
And there are needs and desires you need to ask around that.
None of that can be created in the ten minutes before sex.
Sexual desire is shaped by what happens between you and your partner long before you get to the bedroom.
This is the central idea behind my forthcoming book, DESIRE UNDER PRESSURE: How to Keep Sex & Desire Alive When Real-Life Gets in the Way. The pressures of modern life — careers, children, exhaustion, the endless logistics of running a household — don't have to be the enemies of desire. But they will quietly bury it if a woman doesn't speak up about what she's carrying and what she needs. When she does speak up — to her partner, to herself, and often first to other women — she starts to shape not just what happens in the bedroom, but the entire life around it that makes wanting possible in the first place.
This is especially important in a sexless marriage, where the pressure to have sex can become so loud that there is little room left to ask a different question:
What would actually help me want to be here?
Instead, the conversation often becomes:
Why don't you want sex?
When are we going to have sex again?
What do I need to do to get you in the mood?
Why can't you just relax and enjoy it?
But desire doesn't respond well to pressure. And when the existing emotional and sexual connection doesn't work for you, more pressure to participate in it isn't necessarily going to create more desire.
It is about telling him what you need before you needs it.
Instead of waiting until you’re overwhelmed, you say:
“When I've had a hard day, I don't need you to fix it. I need you to listen and hold me for a few minutes.”
Instead of waiting until she's resentful from carrying too much:
“I need you to take bedtime tonight so I can have some time to myself.”
Instead of waiting until affection has become loaded with the expectation of sex:
“I want more touching between us that doesn't have to go anywhere.”
Instead of waiting until they're in bed to explain what helps her feel sexual:
“I need more time to slow down. I want more kissing and touching before we think about having sex.”
Instead of waiting for him to guess how you want to be comforted after a hard day:
"When I'm like this, I don't need solutions. I need you to just hold me for two minutes."
Instead of waiting for him to notice you're running on empty:
"I have nothing left tonight. Can you take bedtime so I can have twenty minutes alone?"
Instead of waiting until you're in bed to somehow figure it out together, you say — over coffee, in the car, on a walk:
"I've been thinking about what I actually want more of between us. Can we talk about it this week?"
Instead of waiting for him to ask what turns you on, you say:
"I love it when you kiss my neck first, before anything else. Start there."
Instead of hoping he'll eventually understand how you like to be hugged — tightly, or loosely, held or simply touched — you say it. Plainly. Even if it feels strange to say something so small out loud.
These aren't separate from sex. This is part of sex.
Everything is. Support. Time. Affection. Touch. Connection. Physical closeness. The way you speak to each other. The way he responds when she says no. Everything.
The pattern is the same across all of it: if you wait to be asked, you hand away your own direction. If you go first, you give him something real to meet you with.
This isn't a burden you're carrying alone, either — it's a muscle, and muscles get built with practice, ideally long before you need them under pressure. The goal isn't to have one perfect, exhaustive conversation. It's to build the habit of going first, in small ways, constantly — so that when you do end up in bed together, you're not starting the conversation from zero. You're simply continuing one you already started, together, out loud, long before it mattered this much.
What Happens When Women Finally Talk About Their Desire?
For a woman in a sexless marriage, learning to talk about desire can change much more than what happens in the bedroom.
When women learn and build up the courage to speak about their desires, something powerful happens.
Simply put: women find themselves.
(Interestingly, something similar happens when men learn to speak about their feelings.)
The hardest part isn't that a woman lacks desire somewhere inside her. Believe me, we all have lots of desires, needs and cravings. It's that women rarely have inner permission and a place safe enough to go looking for it, name it, and practice saying it out loud.
As a result, when women do this work:
They stop performing desire and start locating it.
They become more specific without becoming more demanding.
More vulnerable without becoming more exposed.
Clearer — about what they actually want.
And — often for the first time — connected to their own pleasure without losing themselves in someone else's expectations of them.
And when a woman finds her words to her own desire, her partner often discovers something they hadn't been able to reach before: a woman who is there. Fully, actually there.
Not a woman who is managing the moment. Not a woman who is waiting for it to be over.
A woman who is present, wanting, and owning of herself.
1. Words Create Clarity
When a woman has enough safety and enough language to explore her desire, she often becomes clearer — not more confused, as you might expect.
Do I want more touch?
Yes.
But what kind?
Do I want to feel adored, or do I want to feel wanted urgently?
Do I want slowness, or play?
Do I want emotional closeness first, every time — or does that depend on the day?
Do I want sex more, or do I want better sex less often?
Do I want to feel like the pursuer sometimes, instead of always the one being pursued?
Do I want to explore this alone first, before I bring it into the relationship?
These are very different questions, and you cannot answer any of them from inside shame or obligation. You have to find your way underneath those first — from a place of curiosity and permission.
That's where clarity lives.
2. Clarity Creates More Choices
When a woman can get clear and find words for what's happening in her body, she gets more choices.
She can distinguish exhaustion from disinterest — and make a choice to address it.
She can differentiate disconnection and loneliness from lack of libido — and make a choice to address it.
She can identify her resentments as a source of lack of sexual attraction — and make a choice to address them.
She can distinguish a true illness from a body that is saying no because it needs more time — and make a choice to address it.
She then has the power to lead the conversation into the direction she needs.
Instead of: "I guess I just don't like sex."
She may be able to say: "I don't think I've ever had sex slow enough, or connected enough, to know what I actually like."
Instead of: "I'm too tired, maybe another time" — said for the fortieth time in a row — she may be able to say: "My body needs time without pressure to have sex to feel safe and unrushed before desire shows up. Can we build that in our daily routine, instead of hoping it appears?"
Instead of quietly absorbing the entire mental load of the household and wondering why she has nothing left to give at night: She may be able to say: "I need you to take this off my plate — not because I can't do it, but because I can't do it and still have anything left over for us. I need your help with this."
Instead of going along with something because it's easier than the conversation: She can begin to lead the conversation.
That's not "high maintenance." That's a woman using her voice to get her own needs met — the very thing I point to as the antidote to the twenty-seven quiet libido-killers in The Biggest Threat to a Woman's Libido.
3. Talking About Desire Makes Sex Better — for Both People
There is another benefit to a woman becoming fluent in her own desire:
It makes sex genuinely better.
When a woman becomes present to the process that leads to her own arousal — what actually builds it, what interrupts it, what it feels like in her body before she even wants intercourse — she becomes more available. Not performing availability. Actually available. I map out exactly what that arousal process looks like, physiologically and emotionally, in What Is Arousal and Why It's So Important for Women's Sexual Desire — because most women have never been taught to recognize it, let alone name it out loud.
She can say:
"I loved that you slowed down there."
"I want to be touched like this, not that."
"I'm starting to feel it — don't stop."
"I want this to be about pleasure, not a performance for either of us."
That's intimacy.
And it is not the theoretical “knowing what you want” kind. This is the granular, specific, often clumsy and unglamorous act of naming what's true — in the moment that the desire arises.
It lives in small moments across a couple's shared life:
In finally saying "actually, slower" instead of enduring. In naming a fantasy you've never said out loud. In noticing your own arousal building and staying with it instead of rushing past it toward the finish line.
These small moments are where erotic intimacy actually gets built. And it changes sex — and sexual desire — for both partners.
Because when a woman is connected to and vocal about her own desire, sex no longer has to be something that happens to her, or for him, or despite her. It becomes something they're building together, out loud, in real time.
Why Women Need Talk to Other Women About Sex
Sometimes, all it takes is hearing another woman say something out loud for you to realize you can say it, too.
“I don't want sex right now, but I don’t know what I want.”
“I wish I could tell my husband I want more from our conversations, but I don’t dare to.”
“I don't actually know what turns me on; I never had really good sexual experiences other women brag about.”
“I need much more time to get aroused than I thought I was supposed to. Is that true for you too?”
The things that we all face similar worries, fears and insecurities about sex and sexual desire — but that we end up struggling with them alone.
This can be especially powerful when you're in a sexless marriage. Because when the disappearance of sex becomes a source of conflict and repeating negative cycles, it becomes very difficult to talk about it at all. You may not be talking to your partner about sex — and the other things you need to come into sex with desire — because every conversation seems to turn into pressure, defensiveness, disappointment, or another argument about how long it's been.
And you may not be talking to your friends about it either.
It can feel too private.
Too embarrassing.
Too vulnerable.
You might worry that they'll judge you — or your partner.
So you keep it to yourself.
Meanwhile, the story in your head can get louder:
Something is wrong with me.
I should want sex.
I don't know why I don't want him.
Maybe I'm broken.
Maybe everyone else's marriage is different.
Maybe this is just what happens when you get older.
This is where talking to other women can create a powerful interruption.
Not because another woman has the answer for you.
But because she might say “Me too” and suddenly, the thing you've been carrying alone becomes something you can speak about.
Even though woman are talking to other women about sex, according to research published in 2026, there is a lot of sexual territory women aren't talking about with each other. While conversations with friends about sex tend to focus on frequency, birth control, good sex, problems with sex, and bad sex, women also reported wanting to talk more about subjects that can feel more vulnerable or taboo, including low sex drive. Fear of discomfort, judgment, privacy concerns, and cultural expectations can all make these conversations harder to have.
There is another reason these conversations matter: what we don't talk about tends to stay difficult to talk about. Research on women's sexual communication with friends found that avoidance can become cyclical: the more uncomfortable or taboo a subject feels, the more we avoid it, and the more we avoid it, the more uncomfortable it remains.
Which means that sometimes, someone simply has to go first.
One woman says something out loud that has been sitting quietly inside her. Another woman realizes she has been thinking the same thing. Or something completely different. Maybe she thinks, “Me too.” Maybe she thinks, “I've never thought about it that way.” Or even, “That's not what I want at all.”
All three are useful.
The point isn't to learn what you're supposed to want from other women. It's to become more comfortable hearing women talk honestly about sex — and, in the process, become more comfortable hearing yourself.
And how women respond matters. The research suggests that friends can be important sources of sexual information and support, but they can also reinforce sexual norms and act as gatekeepers around what feels acceptable to talk about.
So there is a big difference between talking about sex with someone who immediately tells you what you should do and talking with someone who can simply say:
“Tell me more.”
“I've felt that too.”
“What do you think you want?”
“I don't know either.”
That kind of conversation doesn't hand you an answer. It gives you permission to find your own.
And that may be one of the most powerful things women can give each other: not advice, not comparison, not a standard to measure ourselves against, but a space where the things we have been afraid, embarrassed, or simply unaccustomed to saying can finally become sayable.
Because the more we practice speaking about sex without shame or judgment, the more possible it becomes to speak honestly about our own desires.
And eventually, to say them to the person who needs to hear them most: our partner.
For a woman in a sexless marriage, this kinds of openness and safety around sexual desire is a lifeline.
You might hear another woman talk about her low libido and realize you're not uniquely broken.
You might hear someone describe needing more time, more touch, or more connection and realize you aren't asking for too much.
You might hear someone say, “I don't know what I want either,” and feel relieved that you don't have to have the answer.
You don't have to figure out the situation alone.
This is also part of what Pam Costa's work about women’s groups speaks to. In her TEDxPaloAlto talk, Reclaiming Female Sexual Desire, she describes creating safe spaces where women could talk openly about their sexual experiences and find connection and peer support. The power wasn't in women telling each other what they should want. It was in creating a space where women could speak honestly about what was true for them.
Sometimes the greatest gift another woman gives you isn't an answer.
It's permission.
How to Talk to Your Husband About Sex in a Sexless Marriage
Talking about your desires with your partner can feel vulnerable. But there is something deeply empowering about telling a man what you want.
It empowers him because now he knows. And it empowers you because you have given yourself a chance to actually get what you want.
Think about what happens when you don't tell him.
He has a few choices.
He can poke around in the dark, trying to figure out what might work for you. He may try one thing, get it wrong, and walk straight into a landmine of your frustration or disappointment. Then he tries something else. Gets it wrong again. Over time, he will become hesitant to initiate at all — or resentful that he can't get it right with you.
Or he can do what worked for some other woman he knows (and we know how wonderful that feels). Maybe it worked for her, he reasons. Maybe it worked in a movie. Maybe it's what he's been taught women want.
But you aren't her. And you and your situation are unique and important.
Your other option?
You can tell him.
This is what I want.
Or maybe you genuinely don't know yet.
You can say that, too.
“I don't know what I want yet, but I want to find out with you.”
That is not a failure to communicate. It is an invitation to the both of you to create the kind of intimacy that brings you both together.
You are giving him information he can actually work with — and giving yourself the possibility of experiencing something you actually want.
Because your partner cannot reliably guess your desire — he can only respond to what you tell him.
This is where talking about sex becomes an act of empowerment. You are no longer waiting for him to figure you out. You are participating in creating the sexual relationship you want.
Of course, telling the truth only works when there is room for the truth to be received. If your desire is met with pressure, defensiveness, disappointment, ridicule, or an expectation that you now have to deliver on everything you've named, it becomes harder to keep speaking.
But when there is enough safety to say, “This is what I want,” something changes.
You have a voice.
He has information.
And together, you have something to work with.
It may not be that things change the first time. Then you come back and say again: “This is what I want. I need to talk to you about it.” And again and again. Having a voice does not mean that you say it once, and it’s done. It means that you stick around to advocate for yourself over and over and over.
That is very different from trying to have sex while one person is hoping the other will finally guess what she needs.
Desire gives you a direction.
Speaking it gives the two of you a place to go.
Advocacy makes it happen.
Resources for the Woman Who’s Ready to Use Her Voice
If you're reading this and thinking, I want to go first. I want to tell him what I want. But I genuinely don't know what I want—or how to begin saying it — you’re in the right place.
For many women, the problem isn't actual a lack of desire. Your body, mind and heart are constantly wanting, craving, and needing. It's that we've spent so much time responding to what we don't want, what isn't working, what we're tired of, or what our partner wants from us that we've lost touch with the question:
What do I want?
And you can't confidently ask for something you haven't yet put words to.
That's why I created these resources. Each one takes you a little further — from discovering your desires, to putting them into words, to having the conversations that can actually change your sex life.
1. Start by discovering what you want
If you tend to know what you don't want much more easily than what you do, start with this free mini-course:
How to Know What You Want & Confidently Ask for It
This isn't about sitting down and trying to come up with a logical answer to “What do I want?” from your head.
Being a Somatic Experiencing and trauma resolution practitioner, I use a body-based, somatic approach that taps into your body to give you information that your mind can't always access. What feels good? What makes you soften, open, lean in? What creates tension or resistance? What are you craving more of?
The goal is to reconnect with your own experience so that you can begin to distinguish what you actually want from what you've learned you should want.
And if all you can access at first is a complaint—I hate when he does this. I don't want sex like that. I'm so tired of always having to...—that's useful information, too.
Which brings us to the next resource.
2. Turn what you don't want into a clue about what you do want
Sometimes your desire is hiding inside your complaint.
In Unmet Needs Lead to Resentment. This Can Help., I show you how to look behind complaints, dissatisfaction, resentment, and criticism to find the need underneath.
Instead of stopping at:
“I'm so annoyed that I always have to take care of everything.”
you can ask:
What do I actually need?
Maybe it's shared responsibility. More predictability. Time for yourself. Space to relax. Feeling like you're being cared for, too.
And then go one step further:
Why does that matter to me?
That “why” is important. It connects the practical thing you're asking for to your emotional experience. In one of the examples in the article, having a clear plan for the week isn't really about scheduling—it creates enough predictability and space to relax and have more energy for family and the relationship.
This is particularly important for sexual desire because what happens in your everyday life can affect what is possible between you sexually. When your needs are chronically unmet and resentment builds, closeness and sexual intimacy can become much harder to access.
3. Then learn how to actually talk about sex
Once you have even a little more clarity about what you want, the next challenge is saying it.
That's what How to Talk About Sex With Your Partner is for.
One of the biggest mistakes couples make is assuming there is only one conversation about sex: the one that happens while you're having sex.
But that's actually the hardest place to start.
Talking about sex in the moment is an advanced skill because you're both vulnerable, emotionally activated, and focused on what's happening right then. It's much easier to build that skill by first learning how to talk about sex when you're fully clothed and not under pressure.
I break sex conversations into three kinds:
The Discovery Conversation is where you get curious about each other outside the bedroom. You can ask questions like:
The Intimacy Sandbox is an experiential converation that takes place between you.
And lastly, the conversation in the moment where you get to ask for an adjustment, say what feels good, ask to slow down, redirect something, or tell your partner what you'd like more of.
You don't have to know everything before you begin
If you've spent years saying “I don't know,” that doesn't mean there is nothing inside you to discover. It may simply mean you haven't had enough space, attention, curiosity, or permission to find out.
So start small. Notice what you like. Notice what you don't. Turn a complaint into a question. Ask yourself what you need. Find the feeling underneath the need. Give it words. And then, when you're ready, tell him. The more you know about your own desire, the more you can give your partner something real to meet you with.
That is the path of intimacy.
If you recognize yourself somewhere in this article — the exhaustion, the disconnection, the quiet conclusion that you're "just not that sexual" — I want you to know that your sexual desire likely isn't gone. It may simply be hiding under pressure, waiting for safety, for language, and for permission to be spoken — about what you want, and about what you need in order to want it.
My forthcoming forthcoming book, Desire Under Pressure: How to Keep Sex & Desire Alive When Real-Life Gets in the Way, goes deeper into exactly this — how to reclaim desire in the middle of real, busy, demanding life, not in spite of it. Click the link to sign up to receive the first chapter when it is released.
