Q&A: Woman With Higher Desire
For some, flipping the script feels like hell
Confidence and Joy is a newsletter by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Subscribe here. You can also follow Emily on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!
Here’s a great question from a reader:
Q: I am a female with spontaneous desire married to a male with predominantly responsive desire. In other words, I’m in hell. I can’t find a single support group or even other female to discuss. All of my searches leave me feeling worse as I read over and over again “how to solve females’ natural responsive desire.” Good you give me any directions towards books for me or support groups or how to kill my libido or of this is even survivable?
A: Oh, I can hear how very alone you feel, and yet I know you’re actually in very, very good company. When I talked to Amanda Doyle on her and her sister’s podcast, she told the same story of being a higher desire woman married to a lower desire man. She, too, felt miserable and like she was the only one. And multiple people called or wrote in to the podcast saying they had the same experience. There are so many of you!
In fact, among heterosexual couples who seek sex therapy for differences in desire, men are just as likely as women to be the lower-desire partner.
And of course therapy is what I’m going to recommend for you and your husband, because you describe the situation as “hell.” Just not having sex is not, in itself, dangerous or a form of true bodily deprivation. If you feel like you’re in hell, it’s because, for you, sex serves some further function, beyond just the sensations of sex, and that is the issue that needs to be addressed.
Currently you are trapped in what I call the “chasing dynamic,” where the more you ask, the more pressured he feels, and the more pressured he feels, the more difficult it is for him to want or enjoy sex. The result is you both feel terrible and neither of you is getting your needs met, and because you’re busy feeling bad about sex, you’re not turning your attention toward what the sex MEANS.
To be 100% clear: I say this to all people, of every gender, who feel frustrated, alone, angry, blaming, despairing, or any other big feelings around being the higher desire partner in a relationship. The biology is not very different, and it’s not a drive in any human.
What is very different between men and women is the cultural narrative we’re taught. We are generally instructed by modern culture that men want sex for sex’s sake and women are supposed to want sex for the sake of the relationship. So when a woman is the lower-desire partner in a straight relationship, it agrees with the script we’ve all memorized and it makes sense. But when a man is the lower-desire partner, it doesn’t fit the script, which is why… well, as you put it, it feels like you’re in hell. It’s this nightmarish state where you have to question everything mainstream media and culture have ever represented about how masculine sexuality works and how feminine sexuality works.
So as you prepare for therapy, give this activity a try. Write down your full and complete answers to these questions: (If writing is not how you process, you can draw instead, or create a collage or, heck, a Pinterest board! What matters is the exploration, the processing, not the mode we use to process.)
What is it that I want, when I want sex?
(It’s not just orgasm. You can have that on your own. What is it that you want, when you want sex with another person, in particular with your spouse?)
What does it seem like my partner doesn’t want, when he doesn’t want sex?
(Again, not just orgasm, and notice the “seem like.” The only way to know for sure what he doesn’t want is… you guessed it!... ask him. And you’d have to ask in a context where he doesn’t feel pressure, which is why: therapy!)
I confess that suggesting a woman spend time thinking about their sexual connection from the man’s point of view feels very different than suggesting that a man spend more time thinking about the woman’s point of view. Part of our gender training is that women are supposed to be willing and eager to sacrifice ourselves for everyone else’s comfort and convenience, to work hard to understand and anticipate the needs of the men around us. So for me to advise you to consider your partner’s perspective feels all too close to reinforcing the gender script.
But here’s the way I see it: You need something in your relationship that you are not getting. Everything you’ve tried so far has failed so badly that you feel like you’re being tortured and you want to kill off your sexuality. If you want to stay in the relationship—and you get to choose whether or not you stay—you’ll have to create space for your partner’s needs. Right now you’re completely overwhelmed by your own needs, so that’s a gigantic ask. It is not easy. But this is how it works.
As for book recommendations, maybe someone reading this knows of a book specifically about being a higher-desire woman in a straight relationship? If you do, please put it in the comments!
For more general, very recent books about sex therapy, I can recommend Ian Kerner’s new book So Tell Me about the Last Time You Had Sex. For books that explicitly delineate (and help resolve!) the bullshit we’re taught about gender and sexuality, check out Barry and Emily McCarthy’s books, Contemporary Male Sexuality and Finding Your Sexual Voice. Sarah Hunter Murray’s Not Always In the Mood is a good science-y book to understand responsive or no desire in men.
A concluding side note for everyone reading this, I want to make sure we all remember that spontaneous and responsive desire aren’t static states. For most people, whether we experience desire as spontaneous or responsive will vary from relationship to relationship, season of life to season of life, and even just day to day.
Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com
Feel free to say hello on 📷 Instagram, 🦤 Twitter and 🤖 Facebook – I don't always reply but I read everything.
Signed copies of Come As You Are can be obtained from my amazing local bookseller, Book Moon Books.
Stay safe and see you next time.
