Three Couples in Committed Relationships
Rachel and Antonio
Rachel and Antonio are a couple in their early 40s. Antonio, new to the country, moved into Rachel’s condo four years ago. They live in close quarters, with him being self-employed and working from home, and her going to the office only three times a week. Starting their relationship during COVID, they originally spent every moment together. Antonio’s attachment style is more anxious-ambivalent, and Rachel’s tendency to be anxious-avoidant is getting stronger. Antonio is what stan Tatkin calls a “wave,” and Rachel is an “island”. Her sexual desire has declined over the last two years, and triggers regular fights as Antonio feels rejected.
Antonio has not yet made friends and has found the transition to having separate lives outside their relationship challenging. When Rachel has a work dinner, Antonio wants to know who she sat next to and what the conversations were about. When she goes to the Gym, he wants to know what she talked about with her trainer. If she runs late, he starts texting or calling her. When she wants to go out with friends alone, he struggles. He also has a hard time with her family, who have not accepted him. Rachel finds herself torn between her tight-knit family and her partner’s needs for her to include him and stand up for him.
In summary, Antonio often feels left out, anxious and afraid of being abandoned. Rachel feels smothered, controlled, stressed, and guilty whenever she wants some time away from Antonio. Rachel can take some steps to keep Antonio in the loop when she is running late or to help him integrate into her family. However, her lack of sexual desire cannot be fixed by more closeness and togetherness.
Emily and Joshua
Emily and Joshua are in their early thirties and also moved in together during the COVID-19 pandemic. They call each other “my best friend and confidant,” they have a large group of common friends, and share many hobbies. To the world, they show up as a unit. When they are both home, they do everything together and have intimate conversations, sharing all their fears and insecurities. “Josh is like one of my girlfriends,” Emily says. “He is super sensitive and empathetic. He always understands when I am anxious and calms me down with his voice and touch. I can’t imagine waking up at night and he is not there to soothe me.” They have a close, loving relationship, filled with trust, and they feel very safe in it. However, over the last year, they have been stumped by Emily’s lack of sexual desire.
Taylor and Kyle
Taylor and Kyle are married with two small kids, ages 3 years and 9 months. Kyle has been working long hours since his latest promotion. They are both exhausted and find that they have lost their sexual connection. Taylor loves to be the stay-at-home parent and is actively looking to befriend other moms in her neighbourhood, but she misses Kyle during the day. When Kyle is home, their family live naturally revolves around the children. They are both devoted to being parents and excited to create a nurturing and educational space for their children. They are respectful and caring towards each other. However, Taylor is wary of Kyle’s interesting female colleagues, with whom he spends a lot of time. Paired with Kyle’s lack of initiating sex or responding enthusiastically to hers, she is starting to be increasingly concerned.
The Traditional Approach in Couples Therapy
A prevailing belief in couples therapy is that sex is a metaphor for the relationship, for what’s going on emotionally between the two people. The assumption is that if a couple is loving, caring, respectful, and nurturing, and they communicate honestly and with empathy, an ongoing erotic bond is the result. However, as much as stress and conflicts in everyday life often negatively impact a couple’s sexual intimacy, the opposite is not necessarily true. For many people, trust and emotional closeness are the foundation for good sex, but for others, increased emotional intimacy is accompanied by decreased sexual desire.
Sex is a separate and more complicated entity, and more than a metaphor for the quality of the marriage. As Psychotherapist Esther Perel, one of the most respected voices on erotic intelligence, wrote in her 2007 book, “A couple’s emotional life together and their physical life together each have their ebbs and flows, their ups and downs, but these don’t always correspond. They intersect, they influence each other, but they’re also distinct. That’s one reason why, to the chagrin of many, you can often “fix’ a relationship without doing anything for the sex.” (Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity, 25)
The Challenge for Couples
The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for safety and predictability that a marriage or long-term committed partnership provides with erotic desire that thrives on what is new, unpredictable, exciting and mysterious.
We seek a steady, reliable haven in our committed partner, a protection against loneliness and fear. However, as we ground ourselves in familiarity and domesticity, we often find ourselves orchestrating boredom. As humans, we have dual needs for connection and independence, for predictability and novelty, for safety and adventure. Love seeks closeness, but desire needs space. Closeness reduces the sense of freedom and autonomy needed for sexual desire. When two people become fused into one entity, doing everything together, connection can no longer happen. Safety, familiarity and allowing the roles as parents to take over all interactions can kill desire.
There is no need to cultivate separateness in the early stages of falling in love. Distance already exists, and we only need to focus on creating connection, on overcoming the separateness. The longer a relationship lasts, the more we get to know each other’s most inner thoughts and feelings, the more we “automate” our partner, thinking we know everything there is to discover about them.
Relationships are a constant dance of disconnection and reconnection. Both are natural and necessary for the relationship to thrive. For all three couples described above, there are different areas to work through, including some aspects not mentioned here, but the common element that contributes to the lack of desire is that they are confusing fusion with connection and are allowing their individual needs to be replaced by being a couple, respectively, a family.
The Essential Character of Eroticism
In her book “Le deuxième sexe” (The Second Sex) Simone de Beauvoir wrote, “Eroticism is a movement toward the Other, this is its essential character.” Esther Perel suggests that “our ability to tolerate our separatness—and the fundamental insecurity it engenders—is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire in a relationship.”
So, instead of striving for closeness alone, for fusion, or familiarity and emotional intimacy, couples are better off cultivating their individual selves and nurturing a sense of selfhood alongside their couplehood. Some physical, emotional, and intellectual space leads to renewed interest and a sense of mystery. Love enjoys knowing everything about the other; desire thrives on the unexpected, the novel, the mysterious, or the elusive. Or, in Esther Perel’s words, to fan the flame of desire, we need to remember that fire needs air to burn. (E. Perel, Mating in Captivity, 37)
Another aspect is sexual polarity. If a couple wants to continue having a strong sex life, there needs to be an attraction of different energies. One partner, independent of gender, has to relax into the “feminine” energy, and the other one needs to rest in the “masculine” energy. You can read more about that here.
If you have recognized yourself or your partner in this description, and you want to work on rekindling your sex life
reach out for a free Zoom consultation
Angelika Baum
Belief Change & Relationship Coaching
905-286-9466
greendoorrelaxation@yahoo.ca
There are discount packages for couples when booking regular sessions (weekly or bi-weekly).