1. COMPROMISE

“Obligatory sex” seems like a good compromise when one person doesn’t want sex as much as the other. It can even seem like the noble thing to do. It can take many forms, including having sex before you’re ready to make your partner happy. Or worrying you’re taking up too much time in bed so you forget yourself and give your partner that much-needed climax. It can be non-sexual too, like going without a hug or connection from your partner for days and feeling like it’s too much to ask when they’re so busy. Chipping away what matters to you bit by bit, you begin to feel like your needs don’t matter — and it stings at you and your dignity.

2. RESENTMENT

Giving up something that’s important to you to engage in “obligatory sex” to get love doesn’t come without a cost. We will fight mightily to regain the piece of ourselves that we lost in the compromise. It’s the root of resentment. And it begins to seep outside the bedroom. However kind of a person you are, however caring you are to each other, resentment starts to show in the sharp ways you respond, in the sarcastic jokes you make, or in the increased nagging to get things done around the house. You’re less generous and willing to show up for your partner.

3. COMPLAINING / WITHDRAWING

When resentment sets in, you adjust your communication. One person gets sharp and increases the complaining to feel heard. The other withdraws in response to the edginess and pressure. Neither of you feels heard or understood. And things are just so much harder to do because you’re both less generous and willing to show up for each other. At some point, these micro-aggressions add up, and you both snap more and more, which is painful and scary. 

4. ARGUING OVER THE LITTLE STUFF

Those sharp remarks keep you both on edge and small things flare up into big arguments in seconds. You get critical of each other. You might dig up past hurts to drive your point home in hopes that maybe, hopefully, finally your partner hears you and sees your hurt. Conversations about chores devolve into resentment over the lack of sex; conversations about sex invariably devolve into resentments about chores and feeling unappreciated. It gets too much and you just want to avoid it all.

5. WALKING ON EGGSHELLS

It’s hard to be loving and generous when you’re walking on eggshells, wondering every time if your efforts will be met with approval or criticism. You notice yourselves trying to manage each other, either to avoid fights or not send any wrong signals. Instead of growing closer, you protect yourselves from each other. If you do manage to have sex, it often plays out like a rigid script of “do this, don’t do that” to make it work, which breeds even more resentment. You can feel the tension in the air.

6. DISTANCING

With so many small fights and walking on eggshells, it gets harder and harder to feel close, especially since you’ve not healed from any of them. You find yourselves taking a distance or avoiding each other. It has not felt safe for a while to open up vulnerably with each other about your needs, so you dare not tell each other what’s really going on inside — which breeds even more resentment. You feel more and more alone. Sex becomes even less frequent and fraught with new challenges, which adds to the spiraling.

7. FOCUSING ON DISTRACTIONS TO GET RELIEF

This tension in your relationship is forcing you to seek relief elsewhere. You immerse yourself in your work, micromanage your children’s lives, start on a new renovation project … or escape through your phone or porn. The relief masks the real problem: that you have no way to stop the resentment and its corrosive effect on the relationship.

8. HIDING YOUR RELATIONSHIP CHALLENGES FROM OTHERS

It feels shameful to admit that your relationship is not as perfect as it looks from the outside, so you hide your challenges from your friends and family. You put on that happy smile at parties and blurt out that “EVERYTHING is great!” while deep down you know that the tension at home is tearing you apart. You feel even more alone and like a fraud.

9. FEAR AND CATASTROPHIZING

What others don’t know is that you’re constantly worrying about sex and your relationship. All that tension you’re carrying on the inside, mixed with fear, is sucking the energy out of you now every single day. When you wake up in the morning to when you close your eyes to sleep, you’re wondering: “Is this the end of the relationship? Should we even be together?” These thoughts scare the hell out of you. You keep wondering if one of you will leave and if you can handle it. The needle isn’t moving on getting better, so you assume the worst. You start to lose trust in each other, becoming suspicious of your partner’s desire for you (and their activities) and your own desirability.

10. CONTEMPT

You have been burying things so long that you simply stop caring. The respect is gone and contempt takes over. One partner blames and makes the other feel “less than,” “broken” or responsible for the problem. You become critical of each other’s actions, regard each other’s thoughts, feelings and actions as not legitimate, and dismiss concerns as invalid. You might mock each other with sarcasm and condescension, name-calling, and body language such as eye-rolling, sneering, and mimicking.

Results

Every sex problem is an intimacy problem in disguise.

At the beginning, differences in libido appear small and innocent, but the longer they are unattended, they become much harder to work on and fix — costlier, more energy consuming, and less solvable. The longer a sex problem is allowed to linger, the more it devolves into intimacy-blocking behavioral patterns that take on a life of their own and threaten to destroy the relationship.

If you find yourselves caught in this downward spiral, you need to stop the deterioration and rebuild emotional safety that will have you come closer to each other. Then and only then can you begin to open to each other sexually again.

Localized damage

The damage from the unsolved sex problem is noticeable in everyday life, but it doesn’t feel alarming yet. Maybe it’s only one of you who’s compromising, and you believe that there is no danger in that. You might have grown up believing that compromise is the road to fulfillment. This is typical in the beginning of a relationship, where we’re eager to please each other and don’t realize that the consequences of giving up something important to us is our own starvation.

ACTION STEPS: If you started the slippery slope of Stage 1, don’t wait long to seek support for the sex problem at the root of it. If one or both of you are already compromising on what’s really important to you, you will invariably slip into more resentment. There is nothing normal or healthy about having to give up something important to you for love, you will fight tooth and nail to restore your dignity. These will devolve into worse intimacy-blocking patterns over time that will affect the safety and trust in and outside of the bedroom.

There are healthier paths to fulfillment than compromise. Get sex & intimacy support where you will learn about your arousal and intimacy needs, ask for what you want and need in an intimacy-building way, and create an upward spiral of nourishment and fulfillment that serves both partners.

Sex problem spreads to your relationship

The stress of the sex problem starts to affect the relationship, especially how close and safe you feel with each other. You never heal from the fights and the distance feels palpable. Sometimes you feel less like partners, and more like enemies, fighting to be heard and understood. It hurts to see your beloved distance themselves from you.

ACTION STEPS: If you’ve already advanced to Stage 2, your sex problem is no longer about sex. No amount of sex books, new toys or positions, and even date nights will help you stop neither the pernicious cycles of not feeling heard or understood nor the caustic resentment that’s growing. The issue is now the breakdown in intimacy and closeness. Restoring the safety and closeness must happen before you can talk about sex again. You need professional support of a sex and intimacy expert to repair the hurts first so that you can fix the sex problem together.

Sex problem affects the relationship “immune system”

The lack of solutions to your sex problem — and the growing relationship problem — seem insurmountable. At best, you’re living parallel lives, lacking intimacy and connection. At worst, you are exhausted trying and you lose hope that you can fix it. The “immune system” of the relationship is no longer able to fight against the challenges and the recovery mechanism is giving out. You’re in danger of settling for the inevitable — a divorce or a sexless marriage.

ACTION STEPS: If you’ve reached the dangerous terrain of Stage 3, hope is not lost — but you must act now! You need an infusion of hope and communication tools to get you to start connecting again and believing that recovery is possible. You must face this together as a couple as the sex problem is no longer just that — it’s a relationship problem and a major one that requires both of your desires to shift it and a commitment to make it happen. And you cannot do this by yourselves, as you will repeat the same mistakes that got you here in the first place. With the help of a sex & intimacy expert who knows exactly what steps to take right away to create the biggest impact, you can rebuild the closeness and safety of intimacy to reconnect sexually in a way that grows and gets better over time.

• Read how Shannon and Greg, a couple in their 50s and married for 25+ years who were on the brink of considering separation because one partner felt rejected and unwanted by the lack of initiation from the other, recovered from hitting 9 out of 10 of these intimacy-destroying behaviors

• Learn what Sandra & Bill, a couple in 50s & 60s and married for 25 years, did to recover their love and relationship also after considering divorce because of sexual rejection
  

• Read the story of finding love and sex from Alan & Grace, who struggled to rebuild their sex life after the birth of their child and feared that they were incompatible
  

• Learn how Blair & Al, a committed couple in their mid 30s, learned to communicate vulnerably and find sexual passion after hitting 9 out of 10 of these intimacy-destroying behaviors and created a joy and fun filled relationship

Predictor of divorce

Studies by psychologist John Gottman found that contempt is the No. 1 predictor of divorce. The sex problem has spread beyond the bedroom and affects the very fabric of your relationship — respect. You may have already experienced signs of contempt at other stages of the relationship, and once you hit this place, the wounding may be too great.

ACTION STEPS: If you’ve made it all the way to Stage 4, your relationship is bleeding out. You need the ICU. You have a chance of making a recovery if and only if both partners are fully on board in taking responsibility for the contempt and investing fully into healing and reestablishing the relationship. You need the most expert approach from someone who understands these stages and nuances of a relationship to recover your marriage now. It may take years until you find yourselves back trusting and opening up to each other, but it is possible.

On the brink of divorce after 25 years together, Shannon and Bill fought to save their near-sexless marriage. Their experience led them to discover levels of emotional and sexual intimacy that they did not know existed.

Al & Blair, a couple in their 30s, were in a gridlocked place of defensiveness and power struggles that made sexual intimacy impossible. As they found their way to each other and to deeper intimacy, they discovered more freedom and fun.

After their child’s birth, Alan and Grace fell into a sexless marriage that threatened their relationship and love. After losing a year trying to fix this with couples therapy, they fought to find the support that would turn things around.

After 25 years of deep love and connection, Shannon & Greg feared that “differences in libido” would end their marriage. Learn how they broke through damaging patterns to sexy intimacy and even more love.