How Couples Can Deal With Mismatched Sex Drives, According To A Sex Therapist

One of the most common problems faced by long-term couples is desire discrepancy—one partner wants more sex than the other. It's a frustrating place to be for both parties: One person doesn't feel sexually satisfied or desirable in their relationship, the other feels pressured to have sex they don't really want, and both usually feel guilty for putting their partner in this position.

One excellent way couples can deal with the issue is to see a sex therapist, who can work with them in building a new, mutually satisfying intimate life together. How does sex therapy work? A new paper1 published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy gives us a pretty good picture, describing one treatment approach for desire discrepancy developed by certified sex therapist and clinical psychologist Barry McCarthy, Ph.D.

One of the most important steps of dealing with desire discrepancy is to stop viewing each other as representatives of opposing sides.

"In the first session, the task of the therapist is to confront the self-defeating power struggle over intercourse frequency and replace it with a new dialogue about the roles and meanings of couple sexuality," write McCarthy and Tamara Oppliger, M.A., co-author of the study and clinical psychology Ph.D. student at American University, in a draft of the paper shared with mbg. "No one wins a power struggle; the fight is over who is the 'bad spouse' or 'bad sex partner.'"

Stop trying to make one person out to be the enemy. You're a couple—you're on the same side of the table, looking over a shared problem that's hurting your relationship. Come together to make an agreement that this is a journey you're going to undertake together.

And by the way, your goals for this journey should be clear—and it should not be about making sure you have sex a certain number of times a month. Sexuality is about much more than how often you do it. "The goal of couple sex therapy for desire discrepancy is to reestablish sexuality as a positive 15 to 20% role in their relationship," the authors write. "It is not to compensate for the past, to declare a 'winner,' or to reach a goal for intercourse frequency."

When a relationship involves a man and a woman, couples often fall into the trap of using intercourse (i.e., putting a penis in a vagina) as the definition of sex. They believe sex is only sex when intercourse happens, and how often you have intercourse becomes a pass-fail measure of your sex life. One of McCarthy's key points: "When it is intercourse or nothing, nothing almost always wins."

No matter what genders you and your partner are, stop trying to use any one act like intercourse or penetration as the only marker of whether you've had sex—and while you're at it, forget about having orgasms too. All these things can be great parts of a healthy and satisfying sex life, but they're by no means the most important or crucial parts. All kinds of touch can be pleasurable and connective.

"The best sex is mutual and synchronous," the authors write. "Yet, the majority of sexual encounters are asynchronous (better for one partner than the other). Asynchronous sexuality is normal and healthy as long as it's not at the expense of the partner or relationship."

Not sure where to start? After assessment, one of McCarthy's first suggestions is for couples to begin with getting reacquainted with touching each other again. Those touches don't need to be a whole sexual act—they can be as simple as holding each other in bed or rubbing each other's backs. "The focus is using touch as a way to confront avoidance and build a bridge to sexual desire," he and Oppliger write.

Listen, even the most sexually satisfied couples regularly have sexual encounters that don't always pan out or that dissolve midway through. The key is handling those situations with a sense of good humor and love.