My fiancée and I have been together for two years and living together since December, but around March, her libido took a nose dive. Otherwise, our relationship is ideal: We’re mutually respectful, affectionate, supportive, understanding, generous, and our trust is rock solid. I’m completely baffled about her sudden lack of desire for sex, and she can’t explain it either. She fears it’s a sign we aren't supposed to be together. I worry that she doesn’t want me anymore and doesn’t have the courage to say it.
--Withholding Pattern
In the movies, when two lovers fall into each other’s arms and suck face like they’re looking for lost tonsils, it’s generally because the guy’s back from prison or the war, not because he’s just come in from taking out the garbage.
You’ve probably heard warnings that living together before marriage makes for ho-hum sex. Of course, so does living together after marriage, but then you’ve already got a foot in the trap. Most conveniently, the marriage lobby never gets around to mentioning that the institution wasn’t invented so couples could have a really hot time in bed. Just a guess, but that’s why there are marriage vows, but no such thing as casual sex vows to keep people from cutting out early on no-strings-attached nude fun. And whether a couple is married or just “committed,” note that there’s a huge market for self-help manuals like Hot Monogamy, and none whatsoever for books titled “Sex With Anonymous Hussies Needn’t Be Dull.”
You aren’t the only couple crawling around under furniture to look for the woman’s lost libido. In a series of studies published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, sexual medicine specialist Rosemary Basson noted data showing that a third of women lack sexual interest. A third? Hmmm…could the problem be not in women, but in the expectation that desire in women works exactly like desire in men? Well, that’s what Basson found. When a relationship is new, or when women are away from their partner for days or weeks, they’re more likely to have “conscious sexual hunger,” just like men. But, once women are in long-term relationships, they tend not to have the same “spontaneous sexual neediness” men do, but they can be sexually arousable, or “triggerable.” In other words, there’s a good chance the problem isn’t with your girlfriend’s desire for sex, but in how you’re both waiting around for it like it’s a crosstown bus.
A better approach is what marriage therapist Michele Weiner Davis calls “The Nike Solution” (i.e., “just do it”) in her smart but depressingly titled book, The Sex-Starved Marriage. Jumping off from Basson’s work, Weiner Davis explains that women may not feel desire initially, but if they just start fooling around, they’re likely to get there. You should also reconsider the notion that sharing a life means sharing living quarters. Since you might have a little more sex if it’s a little less available, why not rent the apartment across the street and just do a lot of visiting? If your girlfriend’s pilot light still can’t be lit, she should have herself checked out by a specialist in female sexual medicine -- who probably won’t be the corner gynecologist. Finally, consider the unpleasant possibility that love isn’t the answer but the problem. Maybe your girlfriend never was very attracted to you, but believed the hoohah that if you love somebody, attraction will follow. Wrong. Not gonna happen. But, minus attraction, there’s still plenty of opportunity for sleeping together -- as in, lying perfectly still in flannel pajamas after you’re both spent from 20 minutes of the hottest nonstop hugging ever.
September 6, 2006I was pretty wild in high school, and my boyfriend of two years has a hard time trusting me because of it. I’ve explained that I outgrew my teenage need to “hook up,” and I’m a different person now at 21. He really has no reason to doubt that, but he’s still convinced I’ll revert to my old behavior. He also accuses me of withholding information when we discuss our sexual experiences, even though he’s the one who lied that he’d lost his virginity before he met me. I’ve always been completely honest with him about how many partners I’ve had, and point out that if I were lying, I’d have put the number at three instead of 12. How do I get him to see he has no reason to distrust me?
--Blasted With The Past
Like you, he’s learned from your past. Unfortunately, what it taught him was “You Tarzan, him Jane.”
Some men you date will beg for the story behind every notch on your belt. At the same time, they really don’t want to know you even own a belt. Men have an enormous capacity for sexual jealousy. Sure, there are those who can handle the whole truth. But, give the average guy an inch, and he’ll stay awake nights with a ruler agonizing that he can’t possibly measure up. When all his hate and resentment finally knock him out, it’s time for his regular nightmare: a line of men outside your bedroom door that looks like the Israelites waiting to cross the Red Sea. Of course, he’s just the bouncer standing there with one of those customer clickers.
So, how honest is too honest? Well, if you want your insecure, recently deflowered boy virgin to feel comfy about his place in your life, taking him on a sex tour of your teen years probably isn’t your best bet: “Yes, over here we have the infamous janitor’s closet, and if you look out the window, you can see the 50-yard line and the long-jump pit…and I’ll never forget that night we broke my sister’s tree house!”
Yes, let a guy know you used to be kinda wild. As for whether you were with 12 or 20, in the conservatory with Colonel Mustard or in the kitchen with Professor Plum and Mrs. Peacock, it’s really none of his business. What’s productive in a relationship isn’t total honesty, but judicious honesty -- telling somebody what they need to know to know you: what makes you happy, what scares you, and what you want from life, not a moment-by-moment replay of what went on in the back of some delinquent’s car.
Even if you were, at one point, vying to be the Charlie Sheen of teenage girls, that doesn’t give any guy the right to spend two years punishing you for having more sex than he did. After all this time, your boyfriend’s crystal clear on whether it was vanilla or Cirque du Soleil with this one or that one, but he doesn’t know you well enough to have a grasp on what matters: Will you sleep around, not did you? Clearly, it’s his insecurity, not your ethics, that’s the problem. Will that ever change? Probably only if you change boyfriends. Look for a guy who’s secure enough to see your past as part of what made you the person he loves in the present. A guy like this understands that the only must-tell sexual history is the important medical and psychological stuff: funny uncles, communicable diseases, and whether somebody’s actually lost their virginity or they’ve just been working really hard to ditch it at the mall.