Are You Not Attracted to Your Spouse Anymore?
“So…I don’t feel attracted to my spouse anymore and it’s hard for me to want sex often. Now what?”
I get asked that question so many times in marital counseling. Honestly, this challenge is a normal part of being in a long-term relationship. You go through the ebbs and flows of falling in love and falling out of love. It’s common for partners to move from periods of being drawn to sex to periods of feeling less excited, and sometimes avoidant, towards sex given how many different life circumstances and life transitions you face. Oftentimes, this difficulty in rekindling the spark for your spouse can be addressed effectively in therapy. Understanding the whys behind the presenting problem is important but how you attempt to fix the problem is even more important in my opinion because it can either help or exacerbate the situation.
Here are a few assumptions I have heard so many times in therapy as well as real life conversations about how men and women see attraction and sex.
Men always want more sex than women.
Women do not enjoy sex as much as men do.
Sex is not as important to women as it is to men.
I can’t have sex with someone I’m not attracted to!
If you don’t want to have sex more often with me, it means you’re not really that attracted to me.
The above assumptions explain well the never-ending cycle that couples struggle to overcome when they attempt to talk about intimacy. Regardless of our gender, we all have individual preferences to sex, which in turn translates into preferences in frequency and variety in sexual experience. The big problem here is though, as a society, we tend to judge someone’s relationship through the lens of performance while forgetting to include the emotional bonding experience of the couple into the big picture. What I mean is that physical attraction and/or physical performance is important. But as a couples therapist and as a wife to my husband of ten years, I believe that emotional attraction between partners is as crucial, if not more important, as physical attraction in nurturing the couple’s felt sense of intimacy.
Our culture idolizes an unrealistic picture that sexual happiness only comes from being with someone whom is either physically attractive or whom we must feel drawn to sexually in order to feel satisfied. That is black and white thinking that does not present our experience of sex and intimacy as a whole in a committed relationship. This black and white thinking also creates false expectations of how couples “should” view attraction and sex. The Dorian Gray-Anastasia standard in 50 Shades of Gray favors self-illusions and insists that we keep our rose-colored glasses on at all times while evaluating ourselves and our partners’ performance in the relationship. This self-illusion can lead to someone perceiving sexual intimacy only through their own lens and become blinded to their partner’s experience of attraction and sex. In other words, we breed narcissism by allowing the above self-illusions to dictate how we view a healthy and fulfilling partnership.
As a matter of fact, research has shown that 75% of females are emotional pursuers but often withdrawers in the area of sex. Likewise, male emotional withdrawers are often sexual pursuers. (click here and here to read more on the studies). These findings explain how the majority of female partners often link their emotional experience to their desire for sex. The more secure and connected they feel emotionally in the relationship, the more desire they feel for their partner. In other words, for many women, a secure emotional bonding experience with their spouse is a strong indicator of feeling attracted to their significant other. On the other hand, the majority of male partners often experience difficulty in expressing emotions, which may lead them to feel more avoidant towards enhancing intimacy through sharing their feelings. That makes a lot of senses that many male emotional withdrawers tend to become sexual pursuers as they may view sex as an alternative way to create a connection with their spouses.
This understanding of how partners view attraction and sex differently is crucial in stopping your never-ending cycle of conflict around intimacy. When you look deeper into your struggle to feel attracted to your significant other, I encourage you to look at it with curiosity and compassion instead of with judgment and criticism. I know it does not feel good at all to see yourself or your partner getting stuck with that feeling of “falling out of love” looming over your head. However, just like the saying goes “where there’s will, there’s a way,” don’t let shame and guilt stop you from finding your way back to “falling in love” again with your partner. It is possible. As long as you still want to fight for your relationship, help is on the way. Reach out to a relationship expert to get you started today.
