Mismatched Libido, Matching Love: Two True Stories

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[a few bars of acoustic music]

August (narration): 

Now, the story of a couple who decided to go by the names “S” and “C.”

S and C described themselves as foodies and scientists, and they have been together for about 10 years. When S replied to my written query of questions, she said that out of herself and her boyfriend, she is the one with a higher libido. S said that she is “revved up and raring to go most of the time,” whereas C is not. 

S and C also have different sexual interests. One reason I chose to feature their story is what S shared about that in her note. She said, “Libido is just as much about the kind of loving partners want, as much as it is about the frequency.”

Of course, most people don’t realize they have different libidos from day one or even early on in a relationship. S and C surely couldn’t have known about their differences when they first met during college. 

S:

The very first time I saw C, I was at a LAN party, and he had just come back from snowboarding. The very first time I saw C, I was at a LAN party, and he had just come back from snowboarding. So… But after that, we had a mutual friend who we hung out with often, and because we were hanging out with the same friend, we ended up being friends as well.

August (narration):

At that time, they also didn’t predict that they would soon fall in love.

C:

I didn’t know right away. My mom will claim she did. But that’s not really foresight. She made that prediction about everyone I meet.

August (narration):

The friendship blossomed into something more—much more, as they developed a strong and committed love for each other. 

Often when I talk to folks about their experiences with significant mismatched libido, they tell me about patterns. I hear comments like, “I have always had a higher (or lower) sex drive than my partners.” Given that S said she’s pretty much always “ready to go,” I asked her if she sensed early on that her interest in sex might be on the higher end, relatively speaking. 

S: 

That’s an interesting question. I did not start masturbating until—like the first time was 14—and then I didn’t start doing anything on a constant basis until I was 18. So, I would not say that it had occurred to me at that time. However, that did not mean I wasn’t interested in reading a lot of romance related fan fiction. I knew that I was interested but I would also say that I’m a late bloomer in general.

August (narration):

C considers himself a bit of a late bloomer in the sex department, too. He said in his teens, he felt social pressure to be more sexually interested than he was. And he did explore a bit, on and off.

C:

Things picked up more consistently around 19-ish, but I didn’t know if my libido would be super high or low in a relationship until we’re actually there. 

August (narration):

Once S and C’s relationship turned romantic, they experienced that proverbial “honeymoon period,” when intoxicating brain chemicals flow wildly. At the same time, they experienced challenges so many of us do during early sexual experiences, especially when we haven’t learned much about sex.

C:

Really early on in the relationship we were both struggling to come to terms with sexuality but shortly after getting over that hurdle, we were both very gung-ho for a good couple months. So, we didn’t notice a discrepancy in libido until we had stabilized.

S:

Yeah, I’d agree with that. We definitely did a lot of exploration together, which I think helped overall with our understanding of the sexuality and the libido to begin with.

August (narration):

Over time, the initial fireworks settled down some, as they naturally do, as their intimacy deepened in other ways. But the mutual understanding kept on. S and C quickly embraced not only how different their libidos were, but the realization that they wouldn’t be able to fulfill all of each other’s sexual needs—beyond sex frequency.

C:

I identify primarily as gay. So, when it comes to more lusty, physical kinds of sexual interest, I’m much more aimed towards male. and when it comes towards romance and relationship passion, then [S] is right there with me and we can take care of that together. And they’re just kind of two separate buckets that are both under the umbrella of sexuality.

August (narration):

When S and C realized they wouldn’t be able to fulfill all of each other’s sexual needs, given C’s orientation, the fact that S is bisexual and sometimes prefers sex with a woman and her higher-than-his sex drive, they decided to maintain an open relationship. They don’t consider themselves polyamorous, because they only have sex, not full-fledged, love-based relationships, with anyone else. But they like the term non-monogamous. That openness comes in especially handy around particular activities.

S:

As C has so kindly reminded me at this very moment, since C identifies mostly as gay, he is not particularly interested in going down on me at all. He doesn’t go down on me because that’s not something that interests him and does not please him at all but it certainly pleases me. So, if I’m getting together with somebody else, I will usually make a request to get that need fulfilled.

August (narration):

While non-monogamy has been extremely helpful for S and C, like all relationships, it’s had its challenges. Here’s one example: Since romance is important for C, in terms of sex, he sets boundaries with partners, letting them know that while he enjoys that aspect, it’s not going to lead to a deeper relationship. But not everyone has fully understood that.

C:

I enjoy recreating the honeymooning kind of experience and getting a lot of infatuation. And some of my partners did well to respect boundaries to a point and then ran away off in the deep end the last minute and had rougher breakups. And that was interesting for us to communicate through.

S:

That was definitely tough and has happened a couple times now. Usually a bit more of a “I told you so” moment in both instances. It’s like, “I think they’re falling in love with you.” And C was like, “I’m not so sure about that. I established boundaries with them; they don’t need to be told again.”

C:

It’s a lot harder to find people to have relationships with when you straight up front that they’re not going to be your primary, they’re not going to steal you away and make you a husband. So that’s a little more difficult on the casual dating side of things. But each partner I have been with has understood pretty well the boundaries and the expectations of the relationship.

August (narration):

The myth about libido that S told me most her the most is one I find really frustrating, too. 

S:

I mean, the big one for me is that women don’t have a libido or that their libido can only be fulfilled through other people instead of through masturbation because that’s just crap.

August (narration):

S is pretty passionate about solo play, which has I’m sure been especially helpful through the pandemic. And those false notions about women’s desires take others forms, too. There’s the idea that men are always turned on or always have a higher libido, compared to women, for example. In reality, libido is not determined by gender or genitalia. We are all unique and many factors play a role.

As far as navigating desire issues and getting needs met, both S and C pointed to communication as the most important tool—and the one they rely on most.

S:  

We have a good, open communication, which means that we can easily understand that we have different things that we’re craving when it comes to libido. So sometimes we want the romance, which means that we really want to be together because we love each other. But also sometimes, you just want to relive the passionate honeymoon phase as you’d put it earlier. And since we are well past that at this point in our relationship, sometimes that involves getting somebody else into the home. 

And then there’s also what kinds of things we might be interested in to go with our libido. And if the other person isn’t interested in them, we might ask, you know, especially if it’s something new we haven’t considered or haven’t considered recently, then we might bring it up again. If they’re not interested, then we try to respect the other person’s wishes and find a different outlet.

C:

A relationship is about two people communicating and cohabitating and all that. So, if you’re gonna be in relationship with someone and you want it to be meaningful, communication shouldn’t be a downside or a turn off. I know it’s not embraced in our culture, so much, but really, communication helps with relationships at any level. So getting over that stigma was just really useful.

S:

I would say C and I have built a relationship on communication. The earlier in your relationship that you can talk about this you should, because for some people it can be a deal breaker. And if this is something that’s important to you, then it needs to be out in the forefront early. We actually had a mutual friend who got married and three months in, the significant other said that they wanted to be poly, and they were not interested in that at all and ended up getting a divorce pretty quick. And it was very sad. I thought they were really good together. 

August (narration):

That is sad. And I love that she pointed out that libido differences can be a deal breaker for some. Knowing that about yourself, along with any other non-negotiables, is as important as communicating about them.

One current example of a mismatched desire S and C have been discussing is rope play.

S:

It was right before COVID started that I was starting to be like, hey, maybe I should find an outside partner to try this out with and see how much I want to get into it. But then COVID happened and I’ve really put it on the back burner… I’m interested in it and C is not interested in it at all. But for me, I’m like, “Oh, getting tied up. Oh my. I’m ready.” 

August (narration):

These communication skills have been hard-won for C and S, neither of whom learned anything about healthy communicating and healthy sex. At the same time, S said sex was never depicted as something shameful in her household growing up, which she is so grateful for. Even so, she, too, had a lot to learn.

C:

We stumbled through a bunch of situations together and progressively gained more strength in our bonds and how well we deal with them. There have been instances of uncertainty or jealousy and we work through that. And sometimes situations will change over time and we just have to keep up communication and understand our limits and when things change.

August (narration):

If communicating about sex is a challenge for you or you’re not sure how to even start, C suggests starting small and knowing that you do’t have to talk about everything at once. From there, he said, examples can help.

C:

If you have anything to work on from past experiences you can share, then tell a story about yourself to your partner and see how they can help you come to terms with it. 

A big thing about shame, for me, is just looking at social norms in general and deconstructing them to see where is the actual value in this. And does that relate to whatever you’re thinking about? And then there’s still levels of dissonance and stigma to work at that’s not going to be rationalized away immediately. But talking through it really helps.

August (narration):

S agreed. And she said it’s also really important to know what your preferred communication style is.

S:

For us, when we first met in college, we did a lot of our conversations through instant message, because that was the way to have private conversations. At that time, we were both sharing rooms so that meant that the messaging was our safe space that we could talk. 

I also, personally, really prefer written messages because I have more time to think things through and phrase things exactly the way that I intend. I feel like I get more time to have everything mean exactly what I want it to mean. So that really worked well for me. And even now, I will sometimes type things up to have a better understanding of myself and my views on something before we end up having a conversation about it. 

August (narration):

It’s also important to know that even when we try our best, we won’t always articulate things out the way we hope to. We may need to clarify later. Which is actually something that came up during my conversation with C and S. Toward the end, I could hear them giving each other knowing glances. C had something to set straight.

C:

For the record, I do go down [on her] occasionally. It just takes a romantic mindset or a giving mood or some kind of internal push.

August (narration):

I love the way you can hear them smiling at each other. 

Before we wrapped up, S shared one more piece advice for having challenging conversations. 

S:

I think the one other thing I would say is when having tough conversations, feel free to have a break. It is a tough conversation. You can take time for the two of you to go eat and just talk about something else and then come back around to it. It does not have to be all ironed out at once, unless one of you has a date later that day with somebody else. [soft laugh]

[a few bars of acoustic music]

Next, the story of Shan and Jim, as shared by Shan. Shan is a wonderful virtual assistant who’s been helping me with several projects. She also describes herself as a “widowed mom of two teens who never went to school.” (She homeschools them.) When I mentioned to Shan that I had an episode on mismatched libido stories in mind, she offered to speak about her own experience with her late husband, Jim.

Shan had been through a great deal before meeting Jim. She endured abuse as a child. In early adulthood, she had a fiancé who died of cystic fibrosis, and then a serious rebound relationship with a controlling man in her mid-20s. That relationship ended shortly after she had a miscarriage. At that point, Shan was in no rush to pursue another one.

Shan:

So, I figured, okay, one man died. One turned out horrible. I think I’m done for a while. And I had wanted to see the desert since I was about in third grade. There’s no desert in upstate New York. 

So I was telling my friends this and my friend brought me this great article for working in national parks, and I ended up at the Grand Canyon. The first day was Jim’s 33rd birthday, and that was the day I met him. We did not like each other. He liked looking at parts of me. I felt leered at but everything I wanted to do—I want to see the Canyon—Big Jim has hiked every path in the canyon, even the really scary ones. I’d like to learn to play chess; Big Jim is really good at chess. I’d like to hang out with some people but I don’t want a party crowd. Oh, Big Jim doesn’t party. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t do anything. So, everything I wanted to do turned out coming back to him. 

And then one night, I had had a really hard night at work, and I decided to treat myself to a really overpriced six pack of Guinness. Got it back and realized I didn’t own a bottle opener, and it’s late. The only store around is closed. So, I kind of went around to the laundry room, and common areas, and he’s like, “I think I have a bottle opener…from my drinking days, and I’ll see if I can find it. He brought the bottle opener, and we talked for three hours. 

If I can have a conversation with a guy for three hours, it’s a pretty good bet that there’s something there to build on. I’ve always liked to be friends with someone before I had a relationship. I don’t like dating. So then he started taking me to different places at the canyon. And we would talk, and I realized that we didn’t see eye to eye on everything, but we saw kind of side to side on a lot of things. 

August (narration):

Shan and Jim quickly became virtually inseparable. And six months later, they flew back to upstate New York and got married in Shan’s parents yard. She did wear a white dress, by the way, and she did not feel embarrassed about it a bit. After they exchanged vows, they honeymooned in Niagara Falls. Given the short engagement, everyone thought Shan was pregnant, but she wasn’t. They just really wanted to share life as a married couple.

Shan:

When we came back to get married, my mother said, “What would you have done if we didn’t like him?” And I said, “I would have married him anyway. I like him.”

August (narration):

Even though they saw many things “side to side,” as Shan put it, their experiences with sexuality and what they had learned about it varied a lot. 

Shan:

Growing up, I was in a family where sex was not talked about. When I asked my mother, when I was nine or 10, I think, how babies got made, she said, cryptically, “Well, let’s just say that they go in the same place they come out. And I’ll tell you more when you’re older.” That didn’t help. 

August (narration):

Shan was very interested in becoming a veterinarian at the time and while she was “ridiculously too young” to enter that career field, she said—she wasn’t even a teenager yet—her parents ordered her a correspondence course on becoming a veterinary assistant. 

Shan:

And so that’s basically how I learned about sex, from the reproductive chapters and spaying chapters in this assistant course. 

August (narration): 

The only other message about sex Shan received while growing up was that sex was considered very shameful and only to be embraced in marriage. She described her mother as “very, very, very abused,” and her grandmother known as “the town whore.” She made a living through sex work and one of her boyfriends molested Shan’s mother repeatedly for two years. 

Shan:

And so her views on sex were very “you wait until you’re married,” which was good for her. She was 19 when she married. I was 28. She said to me at one point, “You know, someday, I think you’re going to be ashamed and sorry that you really couldn’t wear white when you were married.” 

So, basically learning about my own desire was very furtive, and there was no real information. So, I think I had a couple of orgasms— had no idea that I was having them—and thought I had peed in my bed. 

August (narration):

By the time Shan began building a friendship with Jim, she felt more ready and willing to open her heart up in ways she hadn’t early on.

Shan:

Within a week, I think, of the time that we got together, we had sex for the first time. And then we were basically inseparable. I kind of moved in. It was talk, have sex, talk, have sex, talk, have sex, talk, have sex, stay up all night, drag yourself through work. We didn’t have a lot of responsibilities, other than to go to work and to be together, so it was very easy for that first few months. 

But pretty early on, there was a thing. I was apparently the first person who had ever given him a blowjob that really turned him on. And he was a little obsessive. And so he would just randomly say, “blow job.” And the first few times it was adorable. You know, it made me feel great that I could do this thing that nobody else had been able to do really well for him and make him feel so good. Because I loved him, I wanted him to feel good. And it made me feel good. But after about 500 times, it wasn’t funny. And I started saying, “Hey, if you like that, can you like, ask?” 

August (narration):

It took a bit for Jim to really grasp the problems there and stop making those demands, but he eventually came around—no pun intended. Meanwhile, Jim was wonderfully loving in other ways—kind, considerate…so often made her laugh. In terms of sex, I asked Shan if he seemed to have a sense of entitlement about it, the kind you might have if you’d learned that sex is something women are just supposed to give go men. 

Shan:

Yeah. And that was really what it felt like. 

August (narration): 

Not only that, but he desired sex a lot more often than Shan.

Shan:

He would have been a twice a day person, and I’m about a twice a month person. I like the twice a month really close together so there’s like a long intensity and then I’m usually fine, which doesn’t mean I can’t rise to the occasion. And I was willing to come to his direction.

August: 

What Shan illustrated there was what’s known as responsive desire, versus Jim’s most common form of spontaneous desire. Unless he was under a lot of stress, he could be turned on at the drop of a hat, no particular stimulation needed. But for Shan, she only experienced that a couple of time a month. The rest of the time, her desire could unfold with some effort. For many people that means sensual touch, kissing, “dirty talk” or erotic stories. And once those are in motion, then the turn-on happens.

Shan:

Very often the way he would approach it would be like, “Want to make love?”

August (narration) – tentative/notes:

That approach became more complicated once Shan and Jim had children—which affects sexual desire and frequency for many parents, especially whoever’s doing the most care taking. And there were other difficulties, significant ones, beyond managing added responsibilities.

Shan and Jim’s oldest and youngest were both born by C-section. The oldest was a very large baby, whose position put a lot of strain on Shan’s spine in utero, and Shan’s spine had been injured during her childhood. Their second child was born not breathing and lived for only 12 days. 

Shan:

The nurses in the NICU told us that 85% of couples who lose a baby do not stay together. And I think I can understand why, because we grieved very differently. Only because we were able to make room for each other—I needed to talk about it; I still need to talk; he’d be 18 this summer—I still need to talk about him because the only way I can care for him is to keep his memory as fresh as I can. 

Jim couldn’t talk about him. And he felt like he had like a dark cloud over his head for months was how he expressed it. Everywhere he went, this dark cloud. And when he died in the NICU, Jim held him for like an hour. And I could not do that; I could barely bear to sit with them, while he was holding him. He said, “I needed to hold him because I knew I wouldn’t get to hold him again.”

August (narration):

Soon after he died, the doctor gave them the go-ahead to try for another baby. And before long, Shan was pregnant. Nine months later, they welcomed a healthy baby girl. As delighted as she and Jim were to be raising their two children, Shan’s life remained intense.

She worked in a daycare as a toddler teacher and woke extremely early in the morning to care for her own kids and then five hours with other young children, then return home just before Jim would leave for work as a chef. He worked late into the evening and the kids loved waiting up for him.

Shan:

I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I was being touched and grabbed and nursed on and, you know, cried on and hold on all the time, all day long, literally, all day long. And then he would roll over and look at me and say, “Want to have sex? Want to make love?”

And I made the mistake of rolling my eyes a few times. It wasn’t him. It was the somebody else wants something from me. Somebody else wants to touch me. Can’t I have my body to myself? And he took it as I was disgusted with him. That was never it. I was never disgusted with him. It was just that, can’t you see how much I’m being touched? I need to have my space these few hours when I can sleep. I dream vividly. So, I would dream about the children in the daycare. I dreamed once that there was a plastic bag over a little girl’s face. And I woke up flailing, trying to get this off her face. The children followed me. And I don’t think he understood the intensity of that. 

We tried to talk about it. However, Jim was a person who didn’t handle criticism at all well; no matter how it was put, he didn’t handle it particularly well. He had his own history. He brought his history, I brought my history. Neither one of us had learned conflict resolution. It caused a lot of issues where I think if I could do it now, I would be able to find a better way. 

But there were a lot of times when I tried to get into being aroused, and I might, if I was rested. I tried to explain to him a lot of times that housework was really sexy, because there were always things that needed to be done. A little time to myself. 

August (narration):

Over time, Shan and Jim found ways to tend to his desire for more sexual frequency and Shan’s need for more space between sex and her emotional needs as well. 

Shan:

I know one night, he came home, and I’d had a really hard evening with the kids. And he just looked at me and he pulled out one of our cards and he said, “Go get yourself some dinner. Go out somewhere, by yourself, and get yourself some dinner.” And that was that was really sweet. He could be very romantic, if he caught on that I needed that.

August (narration):

While both Shan and Jim had lower desire during especially stressful times, Shan had more on her plate. So she said that looking back, when she did have breaks from her many responsibilities, she experienced desire and arousal more easily. And when she didn’t, she encouraged Jim to embrace other ways to express and fulfill his desires within the context of their monogamous relationship.    

Shan (narration):

I am the kind of person who’s not especially jealous of things, so I didn’t have a problem – like I bought him a subscription to Playboy because he had enjoyed Playboy. He had a nice stack of them when we met. He tried to tuck them away or something when we first met and I’m like, “I don’t care. I’m not at all sexually attracted to women but I can see beauty in women and see how if you were, these would be beautiful people to look at,” and I didn’t have a problem with it. So I paid for that for a couple of years and then he said, I don’t really want it any more. 

I tried to watch porn with him when he wanted to watch it but a lot of it didn’t have a lot of plot, you know? I ended up laughing way too much.

August (narration):

Shan said that their ability to “be okay” with their varied desires came in waves, which is pretty common. All couples have challenges and relationship areas that may need more ongoing work and asserted effort than others. 

Another strategy that worked well at times, Shan said, involved date nights—unless she felt pressure along the lines of, “Okay, we’re going to have sex tonight.” Then it became another thing on her to-do list. They also found role play, sex toys, lube and activity books helpful for keeping their sex life fulfilling and fun. 

And through all of the challenges and smooth times, those waves Shan mentioned, Shan and Jim nurtured a pretty wonderful relationship.

Shan:

We laughed a lot, and we had some amazing, amazing adventures. We have the best backyards in the world in national parks. We laughed for hours, days, years. We laughed so much. And even after 20 years of marriage, one of us could walk into the room and the other one would be smiling. We got each other. And I miss having somebody who gets me.

August (narration):

A few years ago, they faced their greatest hurdle yet, other than the loss of their second baby. At the time, their kids were older and less dependent and Jim and Shan were were sharing more time together. After some job upheaval and financial difficulties, Jim had decided to pursue a long-held dream.

Shan:

He had decided he was going to do something he talked about since we were dating and start an artisanal hot sauce company. So we spent a year working on this. I designed these really nice labels. We sold them at farmers markets; they were giving a really good name for ourselves. We were bonding a lot over this dream of his that he was making real.

His midlife crisis—you know a lot of people have very big midlife crises—for his, he pierced his ear and dyed his beard electric blue, and until shortly before he died, he had an electric blue beard. He went by the name Chef Blue Beard, and that was actually the name of his hot sauce, Chef Blue Beard. We commissioned a friend to do this cute little cartoon version of him winking with the blue beard and a chef hat on.

The kids never came with us when we did the farmers markets. It was just the two of us. It was like our little thing that we were doing. And there were so many times when we looked at each other and we were like, this is so cool. And that we wanted to get a new car. We went and picked up a used car and had like a dinner out. So, to be able to do that was really, really cool. We got back and the kids said, “Hey, you guys can go do that again any time.” 

August (narration):

Sadly, they were never able to fulfill their plans for more of those shared adventures. On November 13th, 2017, Jim was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer with a 6-12 month prognosis. But on his first day of chemo, he had a heart attack. He spent 10 days in the hospital, then returned home to live his last days with hospice care.

Shan:

So very quickly, I ended up shifting from wife and partner to caregiver. The last few days of an illness like this, a person’s not lucid or able to do much. But, he died on a Friday. A week before that Friday, on a Thursday, was the last time he took a shower. He didn’t know it was the last time but I could tell. I could tell it was going to be the last because it was very difficult for him to move and he was a big man—still—he had lost a lot of weight but he was a big man, and it was very hard for me to make sure he wasn’t going to fall or anything. 

I was helping him get dressed, and we had this ridiculous closet in our room. It had these horrible, mirrored doors. And we had always said we don’t like the doors but they had been there since we moved in. And he looked into the mirror and he’s like, “Oh, look. There’s my wife.” And it was just like his joke, you know. It was kind of a lame joke, but he was really sick. But it just cracked me up and made me cry at the same time. That was the heart of him that he could make a joke even then. 

August (narration):

I’m still so moved by Shan’s openness and eagerness to share about her experiences, both with libido differences and, as a beautiful byproduct, her love story with Jim. I asked her to share a bit about why she was drawn to the chance to talk about their mismatched desire.

Shan:

There’s a big difference between twice a day and twice a month. It’s a lot of ground to cover. And when there are children, it’s kind of like covering that ground with spikes and chains and hurdles and unexpected poisonous snakes and things like that. When our son was a baby, we called him coitus interruptus. Coitus-interrupt us, because any time we tried to have sex, he would cry. Sometimes we’d go to him; sometimes we’d try to wait it out. He’d get quiet. We’d say, ‘Oh, okay, we’re good.’ And boom! He’d cry again.

So, basically, it’s that we didn’t handle it as well as we might have, but a lot of times, we had a good sense of humor about it. We bought a role-playing book and for a while we’d like to role play something. It was tear out pages. There’d be things that cost a lot of money or things that were really inexpensive. We would each pull one, each week, and then surprise each other at some point in the week with whatever the thing was. 

He would do things like wash my back in the shower, and sometimes that would lead somewhere. Sometimes it wouldn’t but he just enjoyed doing that. Often, if I was really tired—I’m large chested—he really enjoyed making love to my breasts so that was something that didn’t take quite as much from me, and it still gave him a lot of pleasure. So, there were compromises, maybe not as many as I could wish now, looking back over the 20 years that I could have made, but we did have a good and sometimes very great sex life. We enjoyed each other. We did laugh a lot. We brought a lot of other intimacy into our lives and maybe that really helps to be able to be intimate in a lot of other ways. 

August (narration):

If you’re struggling with mismatched desire in a relationship, Shan shared this advice:

Shan:

I would say do the best you can to be open, if you’re the person who’s being asked more than you really want to, understand that this is deep, deep flattery because this person wants you that much and they’re not looking somewhere else for this, they’re looking to you. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with looking somewhere else, if that’s something that two mutually agreed upon, but if you’re in a monogamous relationship with each other and they’re looking to you and coming to you with this desire, that’s really a nice thing. 

If you’re the person who is asking and not always getting what you want, sometimes it can help to figure out what would help ease the person into a more receptive mood. How else can you get that need met without actually having sex? 

Basically, as much as you can keep the lines of communication open, given who you are and how you connect, learn better ways to approach the communication, if that’s a problem. But if you want it more and the other person isn’t as into it, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s about you. It might have nothing to do with you at all; it might just be everything else. If they’re trying to tell you, “I’m overwhelmed. Everything else in my life is big,” it can help to believe that, rather than think, “Oh no, it’s me.” Because I think there are a lot of times when he thought it was him, and it wasn’t him. I mean, it’s not like it was never him, because sometimes we’d argued or something, and it was him—but usually, it was just life was a lot. Honestly, with COVID, if he were here now, it would be a lot. 

August (narration):

Shan also pointed to the value of sharing rituals with a partner, as a way to bolster intimacy of all kinds. And they can be really simple. One of her favorites with Jim involved coffee.

Shan:

Nearly every morning, for many years, he would wake up a little before me. He might watch some TV or something with my daughter. But when I woke up, he’d bring me a cup of coffee, he’d get himself a cup of coffee, and we’d sit in bed together, have our coffee. We might read something; we might read to each other. We might read side by side; we might just talk about our lives. Do you remember when we were in that cattle stampede? 

Where was it where they were rounding up the cows around our truck? Where was that? We’d try to remember because we’d driven across the country three times. So we had done some things and seen some things. We’d try to remember or talk about different things or talk about our hopes. The kids would come and go. Sometimes we’d make love, sometimes we wouldn’t. 

But I think that ritual of having the coffee and talking with each other really kind of bonded and connected us. And him bringing it to me, because so much of my day was about serving other people, having somebody serve something to me at the beginning of the day was very special. And so I think that’s a good thing to try to have, some little ritual that belongs just to the two of you that says “I love you and I want you in my life, and when the time is right, I will want you.”

[a few bars of acoustic music]

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