The Psychology of Pressuring Your Spouse About a Dead Bedroom @drpsychmom

Greg asks a question. Greg from Facebook says, will you please talk about the psychology behind pressuring your spouse about your dead bedroom versus ignoring the subject completely, considering this approach seems like a recipe for disaster since problems can't be solved unless they're talked about and kept in the mind of the impacted couple? So pressuring your spouse versus ignoring it. I think what you're trying to say, Greg, is, you you obviously have to pressure. That's the only way to resolve this situation. Pressure, I think, is a strong word, you know, to hold a gun to your spouse's head saying, don't you realize what you're doing here by not providing me with my physical?

Those are not the only two options. It isn't like pressuring versus ignoring. It's not like those are— that would be like being like aggressive versus passive where the middle point is assertive. Like you want to bring up that there's an issue and if it constantly gets bad when you bring it up, then bring your wife into a couple counseling.

This—

all these guys are like— it's funny, all these guys— it used to be all these women say that my husband won't go to counseling. Like, that was like what I dealt with basically until you and I collabed. And then all of these people came over and they were like, oh, my wife won't go to counseling. I'm like, okay, so I guess it's the same thing, which is like, yes, they will. You're just not literally telling them they have to. You're not saying, I, I scheduled this thing like at 8 o'clock. If somebody wants to stay married, there are only so many things that they could say no to. But before that, you can start, you know, to make it clear that it is not acceptable for you to live like that anymore without pressuring, you know, or not saying anything. Like, those are like— we don't have to do either extreme.

It's a, it's a, it's a difficult subject. It's one that I talk about all the time on here, much to the chagrin of some of the followers. They say we talk about it too much, but well, it's, it's the topic that gets the needle moving more than anything else. Sex, sex and marriage, lack thereof. But Greg is saying not pressure necessarily. He's saying like talking, but then hearing your wife reply back with, quit talking about it, dude. And she claims it'll get better if you quit focusing on it so much. This is important. And she's very averse to counseling. Well, this sounds like— you tell me, Samantha, after only reading a few sentences here— this sounds like your boilerplate Mr. Anxious chasing after Miss Avoidant. And Miss Avoidant is saying, uh, can we just stop talking about this dude all the freaking time? For God's sakes, maybe if you backed off a little bit, things would improve. And no, I don't want to go to counseling. No, I don't want to listen to that podcast. No, I don't want to read the book. This is like avoidant 101. And the way I've kind of, um, interpret all this, it kind of exists on a spectrum. Some people are a little avoidant, and yes, if you back off, they blossom and come more to center and become more secure. And you're like, well, there's my feminine sweet wife. All I had to do was not not hang on her 24/7, and now she can breathe. While some are like, so far into the extreme that if you finally back off, they just take off and they go. They're like, oh, thank God you're gone. I've been waiting for you to get off my back. Now I can leave the situation. Some literally leave. And much to the chagrin of the anxious guy who's like, see, I knew it. As soon as I stopped pursuing, this person leaves me. Now there's no hope for me in relationships. So you're saying, Greg, what do I do if I bring, you know, talk to her and say, honey, you know, it's important that couples are physically intimate. And she's like, God, stop freaking talking about this all the time, for God's sakes. Well, maybe we should go talk to somebody about it. God, I don't want to talk to anybody about this. Well, there's the school of thought of backing off, working on yourself, becoming a more grounded, emotionally centered, secure individual may cause her to come more to center. Have you tried that, Greg? Or do you have the patience to try that, to back off? If you say, yeah, I've been there, done that, dude, it doesn't do anything. I'm the type that when you back off, we could go a year with nothing. Well then, sounds like you got a fundamental problem and maybe ultimatum of we need, have to talk to somebody about this. There's no ifs, ands, or buts. If you want to continue being my wife, Monday, 8 o'clock, we go talk to Samantha or whoever it may be. It's not a question, it's a yes, we're going to do this one.

And also, it's like, what does sex represent here, you know? I mean, there's probably not a lot of love that is shown. If there are children around, they're seeing a disconnected marriage where dad is like mooning over mom and mom is like swatting him away. And often that is the tremendous motivator for women to work on something, and they haven't even really thought about it because it's not an abusive marriage. Like maybe they saw. It's not a marriage where the guy's running around cheating. Everybody's involved, you know, but they've never really thought, oh my God, if my kids are watching this, they're going to end up in disconnected, unhappy marriages as well. And because biologically, as I've made very clear, that women's priority is the children and should be, and that's just kind of how it is, then that is frequently what gets them in more than anything. Like shit. Like, we are showing the kids a really shitty environment. And if I visited them in 20 years and I saw them in a disconnected marriage, I would feel kind of deeply ashamed, you know?

And that makes perfect sense. And what you just said is very scientific in nature. But I'll tell you what that really does is it kicks Mr. Anxious in the balls a little bit more, because he's saying the only way to move the needle, phrase I often use, in this relationship more towards what I like is to threaten the woman. You're about to lose your family, woman. You're about to lose time with your kids. You're showing your kids what a bad relationship looks like.

Well, yeah, I'm not saying that to threaten with the divorce first. I'm saying— you're welcome, Greg. I'm saying to bring it up in a different way that could potentially resonate with her just as I would say to men. So like some women, like I advise them to try to have more sex and physical touch with their husband. So they might say the same thing as the man does. Oh, I gotta bring it up through the lens of kids. Oh, I gotta bring it up through the lens of sex, you know. But yeah, you gotta bring things up through the lens that resonates with your audience, and you have to empathize with your audience and say, what do they perceive as important because they're not the same person as me. So his wife may do something on behalf of the children that she wouldn't do otherwise, and that doesn't mean she's a bad person. That means she's a good mom, you know. And so that could be a very easy reframe, just like it doesn't mean that your husband is a sex addict if you should touch him more. It means that he's like a normal guy that likes touch, you know.

And so, right, what, what makes this doubly difficult is, uh, Mr. Anxious, for example. And I apologize, I, I've been, by the way, recently criticized a little bit for, man, you sure do pick on anxious guys a lot. And the guy will say, I'm anxious and I really don't like watching a bunch of material saying, let me show you what Mr. Anxious does. Well, that's just who I tend to attract to my material and who I talk to a lot, and they got work to do. And I'm not trying to belittle them, I'm trying to show these guys that you have power, and the power is working on yourself and trying to come to terms with your anxieties and your, your anxious attachment and all that goes with it. And there are things you can do to get better. And one of the things that is often, um, oh, deeply embedded in, in a lot of anxious guys when it comes to the sex thing is, um, the more work— this very anxious mindset— the more work I do towards improving this relationship shines a light on something. And the, the light— what is being uncovered here is that Holy shit, my wife really doesn't have that kind of feelings towards me that I, Mr. Anxious, would like to say she does. So I would love to think that deeply embedded in there somewhere is this lustful wife really, really wants me in that way, the same way I want her. And the more I teeter, the more the scales tip towards the only way to get a reaction out of this woman is to say, do you want to be a good mom, yes or no? Do you want to be— you want to keep this family going? Yes or no? Do you want to be a good model for the— what your kids— what a lot of these anxious men are hoping is that all I have to do is say, look at me, aren't I a great husband? And then she should jump to attention and say, damn right, I got a good husband. In fact, any woman would kill to have a guy like this. Let's get to it. Let's, let's work on this marriage.

Yeah, man, I've got a bridge to sell you too, you know.

Well, that's it. But that's terrible for a lot of guys. They just hang their head and go and Fuck, what am I doing? The only way to get a rise out of this woman is to, in essence, threaten her with the ending of a relationship. I know you're saying, well, we're not going there yet, but that's in essence that we're building a bridge towards that. We're inching close to an ultimatum, which is, do you want this family unit to maintain? Do you want to keep the life that you're used to, wife? Do you want to have healthy kids that build healthy relationships? If so, we're gonna have to work on coming closer together. And what a lot of these anxious men hope is just that they alone saying, aren't I a great husband, a loving husband, a sweet husband, a caring husband?

Isn't that enough? Right, that's just as naive as when women are like, but if I bake him enough cookies, doesn't that make up for a sexless marriage? He should really love my cookies. I'm trying so hard to make this a nice home, and I'm a wonderful mother, and that should be enough. You know, and it's just fiction, you know. So like him expecting that some sort of base animal drive is going to motivate her is as fictional as her hoping that some desire for an orderly home is going to motivate him. It's just antithetical to reality. And so people who are in that stage, if they work on themselves, they could figure out why they cling to these idealized, romanticized views of reality that have nothing to do with how life actually works, you know. And frequently they do it in all sorts of regards.

It has nothing to do with how life works when in a 20-plus year marriage to a woman that you have 4 kids with, etc., etc. These are all things that put a big heavy blanket on top of that new relationship energy honeymoon stage lustfulness that a lot of us lucky bastards— well, that's, that's what makes it so goddamn difficult, is that for a lot of guys it's like Man, I'm telling you, you know, if I were to split this relationship into stages, stage 1 was magical, and that's what got me hooked. That's what got me to sign over this, that, make a commitment to the woman, put a ring on her, give her 3 kids, because Mother Nature basically said, look what you got, isn't this great? And I think, he's damn right, Mother Nature, let's do this. And then something flipped, and I'm like, I don't, I don't like this post-flip And what I'm hearing from a lot of people, a lot of these men say, what I'm hearing from everybody is, tough dude, suck it up, grow up for God's sakes. This is not— everybody stays the same. Okay. And they hang their head and they, yes dear, whatever you say dear, and, you know, become the typical schlub of a guy that we all know and love. So it's very difficult. And basically we're telling these guys, this is a new chapter and you have your work cut out for you. If you want to get from A to Z, it's the path there is a lot different and it's a lot arguably more difficult than what it used to be. Used to be, you just walk into the room and say, hey honey, here I am, and you guys were going at it like rabbits. Ain't the same anymore, in case you didn't notice, dude. So if you want to get a little intimacy between the two of you, the game plan's got to change, expectations got to change. You got to be more realistic. And that especially for your anxious guys. And I'm learning especially for those guys um, neurodivergent types, that's very tough to come to terms with. They're very hypersensitive to that, very hypersensitive to rejection and other things. So it's doubly hard for them.

Yeah. And I gave you over a link. I don't have the ability to do this, Greg, but there's a whole link of an article that Dad Starting Over can link back to you in the chats, maybe, because I gave it to him privately. It's called 6 Ways for Guys to Work on Preoccupied Attachment. So Greg, that's where I think you should start, my friend, because he literally asked for that.

Let me go to, um, chat here.

Yeah, the other way, by the way, the other way for it to go is that— thank you. Um, that's what you should look at, Greg. Um, but the other way for this to go is like there are confident, healthy men that are like, oh, we're done with the honeymoon stage. That makes sense. Like The relationship is just one part of my life after all, not the entire life. And now's a time as well for me to focus on building my career, building my wealth, building my relationship with my children, building my relationships with other men, figuring out my purpose on this planet. Maybe if I'm a religious guy, I focus on that. Like there's like all manner of things to do, you know, as well. Like what happens when the preoccupied attachment man or woman feels that the relationship is like it, like it's like the whole ball of wax and everything else is like in the background. And that is just not a healthy way to think. There's like a pie chart, and if your relationship is that whole circle, then it gets really messed up, you know.

Here's what, uh, you're preaching to the choir. That's why I tell a lot of guys is that you've put the— in your— the phrase I often use is you've thrown the entirety, all of your mental health eggs into one basket, and that is wife. You've put all the pressure, and that's a lot weight on her shoulders. And a lot of these women fully realize that. My guy, his— the entirety of his, uh, emotional health, his day-to-day, uh, attitude and everything completely rests on me, his wife. And Jesus, that's freaking exhausting. But on top of all that, and we're going back to the old SEX, um, we cannot— oh, uh, what's the word— I cannot overemphasize the male libido— not for every man. There are some men that I know, they're like, 'Sex isn't that important.' Well, they're in the minority. Um, for a lot of men, it is front and center, and it is always front and center up until their 50s, 60s, and some beyond, of, 'This is a driving force in my life, period.' And all you have to look at is the world of sex workers and pornography and everything else that preys upon that. And that is something that we have to come to terms with, contend with, and take that energy and refocus it elsewhere, especially if we're in a long-term monogamous relationship. So to hear from a woman, hey, just don't worry so much about it. Easy, easier said than done.

Women that are not in these situations where they pursue our health are in situations where they are having sex a couple times a week, you know, and she does love them. And it may not look like something out of a porn porno, but it is not shitty. It has kissing, it has touching, it's a close connection between two people that love each other, and it doesn't never happen, you know. So like, the thing is, is it's like chicken and egg. There's some situations where I think that we should always base on like, what does a secure relationship look like? That still goes through the honeymoon stage, and the honeymoon stage ends in a securely attached loving relationship as well. I'm sure in yours and certainly in mine, you know, it doesn't— it's not I don't feel about my husband right now like I did like on the second date. Like, that would be insane. You would have to like on cocaine. If people do not know that you can be in a happy relationship after the honeymoon stage, why? You know, the reason why is because they didn't grow up seeing that. They weren't able to talk to their dad or their mom or to— or to model after a healthy relationship. We are very isolated in this world. We used to live in extended kin networks. Now we do not. People— like, there are people that have never talked to a family member about anything related to sex, including men whose father never talked to them about sex or relationships, certainly women who never did. I mean, sometimes guys are thinking that, like— or women are thinking like everybody else is living this eternal honeymoon stage and that's what a happy marriage looks like. That is not what a happy marriage looks like. That's why I have a podcast like, what does a healthy relationship look like after the honeymoon stage? Because people are comparing it, and especially guys who watch a lot of porn, you know, then they're like, everybody else is in like some hedonistic wonderland except for me. And even just setting, like, you got a level set and be like, what is, what does a healthy relationship look like? You know, it doesn't look like 7 date nights a week and like anal every Tuesday. It It doesn't. It really doesn't. Except maybe in your marriage. But it doesn't.

I was gonna— right away, every now and then during these little chats, I think about the sound bites and the little clips that I'm going to take from them. And that was one right there. Anal every Tuesday. All right, should make a book called that. So, but Greg says that it seems that she was explaining that a happy relationship includes some sex. It's hard when there's none to very little. Yeah, exactly. So Here's the thing. Yeah, often when I hear, often when I hear from men, they'll say, I'm telling you, this relationship is A+ perfect, amazing, except for the sex thing. We're a great partnership. We logistically run this family unit perfectly. We're just two peas in a pod. And some men even tell me, we're very touchy. We're very snuggly. We're very, you know, on the couch together, we're hugging and kissing, we're butt slapping, We just don't cross the bridge into the doing the act, rarely if ever.

And, um, and I have a, yeah, I have a podcast on that and I want to give it to him, but I guess I'll just do it afterwards because I can't do these links. But, um, send to me. I can post everything. Oh, I'll send it to you. It says everything is fine in our marriage except for sex. That is a bullshit garbage lie. That is not true. That isn't real. That's like not reality. So that's like saying like, like everything is great in this marriage Except he lives in California and he doesn't know that we're married, but otherwise it's like a perfect relationship. It's a fiction. That is a delusion. So there are no relationships where one human being wants to be having sex, the other person says 100%, I will not, but otherwise is a loving partner. That is just some bullshit that people tell themselves so that they don't have to confront whether they should get a divorce.

That's what I said in my book, The Dead Bedroom Fix. I said the lack of sex is the canary in the coal mine for a much deeper-seated issues. And sure enough, when you talk to these guys, you start going, ah, there's a not good thing that has nothing to do with sex in your marriage. Oh, there's another not good thing. Oh, this happened 3 years ago. Oh, yeah, it's always bad.

It is always bad.

And you're right. It's because these guys, these guys had no early childhood model for what a healthy long-term and yes, sexual relationship looks like. They just don't. It's just completely foreign to them. So, but again, we're kind of going in circles here. Often how it is framed is that the low libido person kind of is in the driver's seat when it comes to this stuff, lower libido person. So, well, what's healthy? You go to regular/high libido guy and he's like, you know what would be great? Twice a week, man, that'd be awesome. I would live with every Monday and Friday or whatever it may be. And you go to the wife and she just says, I love him to death, but once a month is awesome for me. Well, can we compromise?

She doesn't love him to death, and that's what we have to talk about in couples counseling, because she doesn't love him. Because if you look through at what they're actually doing, and sometimes I get, God, the most saddest field reports in the world. This once a, once a month, it's like freaking 7 minutes including her shower afterwards, and it's like awful, you know. And so that is not loving somebody. And so sometimes women in particular need like the straight-talking approach. And it is like also a delusion that men have that like women do not change in couples counseling and that they don't respond to feedback. I have had multiple women be like, ever since you've told me— even on the podcast, forget about in session when, as you can imagine, I'm quite direct— but even from the pocket, they're like I have transformed my marriage since hearing you say that physical touch is important to men. I literally did not know that. Literally, because nobody has ever said that except my husband, who's always whining about shit. So who the fuck even knows with him? But like, hearing another person say it was transformative, and that's helped our marriage. But the point is, is that if you're having 7 minutes of sex every month, that would be like the equivalent of the man refusing to say hello to you when he walked into the room, but saying he's still a nice guy. That's just not real. On the other hand, there is objective reality. And if a woman's having like an hour of sex with you twice a week, when she does have like tiny little kids, that's something to be happy about, you know, or at least to say, cool, I think I'm doing pretty well. I'm pretty well situated. Even though I might want it every day.

But the numbers show us twice a week, which I think sounds like pretty normal, healthy to me. Is relatively rare. There was a study— I mean, it depends on what survey you, you read or whatever, but there was a survey that's often stated by a lot of articles you read and so forth that shows 53%, which is the slight majority of married couples in America, have sex twice a month or less.

How much?

Twice a month or less. 53%.

Have twice a month. Well, that is also including very old people and also postmenopausal women. But what I have seen from— I'll, I'll Uno reverse your study. I have that study that says that, uh, once a week is correlated with a happy marriage, and anything above that, it doesn't—

yeah, it doesn't, um, not happy.

Yeah, I have seen that like the happiest couples that I see Then again, they're also on the younger end, tend to have sex 2-3 times a week, you know, the happiest. But remember, that's not every— if she gets her period, if she doesn't feel good, if the kid is sleeping in the bed because the kid has the flu, then it doesn't go to every week. And if it's, you know, and that's also like super variable according to her cycle. There's a lot of women are super, um, impacted by hormones, obviously. And in the first half of their cycle, they could be doing it every other day. In the second— I saw a meme that said like the second half of a woman's cycle is lesbian phase. I thought that was hilarious because it really is lesbian phase. It's like after ovulation, a lot of women really could not be less interested at all. And so a lot of people just have to learn how to track stuff too, by the way. But that's its own conversation. But yes, twice a month is not going to make most people happy, nor does that mean that you really love your husband.

That's a, it's a, uh, well, it's a controversial thing, especially coming from a lady. You know, I see the pushback from a lot of ladies is that they understand and they empathize with the men's desire and so forth, but they say have some empathy for us. The act of intercourse is one that is a little more extreme in vulnerability and physicality and all that stuff versus baking cookies. You know, we're talking about doing the most vulnerable—

making cookies takes like 7,000 times as long. Like, people make cookies, takes them like an hour. People are having sex, and I'm not saying this is right, but people are having sex for like 180 seconds. And so if a person thinks that having sex— okay, so there's exceptions. If you're postmenopausal, you have vaginal atrophy, and that it hurts, it literally physically painful, no sex drive at all because your body biologically doesn't want sex and you're older, this is a different scenario. But if we're talking about people in their 30s and 40s, right, Um, yep, perimenopause can start in your 40s. But the point is, if you find it that vulnerable to have intercourse, that upsetting, that much of a big deal, why? It's either the marriage is truly a garbage fire and you have no respect for this guy. He's cheated. I've seen it. He's cheated on the woman before. He looks at porn all the time. He kind of treats her like shit. So of course she doesn't want to have sex with him. She barely wants to look at him. Like, no kidding. But like, if it's a situation where she could say with a straight face that she loves him but sex is too vulnerable, like, that is a sex issue. That's not a him and her issue. That's something where unilaterally on her end, she should go into therapy and figure out— I, I'm sure that woman was raised very sex negative. I'm sure she saw things that were bad about sex, possibly in her own house. Maybe she has sexual trauma. Like, having sex with somebody you ostensibly love, having that be too vulnerable to do is is that is not a relational issue. That's an individual issue, unless it is a, this marriage is terrible issue and I don't want to be vulnerable with him. I barely want to look at him in the face, never mind have sex with him.

Yeah, the, you know, we have the physical thing, the emotional thing. A thing that I frequently hear, not to be too crass, is vaginismus, where the, the opening is clenched. That is a result of anxiety, past trauma, and so forth. Sometimes there's some physical things that can result in that, but, uh, We also have the— and every man knows this one— the transactional element to this. I realize this is important to you, man. If you want to win the prize of physical affection from your wife, I'm going to need some things done around here. And very often this goes down the path of domestic duties. You know, maybe if you made the bed every day, I would do so. And so we have these anxious men that are like, yes ma'am, and they jump to attention. They don't just make the bed, they make the bed and then clean the house from top to bottom and get on their hands and knees and scrub the tile and everything else, and they're like, shit, still no sex, this sucks. So we could go around and around in circles with this whole sex and marriage thing. It's kind of complicated.

Yeah, those are relationship issues. You know, sex is a proxy variable for connection and closeness and vulnerability, and there's a lot of couples where they're talking about just the wrong thing. Like how we were just talking about gifts— the gift isn't the issue. Sex isn't the issue. Like, it's the fact that, like, you're not a team in your relationship, you know? I mean, it's the fact that you can't be close. It's the fact that there is no joy and connection. I'm not saying there's supposed to be, like, euphoria, like in the honeymoon stage, but still joy in connection.