This YouTube Q&A (Ask a Sex Therapist) features Vanessa Marin (sex therapist) and her husband Xander answering a viewer whose husband wants daily sex while she only wants it less often. Vanessa identifies key red flags—daily anger and disrespect—and centers safety and agency: it must be acceptable to say no. She advises the questioner to initiate a calm conversation using an affirming script that validates the husband while naming that his angry/disrespectful reactions are unacceptable, to teach him alternative ways to express disappointment, and to consider couples therapy if conversations become unsafe. The hosts note that healthy permission to refuse can actually increase intimacy and sexual frequency over time; a current compromise mentioned is twice-weekly sex but resentment remains.
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We can't start a video like that. Do you have a question you have just been dying to ask a sex.
Therapist and her husband?
We decided to start something new here on our channel and start doing these Ask a Sex Therapist episodes. So we get so many questions sent to us every day and we decided to start making videos where we do a little deep dive on some of these questions.
Yeah, we definitely answer tons of questions on Instagram stories, but you can only say so much in that context. So here on YouTube we can explain a little bit more. So if you've got a question you've been dying to ask, why don't you leave it down in the comments below and we might get to it next time we do this series. So before we get to this week's question, we want to introduce ourselves in case you're brand new. Here we are, Vanessa and Xander Marin. Vanessa here is a sex therapist. I. I am a regular dude. We've been together for 14 years. Also, these are our cute little pugs, Winston and Maggie.
And our account is all about giving you the tools, tips and techniques that you need to create a truly extraordinary relationship inside of the bedroom and out. So if you are interested in that, then go ahead and hit that subscribe button.
Yes. All right, so let's get right into it. And here's the question. My husband wants sex every day and I could honestly live without it. We now have a compromise of two days a week, and he's still angry on the daily and disrespectful because he says I'm not intimate enough and he doesn't feel loved, et cetera, but I'm just not like that lovey dovey anymore. Ooh.
Okay. So the immediate thing that jumps out at me with this question is there's some pretty big red flags here that are named angry on the daily and disrespectful. So to me, like, sometimes people will present questions like this of like, well, why don't I ever want to have sex with my partner? And I sort of turn the question around to like, well, why would you want to have sex with somebody who's being disrespectful of you and angry with you? Like, that just doesn't sound like a desirable situation. It doesn't even sound like a safe situation. It makes me think about how much agency does this woman actually feel about her own sex life? Like, she says they've made this compromise to do it twice a week, but, like, is she feeling pressured or guilted into that because he's Being so angry and disrespectful. So the bottom line is that it absolutely has to be safe and okay in your relationship, either one of you, to say no to each other. And, like, we want to be real here. Of course it doesn't feel good to hear a no from your partner. Like, it can bring up feelings of rejection and fear and sadness and all kinds of stuff, but that's very different from being angry at your partner and being disrespectful and cruel to them. Studies have even shown that in partnerships where both partners feel okay saying no, they actually wind up having way more sex.
Interesting.
Yeah. So I think it's really important for this couple to work on making no a completely acceptable response, because to me, there's just no way that she's going to start feeling wild desire and lovey dovey ness towards him if he's being angry to her all the time. So what I would do in this situation is tell her to initiate a conversation with him at a time when they're both calm and relaxed and lead with something like, look, you're important to me. I love you. Our sex life is important to me. I want to feel connected, and I want you to feel loved by me, me. But the way that we are doing things right now, it's obviously not working for either one of us. And so I want to talk about how we can give each other what it is that we need to feel connected, to feel that love to each other. So again, you're like, you're really drilling in. Like, I hear what is important to you. I respect your needs. I want to try to find a way to make this work. So leading with that tends to help people, like, relax and not get immediately defensive. But I do think that she needs to make it crystal clear to him that his reactions are not acceptable. And so I would even go into more detail with him. She just said to us that he's disrespectful and angry. But I would maybe share whatever specific details of, like, you know, at the same time, I really want to make sure that you understand that when you react that way, like, that's not an acceptable reaction to me. It doesn't make me feel safe. It doesn't make it feel okay for me to say no, you know, something like that. So obviously this conversation has the possibility to get tense. And this couple may need to talk to a couple's therapist to help them have this conversation in a healthy way. But I think he really needs to hear that it's not okay for him to be responding in that way. And what they could do is to talk about what are different sorts of ways that he could express feeling sad or hurt or disappointed. Cause again, it's okay for him to feel bummed out that they're not connecting as much as he wants to.
Yeah, that's totally valid. It's just how you show it that really matters.
Exactly. So he needs to learn different ways. And she could even help him out by sharing something. Like, you know, if you're feeling disappointed, it would feel better for me if you phrased it in this way or shared it in this way or we did this, you know, give him different ideas of ways to express those feelings. So bottom line, once again, is that the way that he's reacting, it's not acceptable. And it needs to be okay and safe in their relationship for her to say no. Once that is in place, then I think that she's naturally gonna feel herself feeling a bit more interested in being intimate with. He's not being angry and disrespectful of her. She might feel that desire to want to connect more.
And hopefully when she phrases it like this, it will feel kind of logical to him. Like, oh, I have been acting in a way that makes it challenging for my partner to want to be having sex with me at all. And so, yeah, even if we have this arrangement and. And that we're doing it twice a week, but I would prefer it more. It's like, if I keep acting like this, I'm going to be getting it less than that, which is no good.
All right, well, that wraps up our first edition of Ask a Sex Therapist. Again. If you have any questions that you would love to hear us answer, drop them down in the comments below.
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