Reader Request Fridays #2

Hello and welcome to Reader's Request Fridays. This is a special international edition because we are in South Africa on a special trip celebrating our eighth wedding anniversary.

Crazy.

We made it to eight years. So let's get into this week's question. I'm in a relationship with a guy who's sweet and a good boyfriend who talks about forever. We love each other, but the problem is that I want sex way more than he does. He's fine with it once a week or even less. I'd like it at least twice a week. I literally always initiate and half of the time he shoots me down. We've talked about it before, but he said he was sorry that his libido was low, but that he felt like once a week was normal. That made me feel like I was needy and gross for wanting more. This is my first sexual relationship, but he's had several. I feel like I am not attractive enough for him to want to have sex with. I love him, but I honestly don't think that I can deal with this rejection for the rest of my life. It kills me a little inside every time he doesn't respond to me and makes me feel less and less attractive. Okay, so the first thing that I wanted to say after reading over this question was that it is totally normal and common in a heterosexual relationship for the woman to be the partner who has the higher sex drive. So it really pained me reading over this question and hearing this person describe herself as feeling gross and needy for wanting sex more often than her male partner, because that is just absolutely not true. We really don't talk about this situation enough where the woman is the higher sex drive partner in a heterosexual relationship. So I just want to be super clear that this happens in way more relationships than most people realize. It's completely normal. Very, very common. So definitely nothing gross or needy about wanting sex more than your partner.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely not. And it doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't mean that something is wrong with you. Everybody has a sex drive. And I know you mentioned that. The reader mentioned that she, this was her first sexual partner. So I, you know, I imagine that the more sexual partners you have, the more different sex drives you see. And like everyone, everyone's is different. And yours will change and his will change throughout life as well. So just because yours is higher than his right now, it doesn't mean that yours is higher than it should be. And it also doesn't mean that it's higher. Higher than his always will be either.

Yeah, it's really important to recognize that there is no right sex drive. There's no one sex drive that we're all supposed to be having. So I found myself getting curious about this conversation that these two had with each other where, you know, she brought it up and he said, you know, I'm sorry that my sex drive is low. I felt like once a week was normal. I think that that probably gave her this impression that something was horribly wrong with her. Like, he's saying, you know, I'm normal.

And he's also probably leveraging, like, or she's thinking he's speaking from his experience. Like, oh, in my experience with other women, they've only wanted it once a week. You know, they've only wanted it once a week. So therefore something is wrong with you. Now, I don't know if he said it that way or not, but I can imagine how it would be easy to take it that way, whether or.

Not he's curious about that. Yeah, I think that she probably took it as, oh, he's telling me that I'm not normal. And maybe that is how he was saying it. But maybe he was also trying to, like, maybe he was also feeling self conscious about his own sex drive and sort of saying, oh, shoot, now you're thinking my sex drive is low. I thought it was normal. You know, he's coming at it from a place.

I mean, honestly. Honestly, this describes our own situation at times in life. And. And, yeah, like, Vanessa and I have had conversations like this before, and I have felt very defensive about feeling like something is wrong with me for having a lower sex drive. And so it can be easy in a discussion like this to feel like you're on the defensive, not because the other person is, like, saying anything in a way that is, like, mean or bad, but it's just. It's an embarrassing thing as a. As a guy, as a man, to be like, oh, I. You know, because, like, people like society tells you you should have the higher sex drive. You should always want sex. So it's really. It's really hard to not feel kind of defensive and bad. And so it's easy to kind of rationalize, be like, oh, well, it's all in the past. It's always been like this. Or I feel like, you know, once a week is common from what the Internet says or whatever.

So I think when it comes down to the frequency issue, I definitely think that these two need to have another conversation. And I think that it would be great to sort of open it up by saying something like, you know, when we had that conversation about our different sex drives. I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but what I came away from that conversation was feeling like something's wrong with me for wanting the amount of sex that I want. And I've now realized that it's okay for me to want as much sex as I want, and it's okay for you to want as much sex as you want. So what we need to do is work together as a team to figure out what's going to feel good for us in our sex life. What do we need to feel connected to each other, close to each other. So you're really approaching it as a team together. But I think that this conversation is a good opportunity to say, yeah, this is what I was left with. I don't think that's what you wanted me to feel, and that's not how I want to feel either. So how do we kind of reset and approach this together as a team?

Yeah. And then we also are not entirely sure from the question. And she's talking about. She's the one who always initiates, and. And he's always turning her down. Well, I think what the first thing about that is that whenever you initiate anything, whenever you ask for something that you want, there's always some degree of vulnerability. There's always the possibility that you're gonna be let down, that someone's gonna say no. But that's part of life as well. If you don't ask for what you want, if you don't initiate things, then the likelihood of you getting what you want or things going the way that you want them is very low. Like, if you never ask for a at work, or if you always get stuck on the bad projects and you never say anything, you never talk about what you would like to do, it's unlikely that that's ever going to happen. And in addition, it's likely that, like, your boss is going to think, oh, well, you must, like, you must be happy with the way things are.

So, yeah. So I think the basic point here is that initiating sex is always going to feel vulnerable because you're always putting yourself in a position of being turned down. And being turned down for anything in life feels, you know, it sucks. So I think the issue here is not that you're going to ever get to a situation where you're going to feel completely comfortable initiating. You're never going to feel vulnerable. You're never going to get turned down. That's just not realistic. Instead, it's, how can I get as comfortable as possible with initiating, knowing that, yes, sometimes I'm going to get turned down. Yes, sometimes it's going to sting, yes, sometimes I'm going to feel self conscious about it and still allowing yourself to do it anyway. Because initiation is just such an important part of a healthy sex life. Someone's always got to do it.

Yeah. And also, what. Yeah. What we haven't talked about is the way, the way that you initiate as well. Like, it's, it's, it's not. I'm not sure from the question. Like, is she saying that, you know, is she just saying, hey, do you want to have sex? Or is initiation, like, starting to make out and seeing where things go? But I think there's a. There's kind of a lot of shades of initiation. And, you know, oftentimes when it comes to sex, it's like, if you just come straight out, out of nowhere and say, hey, do you want to have sex? It might. If you're not in the mood or something, then you kind of like, whoa. Oh, I don't know. Like, no, not really. But if you, you know, start with something smaller, like, you know, hey, like, let's cuddle. Hey, like, kiss me. Let's. Let's make out a little bit. That's, you know, there are ways to initiate that can kind of more oftentimes lead to a more positive outcome, Especially if you have more of a responsive sex drive where you need a little bit of stimulation or a little time to kind of get warmed up.

And on the flip side of that coin, there are also ways that you can work on turning down your partner's request or considering your partner's request, that can make the whole process feel a lot easier, too. Where it doesn't need to always be just, no, we're not doing it. Are there softer ways that your partner could turn you down? So maybe it's saying, I'm not sure, but what if we start making out and we see what happens? Or what if it's describing, hey, I'm sorry, I'm just really not in the mood right now because I have a horrible stomachache or maybe something bad happened at work that day. So I think having a conversation together where you talk about, okay, how do we make initiation and consideration feel good in our relationship? What are specific things that we can do to initiate sex in ways that will really invite each other to say yes? And what are ways that we can turn each other down or consider each other's requests in ways that are going to make us feel better not feeling like this abrupt rejection. So that would be a great conversation to have. And then I think we need to talk about her not feeling attractive if she initiates with her partner and he turns her down.

Yeah, I mean, that's. That's a tough one because, like, yeah, it's. I. I think that, you know, it's not. It's not a really. It's not a great thing to. To tie saying yes to sex or having sex to, like a judgment on your level of attraction. Like, like you guys are together. He's talking about wanting to be with you forever. Like, he's definitely attracted to you. I don't think you need to worry about that part. And it's just sort of, you know. Yeah. Like, you know, I think it shouldn't be. You shouldn't be tying that. Like, it's not a one to one relationship between having sex.

Yeah. Yeah. I can totally sympathize with this because I know that, like, we always want to feel attractive to our partners. We want to feel like our partner just. They desire us, they look at us, we look great, and they just have to have us. So we want to feel that kind of animalistic passion and attraction from our partners.

And.

And at the same time, that's not the only reason why we have sex. And so, like Xander was saying, if you tie those two things together, it's gonna put a lot of pressure on sex. Like, all of a sudden, sex becomes like a way that you have to prove to your partner that you're attracted to them, and then that doesn't really, you know, make you actually want to have sex if you feel like you're having to prove something. So the really important thing to recognize is just like Xander said, there's not this one to one relationship between if your partner's initiating sex or if your partner wants sexual, that's proof of how attractive you are to them. Instead, I would talk about, are there other ways to talk to your partner and to have your partner express their attraction to you? So it's not always about sex. Maybe it's just random compliments throughout the day or more detailed compliments or just talking about that attraction, what attracted you to each other in the first place, that kind of thing. So you're getting your ego boosted a little bit, but it's not directly tied to. To sex.

Yeah.

All right, so that is our advice for this question. We are doing readers requests for the entire month of October. So if you have a question that you want us to answer, please feel free to send it on over to infovm. Therapy.

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