If your spouse wants sex more often than you do, whose needs matter the most?
Desire for intimacy varies from person to person, and it’s not unusual for spouses to have different sex drives. Still, many couples find it challenging to agree on how often to be intimate. Life is demanding, and making time for intimacy often falls to the bottom of the to-do list.
As a couple, you might be wondering how to decide on sex from one day to the next. Maybe you want to make yourself more available to your spouse. Perhaps your spouse wants to honor your energy level and work with you to find the best times for intimacy.
When it comes to intimacy, your spouse’s needs don’t matter more than yours — and vice versa. Instead, it’s crucial to find a balance that works for your life and your relationship. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to intimacy, but when you work together as a couple, you can find a path forward that feels good to you both.
Intimacy Opens the Door to Connection
Intimacy may feel like another obligation on your daily list, especially when you’re tired or stressed. But in reality, it’s an opportunity to connect in your marriage. Rather than categorizing sex with other daily to-dos such as going to work and cleaning up around the house, treat it as a connection you want to pursue.
Women tend to crave emotional connection, while men are drawn to physical connection. Rather than resisting one another, each of you must be willing to offer the other what they need. For husbands, that means being more attentive to your wife’s emotional needs. And for wives, it means being open to physical intimacy. Healthy, loving intimacy often leads to the deeper emotional connection you’re seeking.
It’s important to note that there are many ways to connect with one another and maintain intimacy besides sex. During seasons when sex is infrequent or can’t happen at all, it’s still critical to cultivate that connection. Physical touch, shared activities, deep conversation, and time spent together can help to deepen your relationship regardless of sexual frequency.
Intimacy Requires Preparation and Communication
If you’re feeling reluctant to be intimate with your spouse more often, intentional preparation can help you get in the right frame of mind. Prepare yourself in mind, heart, and body, and put sex on the calendar if you need to. Thinking about that time together can help you start looking forward to it more often.
Make it a priority to communicate with one another often about sex. It’s important to avoid building resentment around these times together. Communicating and being honest about how you feel can help to prevent resentment from setting in.
Even with mental preparation, sometimes we may not be up for intimacy. Let your spouse know if this is the case. It’s also possible to come to an agreement when you’re unsure. You could say something like, “I don’t think I’m up for this right now, but I’m willing to try.”
It’s also important to stay aware of your overall health and wellbeing. Desire is physiological, and many different factors can impact it, including stress, hormones, energy levels, your overall wellbeing, and even the depth of emotional connection you feel with your spouse. Taking care of yourselves and one another can help to remove barriers to intimacy.
Remember that your level of desire doesn’t reflect on or measure the amount of love you feel for your spouse. Still, it’s possible to be prepared and available for intimacy, and that time together pays great dividends in your marriage. Even on the days when you agree to skip sex, your spouse will know how deeply you care about prioritizing it.
Your Desires Don’t Conflict; They Protect Your Marriage
So you want more emotional intimacy, and your spouse wants sex more often to feel connected. Does that mean you’re locked into conflict forever? Not at all.
Rather than seeing yourselves as being at odds, consider this: You’re the guardians of both sides of your marriage. For a marriage to work long-term, you must work together to guard both emotional connection and physical intimacy. Your desires are complimentary to one another.
As iron sharpens iron, your marriage needs both elements in order to thrive. Your husband’s needs aren’t necessarily more important than yours, and your needs aren’t more important than his. Understand each other rather than fueling more conflict.
This is an almost universal issue for couples that we have heard many times over the years, and it’s absolutely normal. It does take negotiation, compromise, and give-and-take to find a working balance. Your marriage is like its own unique dance; it’s up to you and your husband to decide on the rhythm that works best for you.
Need some guidance on building the healthiest sex life you can? Our book, Crazy Good Sex, can help. While it’s primarily directed toward husbands, you’ll both benefit from its insights into physical intimacy and true emotional connection in your marriage. Get your copy here.
How do you and your spouse navigate different sex drives? Share your success stories in the comments.
A Common problem in Marriages.
My view on this after more than 40 years of marriage is that a majority of married women have the best position. They emphasize the total 3-prong approach to sexual intimacy. It is not just because it feels good (majority of men), but sexual intimacy has the greatest level of intimacy and satisfaction when the following three areas or criteria are met. First, It is a union of two souls who appreciate the purpose of sex from a sacred perspective. Secondly, it is a union of two minds focused on on enjoying the entire experience and pleasing their spouse. Finally, it is the joining of two bodies committed to each other in marriage and not to be engaged in casually because of the biological elements released during orgasm that facilitate bounding. Of course, if the married couple is trying to conceive a child in love, the aforementioned approach should be emphasized.
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