You DO have options: what higher-desire partners can actually do

Feeling stuck, powerless, and like your needs don't matter? This episode is for you.

A listener wrote: "I feel like you only talk about what the low-libido partner needs. What about me?" He's right—I needed to address this more directly.

In this episode, I break down the "power imbalance" myth, clarify what you can reasonably expect in a monogamous relationship, and talk over the 5 real options when your partner refuses to work on your desire discrepancy.

Your needs matter. You're not powerless. You have choices—they're just hard choices.

We also cover what you can do RIGHT NOW to reclaim your agency.

Topics: desire discrepancy, mismatched libido, sexless marriage, higher libido partner, relationship help

Get my free guide: 5 Steps to Start Solving Desire Differences
(Without Blame or Shame), A Practical Starting Point for Individuals and Couples, at https://laurajurgens.com/libido

Find out more about me at https://laurajurgens.com/

Transcript

0:01  
Welcome to the desire gap podcast. I'm your host, Dr Laura Jurgens, and whether you want more sex than your partner or less, you are not wrong, and your relationship isn't doomed. You just need better tools to solve the struggles of mismatched libidos. That's what we do here, so welcome and let's dive in. Hey everyone. Welcome to today's episode. We are going to talk about the fact that you do have options as the higher libido partner, what you can actually do, and I want to own up to getting an email from a listener recently that really helped me realize how much I need to be very explicit with you all right away on this he's been listening to the podcast trying to figure out how to solve the desire gap with his partner, and just to paraphrase, he basically said, I feel like you're only talking about what the low libido partner needs. What about me? Why do I have to live with disappointment and rejection? Why does my partner get to have all the power get to have the sex life they want, while my desires and feelings don't matter? And I realized that he was really right, that I need to address this more directly, because if what you're hearing from me as the high libido partner is that you should just shut up and suffer, then I have not been clear enough. Because I, although I know I've never said that, because I fundamentally don't believe it. I don't believe you should just shut up and suffer. It is really easy to hear that when we talk about how pressuring your partner for sex doesn't work, especially if you don't know what else to do. So today's episode is for every higher desire partner out there who feels stuck, powerless and like your needs don't matter, we're going to talk about what you can actually do your very real options, your actual agency and power, and why this sort of power imbalance that you think exists isn't quite what it seems. So here's what we're going to do today. We're going to address the misconception that your needs don't matter head on. I'm going to clarify what I actually mean when I talk about pressure and consent in the context of you and like how, how this affects you, I'm going to give some concrete options for what to do, including when your partner won't work on the problem. And I'm going to talk very frankly about your agency and the power dynamics here. Okay, so just to start off, let's address this misconception, your needs matter. And here's what I think is happening. I think the listener heard me say, Don't pressure your partner, don't rush penetration. Don't create obligation sex, and translated it to your needs don't matter, just accept less sex and be grateful for whatever you get. And while that is not actually what I said, it is probably very easy to hear it that way, because that is how he already feels. That's what he thinks and fears his partner is saying, by not wanting sex that your needs don't matter. You should just accept it and be grateful for what you get, right? So his brain is primed to hear that message everywhere, and yours might also be, because that's how you think your partner is thinking about you, like your needs don't matter. But here's the thing that's true, that is absolutely not what I'm saying. Your needs do matter. Your pain is absolutely real, and your loneliness, frustration, feelings of rejection, those are legitimate. The higher desire partner is suffering just as much as the lower desire partner in a desire gap situation, just everybody's suffering differently, right? So one person's dealing with pressure, anxiety, guilt, shame, and the other person is often dealing with rejection, disappointment, feeling unwanted and sometimes also shame. Both of you are in pain and it matters. Both of you matter, and there's a very good chance that this person's partner believes his needs matter too, but is stuck because she, he or they, feels pressured, and their body is saying no, and so they've gone into avoidance. And it's easy to interpret avoidance as you don't matter to me. So I want to say here's why I talk about pressure, pressuring your partner not being helpful. What I'm actually saying is that pressure makes the problem worse for everyone, including you as the high desire partner. You don't actually want obligation sex. You want your partner to actually want. You, you don't want them to just lay there like a dead fish and not be into it or pretend to be into it. And the thing is, pressure doesn't create desire. It creates anxiety, and anxiety kills desire. So when I'm telling you to back off the pressure, I am not doing that to protect your partner at your expense. I am doing it because it is your best shot at eventually having the sex life you want. But you're right. I do this. This person was right. Right that I need to talk more about what you can do, and that is absolutely on my list, and I'm doing it today. So one of the other problems that came out in his email that I really want to address is this idea that this, the low desire partner was sort of unilaterally deciding not to that nobody, we're not going to have sex, right? That this is the core problem, and this is a core problem. The idea is, and the reality is, let me just say the reality is that nobody gets to unilaterally decide because you are in a partnership with another person. And this may be hard to hear, but here, here's the deal. In a relationship, nobody gets to unilaterally have the sex they want if it requires their partner's participation. That is called consent, right? And the lower desire partner doesn't get to dictate no sex ever. If that's a deal breaker for you, you get to leave, right? The higher desire partner doesn't get to demand sex. Their partner genuinely doesn't want or coerce them into it emotionally. But what you do both get to do is work together to figure out what's possible or decide the relationship isn't working. And you know, I worked with a guy who kept saying, I signed up for a sexual relationship. She doesn't just get to decide we're not having sex anymore. And and I said, you know, you're right. She doesn't get to just decide that, but you also don't get to decide you are having sex when she doesn't want to. What you both get to do is figure out if there is some sort of middle ground or admit that it's not working right. And so that reframe was a really important shift for him, and it actually turned out, once we worked together for a while, that she just didn't like the sex they were having, and he was getting defensive every time she asked for the type of sex that she wanted, because he didn't know what to do, and he didn't really want to do all that foreplay and oral that she wanted, and so she had shut down. And admittedly, she wasn't asking in a very effective way. She was kind of in this sort of, like, not like that feedback trap. But it turned out that he wasn't offering sex she wanted, and when they started working with me and solved their communication issues, they started having better quality sex for her and the quantity issue for him was resolved, but that wouldn't have happened if he had stayed in this very like adversarial position of like, well, she doesn't just get to decide. And the thing is, yes, she does. She gets to decide what to do with her body, right? That is consent, so we do have to admit that and move forward from that place. All right. So another issue that came up that I really wanted to address is this power dynamic myth, this idea that my partner, the low desire partner, holds all the power because they control somehow whether sex happens, right? And I hear this a lot, and I get why it feels that way when you want sex and your partner is allowed to say no, it feels like they are the gatekeeper, and you are just left in limbo. You are just like stuck. But here's where that framing really misses the mark. They don't hold all the power. You are both stuck in a dynamic that is not working for either of you, and you actually have a lot of power in this situation. Yes, your partner controls whether sex is happening, if on any given night, that is consent, right? And it has to work that way, but because sex requires the sex that you want requires two people. If the sex you want only requires yourself, then they're not gatekeeping, right?

9:26  
They get to decide whether they want to participate in anything. You wouldn't force feed them the meatloaf that they hate. So you're not going to like, right? We're not going to coerce someone, emotionally or in any other way, into having sex with us. But here's what you do. Control. You control whether you stay in the relationship. You control how you show up emotionally. You control what you're willing to tolerate in the long term. You control whether you insist on working together on this issue or you decide to make other. Choices, you control your own emotional regulation and how you handle disappointment, the power imbalance that people are thinking of when they're thinking that the low libido partner is like a gatekeeper, is actually just consent, and the solution isn't to take away their No, it's to build a relationship where their yes can actually show up. I want to just say that one more time, the solution isn't to take away their no or to pout until they give in. It is to build a relationship where their yes shows up authentically. And so this requires what I often say, which is this team based reframe, and I will always say that, because it's so important. So when you're stuck in the you versus me thinking, which clearly was going on for this listener who wrote me, and I really understand that, because you kind of get entrenched in it after a while. When you're stuck in the sort of you have all the power, I'm powerless. That is an adversarial dynamic, and in that dynamic, everyone loses, right? So getting on the same team, admitting like, hey, we have a desire discrepancy that's hurting both of us. How can we solve this together? That is where real agency and power lives, and that is where possibility lives. So, for example. So I had a client who said, you know, my spouse has all the power. I always initiate. He always says no. And I asked her, What would happen if you said to him, I'm miserable. You're miserable about this. It isn't working for either of us. Let's get help together or figure out what else we're going to do. That is power. That is agency. Being vulnerable is really powerful. Being honest and asking to go get help together is taking her power, she finally realized that she'd been giving away all her power by never actually putting the problem on the table and just sort of sulking about it, right? She hadn't told him that she was coming to see me, right? And that changed really quickly after we had this conversation. Once she made it a we problem instead of a him problem, things started moving right when she stopped being so blaming and sort of victim-y, then he could actually hear her pain, because she took agency, and she showed up vulnerably, and he started participating to sort out their issues together with my help, right? So another question that came up for this listener was, you know, what can I expect? What can I reasonably expect in a monogamous relationship? And I hear this a lot from high libido partners, it's a great question, and honestly, the answer depends, because every couple negotiates monogamy differently. But here's a few things that you would be very reasonable to expect. One is honesty you and your partner. And this is expecting from yourself as well as your partner, you and your partner. It is reasonably to reasonable to expect honesty about what's happening. And like I would put that in that I would put it's reasonable to expect somebody to need to take time to figure out what's happening, but then come to you honestly and tell you they don't. It's not necessarily reasonable to expect them to understand what's going on for themselves right away or without help. But they could be honest about not knowing right or that they could be honest about needing some time to figure it out, and then follow up with you. I also think it's really reasonable to expect effort, and this means both of you being willing to explore what is happening for you, whether you do or don't want sex, what kind of sex you want and what kind of help might be helpful for you, right? Putting in some effort. I also think it's reasonable to expect engagement, so that means both of you being willing to work on the problem together and not just shutting down, right? And I think it's reasonable to expect openness, kindness, right? That like when you do bring up an issue, if, now look, if you bring it up in an accusatory way and you're blaming and stuff, then you're going to get defensiveness. And it's pretty reasonable to expect defensiveness, but when you come vulnerably, you know it is a reasonable expectation to expect somebody to at least give you some benefit of the doubt if you ask for it calmly and vulnerably. I also think it's reasonable to expect someone to be willing to get some qualified support and some professional help if it's needed, but that's what I think, right I'm not in your relationship. You have to decide between the two of you, what are the expectations that you mutually agree on for how you behave together? Other in your relationship. Have you ever even talked about it? Did you just assume Monogamy was the default and that you know it's fine to like do, to not put in effort to find a check out like, what? What have you talked about? What have you decided together? A lot of times, couples haven't decided anything together, so maybe that conversation needs to happen, right? What I don't think it's reasonable. What you can't expect was for your partner to want sex that they don't want. You can't expect for desire to magically appear because you want it to, and you really can't expect for them to override their body's signals to make you happy. That is not a reasonable expectation in a relationship. But here's the thing, so when someone will not engage, and I would say for me, I think engagement with an issue is a reasonable expectation, but you do have, it's not reasonable to set up like to use engagement as a like, like a hammer at somebody, like, I'm here yelling at you, I'm blaming you, and you won't engage. That's that's just juvenile and manipulative, right? But if your partner will, is actually refusing to even talk about it when you have come to them calmly, when you have asked them to get help with you, or they just shut down every time you bring it up, and even when you've scheduled it in advance, calmly and you've followed all of the suggestions that I've made in getting on the same team part one and part two podcasts, but If they still refuse to even talk about it, that is actually a different problem, that is not a desire discrepancy problem, that is actually a refusal to work on the relationship problem, and that brings us to your other options, right? So that's refusal to engage is a totally different relationship issue than a desire gap, right? So I want to just be clear that what I'm suggesting the sort of working on it part means, hey, we're both struggling. Let's find someone who can help us figure this out together. What does not count as working on it is continuing to have obligation sex while resenting each other, your partner saying, I'll try, but never actually doing anything, or both of you just avoiding the topic and hoping it goes away. That's not actually working on it, just to be clear. Okay, so here are your real options as the higher libido partner, I'm going to give you the best option, and then I'm in my opinion, obviously, and then I'm going to give you five very real alternatives. If the best option isn't happening, like your partner refuses to work on it. So best option work on it together, right? So before we get to these sort of five other options, if your partner won't work on it, the best option is to work on this together with professional help. And so what you can do with your agency is ask for that, set up an appointment with me. Come see me on your own. You don't have to have your partner with you in the beginning. And in fact, a lot of people start with me on their own so that they can learn how to best invite their partner in and try some things and figure out some things that we can do to help make the situation more comfortable for their partner. And then their partner gets curious about, Gosh, why has my relationship gotten so much better lately? I feel so much more comfortable, and they find out that their partner's been working with a coach, and then they're like, really excited to come in and work with me, too. And that happens all the time. I would say that's kind of the majority of my clients. One person comes first, so you could come get help first. That is absolutely something you can do, right?

19:05  
And that is working on it together, because you're just going to be in the leadership position of working on it by working on yourself and your side first. Working on it does not mean pushing your partner to have sex they don't want, right? It means working with someone, either like me or you know somebody else, who can help you both get on the same team and learn to communicate better both of you understand what's actually happening emotionally and sexually for each of you. And again, we can help with we can build the communication skills in one of you first. We can understand what's happening emotionally and sexually in one of you first. Not everybody has to start at the same time. And we also want to create conditions for desire to emerge for the lower libido partner. So helping you solve for any of the conditions that you may have inadvertently been creating that are creating pressure on the lower libido. Person, and then figuring out what's possible for your specific relationship. That's also part of getting help this option, working on it, starting either just with you or with both of you, is the best chance of creating the sex life that works for both of you. Your best option for this is to go to those getting on the same team episodes, listen to those. Grab my free guide on the website Laura jurgens.com so you can have this conversation. And if you need help getting started, or you don't feel comfortable bringing them in right away and you want to get started on your own, I can help, right? But the conversation should, at a minimum, include something like, Hey, I'm really hurting here. I'm feeling sad and disconnected, but I really don't want you to just to have sex with me, to please me if you don't want to. I think that's going to hurt us in the long run. So I want us to get some help and really work on this. Will you do that with me? Right? But if your partner refuses and say you've worked you've already come to me, and we've done everything we can to create better conditions and help you communicate this well with them, and your partner still refuses to work on it. Here are your other five options. Number one, stay as is and get increasingly resentful. This is a legitimate option, and a lot of people choose it by default. What it looks like is you staying in the relationship, nothing changing. Your partner keeps saying no, you keep wanting more sex, and over time, you just get really bitter and often kind of nasty, so your resentment will leak out in passive, aggressive comments, withdrawal, contempt. You often stop liking yourself because you don't really like being like that. You stop being affectionate because what's the point? Right? Your partner feels it. The relationship deteriorates, but you don't leave. And a lot of times people are just doing this by default, right? But it is an option you could choose. Most people don't choose it on purpose. But people do choose it because leaving is scary, right? Because maybe you love them in other ways, because maybe you're hoping something will magically change because of kids, finances, fear of being alone, whatever it is, right? But what typically happens is the relationship slowly dies, it becomes really unpleasant. It starts affecting your health and your self image and self esteem and the rest of your life. And it can limp along for decades like this, right? But it doesn't get better. So my take is actually that this is the worst option. I don't recommend it, but it's what most people default to. So I'm going to name it for you as a legitimate option. Just stay, let it be bad and get resentful. All right. Option two, stay and genuinely accept less sex without resentment. Now look, this is super hard, and almost no one can do it, but I'm going to tell you it as a legitimate option, because every now and then there is an exception, somebody can manage to make it happen. What it looks like you stay in the relationship, and you truly let go of your sexual expectations. You don't suppress them. You actually release them. You find fulfillment in other areas of your life. You focus on masturbation. You genuinely become okay with a low sex or no sex partnership. This is really hard because you can't fake it. You can't white knuckle your way through it. You'll just be doing option number one, if you're just suppressing your needs and pretending you're fine, you'll end up back in option one with the resentment This option requires actually shifting your values, your priorities and your expectations and finding other sources of connection, Joy and aliveness, the people who can genuinely do this tend to have low to moderate sex drives themselves, find really deep fulfillment in other areas of the relationship. Tend to have really enjoyable solo sex lives that actually do satisfy them and have genuinely shifted what they value about the relationship. So my take on this is that it is possible, but rare. And you have to be really honest with yourself about whether you can actually do it, not whether you think you should be able to do it, because very, very few people can do this. I do know a couple where he it's a heterosexual couple. He genuinely doesn't care about sex very much. They have sex, maybe like once a year, and she's much more interested in sex, but she also has a really great time with her vibrator and her other sex toys, and she has a rich fantasy life, and she's really happy with other aspects of their relationship. She's deeply fulfilled by their intellectual connection. She loves their travel together. They do shared creative projects. They're actually both artists, and they do like this, like beautiful art together. She's not gritting her teeth through it. She's actually genuinely happy. But I will say that didn't happen by accident. That took real work and real honesty about what she values most, and they needed help to get there. But now it works, but you got to be really, really honest with yourself about whether that's going to work for you. All right. Option three, open the relationship honestly. So this is like, outsource the sex part honestly, and what this looks like is having an honest conversation with your partner about meeting your sexual needs outside the relationship. You negotiate boundaries, rules, agreements, and you follow them. You get support, therapy or coaching to navigate it. And why? You know, people choose this because they want to stay in the relationship for all the other reasons that it works, but they genuinely need a sexual connection that isn't available with their partner. And it requires that. Here's the thing that it requires, though, is massively good communication skills, really deep emotional self awareness and resilience and typically, professional support. You also need a partner who's willing to consider non monogamy. Need time, patience and a hell of a lot of hard conversations. It can be great. It works well for some couples, it saves the relationship for some couples. For others, it actually accelerates the ending, opening a relationship to solve a problem doesn't typically work, but if, especially if the couple is not connected emotionally already, but if they are opening the relationship from a place of genuine connection, love and like strong bond, it can work. So my take on this is, this is a very legitimate option. It is hard, but it is honest. And if your partner is not willing, these are all the options. When your partner is not if you are in a monogamous relationship, your partner is not willing to work on the desire gap. I think this is a very legitimate choice to put to them, but if you're going to do it, get help. Don't just wing it, right? And don't pretend that you're opening the relation. This happens all the time. Pretend that you're opening the relationship honestly, but you're actually not being honest about it. That's just called cheating.

27:50  
But I did, you know, this can work. I did work with a couple where, you know, she had this chronic pain situation that made penetrative sex in particular impossible, and her partner really wanted that sometimes, not necessarily all the time, but he was climbing the walls really. And they spent a bunch of time in therapy, figuring talking about opening the relationship, trying to figure out if it could work. Then they moved they worked with me on their attachment needs, really understanding those, really understanding the structure of the open relationship that would work, and negotiating that and learning really great communication and repair skills. They set very clear boundaries, and he started seeing other people for sex, and has worked out really well. It's been a couple years. They're still together. They're still really happy together, and they're really glad that they did it, but they did the work first. They didn't just jump into it out of desperation, and he didn't just cheat and then pretend it was actually him in an open relationship. Okay, next on your list of five options, option four is actually cheat, and so this is outsourcing dishonestly, and what this looks like is you meet your sexual needs outside the relationship without your partner's knowledge or consent. And I Why am I including this as an option? Right? I am not including it because I recommend it. I do not recommend it, but it's what a lot of people do, and I'm naming it because pretending it's not an option that people actually choose doesn't make it go away. This is an option, and I want you to look at all your options with open eyes. People do this option because they feel stuck between staying miserable and leaving and they don't know how to be honest. They've maybe tried everything else except for honesty, and they want to preserve something. Typically, they're conflict avoidant. They can't face hard conversations, and they have some ideas about preserving the family structure that often happens. You'll see a lot of. People who have I've had a lot of people who have all these ideas about, like, being Christian and that they can't divorce because God hates divorce, but it's okay for them to go cheat, so they do that. I don't quite understand the logic, because I'm pretty sure that that's not how it works in the church, but they've gotten so shamed into the structures that they can't really think outside that box, and they're so focused on preserving appearances from the outside, and they don't know how to be honest. And so that's one reason. Sometimes there's like, really legitimate reasons for this, and I am not here to judge. I just don't think it works very often for people, it doesn't work out very well. But I have heard circumstances where it, you know, especially where there was some abuse or some financial coercion, where in some ways, it it kind of made sense based on what those that person needed to do at the time for them, right? I just don't typically recommend this option, because it usually backfires. You tend to get caught, and then that blows up. Or if you don't, you have to kind of live with this sense of dishonesty and possibly getting caught. There's also, you know, it just blows up relationships when that happens, right when, when it does come out. But even if you don't get caught, it creates distance in your primary relationship, and it creates a lot of distance. It kind of almost fractures people on the inside, fractures their personalities a little bit, and it can be really devastating to the cheater, as well emotionally, as well as the person who feels betrayed by their partner. And also, you open your partner up to serious health risks from STIs. And I find that really to be for me, that's a real moral issue, and I think your partner deserves to decide whether they're going to expose themselves to that or not. So if you are seriously considering cheating, please ask yourself, Why am I staying? What am I actually preserving? Because it's not the relationship, it's the illusion of the relationship. And ask yourself if there is a more honest way to get what you need.

32:26  
So option number five,

32:29  
this is another one that I do actually think is a very legitimate option to consider, and that is, leave the relationship. This looks like deciding that sexual connection that you want is not possible. The person's not going to work on it with you, and this is non negotiable for you, and that is okay. You are allowed to be a person with sexual needs if your partner can't or won't meet you there, it's okay to admit that the relationship doesn't work, but people resist this because it's painful, and that's understandable. You know, maybe because you love your partner, or because of logistics or kids or finances or just fear, right? Or because you feel guilty, because you feel like people will judge you for leaving over sex. But the truth is that sexual connection might be a non negotiable thing for you that you really desire to have in your life, and that's okay. That doesn't make you shallow or selfish, it just makes you honest about what you need, and some relationships can't accommodate both persons needs. It's sad, but it's also absolutely real and true. You are allowed to leave, and this option actually creates the possibility of finding relationships that work for you and your partner, right? Find a relationship that works for you sexually, but it honestly, it frees your partner, too from trying to be somebody that they're not, and especially if they don't want to work on it. It gives you a chance to be with somebody who will want to work on the relationship with you. So I do think this is a completely legitimate option. And if you're genuinely tried to work on it together and it's not working, this is also often the kindest thing for both of you. And you know, I had a couple of clients who spent years trying to make their relationship work, even though he wanted a ton of sex, and she never wanted to have sex ever again, and it created all this distance and resentment and coldness between them, and this sort of push pull dynamic that was just miserable for both of them. And, you know, she didn't want sex with him, but also not with anyone else ever, and the best thing for them that they ever could have done was for themselves and their kids, was to separate, but they felt like they were not allowed to separate because they were. They had a particular church that they went to that just did not believe that divorce was okay. I. So once they got over that and realized that the best thing they could do for themselves and for their relationship as CO parents was to separate, they finally did, and they separated amicably. By working with me, you don't have to work with me to do that, and they are both much happier now. She's happy alone. He's dating, he's having a bunch of sex. They are building more closeness now as friends and CO parents that they aren't caught in this old push, pull dynamic, sometimes the relationship just can't hold both people's needs, and that's okay. It doesn't mean you failed. It's actually just closing a chapter and succeeding with the next one, right? And it was a success, because they stopped before it got any worse. So the summary of your options if your partner won't work on the problem with you, one, stay and get resentful. Don't recommend. Two, stay and genuinely accept less sex, hard, but not totally impossible. Three, open the relationship, honestly, absolutely legitimate, but difficult. Four, cheat, not recommended, but a real option. Five, leave, completely legitimate, also hard. None of them are easy, but pretending that you have no agency, that you're just stuck is not true. You have choices. They are just hard choices. All right. So as we get to wrap up here, I just want to say what you can do right now. So if you haven't yet tried working on it together, obviously I'm suggesting do that first, right. Create safety for honest conversation. Learn what actually creates desire together. Be willing to get curious. Both of you, hopefully will commit to understanding what's happening at some point, please work with someone who can help you. That's the path with the best chance of success. But what you can do for yourself while you're working on that together or figuring out if your partner will work on it at all, is one to take care of your own sexual needs. So masturbate, have a good time with it. Don't let it be a consolation prize or like a quick thing. Really be luxurious and enjoy your own sexuality. Number two, work on your emotional regulation. So please, you know, learn to stop making your partner responsible for managing all your feelings about sex, soothe your own disappointment, and learn how to do that. Number three, you can work on building a life that doesn't revolve around waiting so finding other sources, sources for yourself of joy, of connection, of aliveness. Another thing you can do is really get clear on your bottom line. What are you actually willing to live with long term? What's non negotiable? Be honest with yourself, and number five is stop pressuring, because it's not helping. It's just making things worse, and that means emotional coercion, too, through like sulking or pouting kind of stuff, right? One of my clients realized he was spending every evening hoping his husband would initiate, or trying to figure out how to initiate with his husband in a way that didn't get turned down. And he was, like, tracking his husband's moods, trying to create these, like perfect conditions, and like, then, of course, like blowing up when it didn't work, and, you know, trying to push his husband to get on testosterone and all this stuff. But his whole life basically revolved around when they might have sex next, and trying to force that issue. And yes, there were absolutely things we needed to work on for both of them so that his husband could feel comfortable saying yes again. But in the meantime, one of the key ingredients was when I said, What if you just went and did things you enjoy, instead of focusing so much on whether you're going to get sex or not? What if you just built a life that you loved? And he started doing stuff again, like rock climbing, he reconnected with some friends, he got into woodworking. He started having a really good time, and he stopped being so desperate, and he was happier. But he also became more attractive because he wasn't this like black hole of need anymore, and it gave them some space and time to work on other underlying issues. So what I want you to take away from this episode is that you are not powerless. You have options. They're not all easy options, right? And some of them are painful, but you are not powerless or stuck. Your needs matter the fact that I talk about creating safety and not pressuring your partner doesn't mean your needs are less important. It just means I'm trying to help you stop doing things that make the problem worse. The best path is working together. But you know, if your partner is willing to get help and actually engage with the problem, don't assume they're not. There's a good chance that they are. Then you just need to find the right way to ask and in a way that they can hear. But if they really won't, you do get to decide what you're willing to live with. And if you're feeling stuck, and you've tried everything and nothing's working and you need help, you don't have to do this alone, right? But I want to invite you to, you know, this week, practice one thing from the like, what can you do for yourself? Section, right? Just pick one and look honestly at all your options and really do an honest evaluation of what your next thing to try is. Okay? I want to thank you very much for listening today. I hope this has been helpful. If you have found this podcast helpful in general, I'd really appreciate you leaving me a five star review and a comment about what's helpful on the platform, because I read all the comments and I treasure them, and the five star ratings and reviews really help me, kind of beat the algorithm monster to help other people find the podcast. That's how podcasts get found, is by all those five star ratings and reviews. So I would really appreciate if you did that. If you like this podcast, and if you have any feedback about it, please feel free to send me an email Laura at Laura jurgens.com and I will see you here next week, my friends. Hey. So before you go, I have some more free help for you. If you are okay with sharing your email, I will send you my free guide, five steps to start solving desire differences without blame or shame. This is a practical starting point for individuals and couples. You can opt out of my emails at any time, but I think you'll want to stick around. I am not a spammer. Go get it at www.Laurajurgens.com/libido. Make sure to spell my last name right and the link is in the show notes.