18+ · For adults only.
It usually starts quietly. One of you reaches over and the other one is tired. It happens again. Soon there’s a small, unspoken scoreboard: who initiated, who said no, how long it’s been. One partner starts to feel rejected, the other starts to feel pressured, and neither wants to bring it up.
If that sounds familiar, you’re in very good company. Researchers count differences in desire among the main reasons couples seek therapy. The good news is that there’s a lot you can do about it.
First, the reassurance
Researchers have a dry name for it: sexual desire discrepancy. A systematic review by Kristen Mark and Julie Lasslo, covering 64 articles on desire in long-term relationships, notes that desire ebbs and flows, both within one person over time and between partners. The factors they map fall into three levels: individual (think stress, health or mood), interpersonal (the relationship itself) and societal (the wider world around you).
In other words, a gap in desire is a normal feature of long relationships, not proof that something is broken. Nobody has a fixed “drive” that stays the same for life.
And the gap isn’t always the same way round. Sometimes the partner who usually wants more goes through a quiet season, and the roles flip.
The gap itself isn’t the problem; how you handle it is
In a 2012 study of 133 university-age couples, Mark and Sarah Murray found that a bigger desire gap predicted lower satisfaction: lower sexual satisfaction for the women and lower relationship satisfaction for the men. Their conclusion is the useful bit: stop focusing on the one partner with “low desire” and look at how the couple interacts.
In a 2020 study, Laura Vowels and Kristen Mark asked 229 people in relationships how they actually dealt with differences in desire. They identified 17 strategies in five main groups: disengaging, communicating, doing something on your own, doing some other activity together, and having sex anyway. Partnered strategies were linked to higher sexual and relationship satisfaction than solo ones. Interestingly, none of the strategies was linked to how much desire people felt.
So the aim isn’t to “fix” the lower-desire partner. It’s to stop it being a lonely, silent fight.
Two kinds of desire
Many of us grew up with a movie version of desire: it strikes out of nowhere and you can’t keep your hands off each other. That’s spontaneous desire, and it’s real. But it isn’t the only kind.
In 2000, the physician Rosemary Basson proposed a model in which, for many people, desire is responsive. It shows up after things start: after some closeness, touch or the right mood, rather than before. Her model was first described for women, but the idea now helps many couples of all genders make sense of their differences.
If one of you is mostly responsive, waiting to “be in the mood” before anything happens can mean waiting forever. That isn’t low interest. It’s a different starting point.
What actually helps
1. Talk about it outside the bedroom. Never right after a rejection, and never at midnight. Pick a calm moment, like a walk or a Sunday coffee, and start with “us”: “I miss feeling close to you. Can we talk about how we’re doing?”
2. Get curious, not defensive. Ask what helps your partner feel desire, and what gets in the way. Exhaustion? Stress at work? Feeling unattractive lately? Housework imbalance? The answers are often less about sex than you’d think.
3. Say what desire looks like for you. If you’re the responsive one, explain it: “I’m rarely in the mood out of nowhere, but I often am once we’re close.” If you’re the one who initiates, explain what being turned down feels like, without blame.
4. Widen the menu. Intimacy isn’t all or nothing. Kissing, massage, showering together, a long cuddle with no expectations: these count, and they often help responsive desire wake up. A yes, no, maybe list is a low-pressure way to map out what you both enjoy.
5. Make room for it. Scheduling sex sounds unromantic until you realise that most anticipation is a kind of plan. Protecting time for closeness, like slow mornings without phones, gives desire somewhere to land.
6. Add a little novelty. Trying new things together, inside or outside the bedroom, is a classic way to break routine. Even playful ideas like role-play can shift the mood.
7. Believe it can grow. In research led by Jessica Maxwell, across six studies with nearly 1,900 participants, people who saw sexual satisfaction as something that takes work and effort (“growth beliefs”) reported higher sexual and relationship satisfaction, and so did their partners. People who believed in sexual “destiny”, the idea that you’re either compatible or you’re not, struggled more when disagreements came up.
The non-negotiable part
Nobody owes anyone sex. Not in a marriage, not after a nice dinner, not to “keep the peace”. A yes given out of guilt or fear isn’t the kind of yes worth having, and it won’t build the desire you’re hoping for. The goal of everything above is to make both of you feel freer, never more obliged.
If you’re the partner who wants more, your feelings are valid too. Feeling unwanted hurts. It’s fine to say so, as long as you’re asking for connection, not demanding a result.
When to get extra help
Sometimes a drop in desire has a physical or emotional cause that’s worth checking. The NHS lists relationship problems, stress, anxiety or depression, pregnancy and a new baby, hormonal changes with age, some medicines and hormonal contraception, and drinking too much among the main causes of a low sex drive. Some long-term conditions can play a part too. See a doctor if you’re worried about a change in your desire, or if sex is painful.
If you’ve been stuck for a long time, or the topic always ends in a fight, a qualified couples or sex therapist can help you both talk about it without the scoreboard.
Desire changes. Relationships that last usually aren’t the ones where both partners always want the same thing. They’re the ones where both feel safe enough to say what they want, and kind enough to listen. And when you’d like a little inspiration, our reader stories, like Rules of the Game, are there for that.
This article is educational and not a substitute for medical or therapeutic advice. If sex causes you pain, distress or conflict, talk to a doctor or a qualified sex therapist.
Sources
- Mark, K. P., & Lasslo, J. A. (2018). Maintaining sexual desire in long-term relationships: A systematic review and conceptual model. The Journal of Sex Research, 55(4-5), 563-581. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2018.1437592
- Mark, K. P., & Murray, S. H. (2012). Gender differences in desire discrepancy as a predictor of sexual and relationship satisfaction in a college sample of heterosexual romantic relationships. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 38(2), 198-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2011.606877
- Vowels, L. M., & Mark, K. P. (2020). Strategies for mitigating sexual desire discrepancy in relationships. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(3), 1017-1028. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01640-y
- Basson, R. (2000). The female sexual response: A different model. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26(1), 51-65. https://doi.org/10.1080/009262300278641
- Maxwell, J. A., Muise, A., MacDonald, G., Day, L. C., Rosen, N. O., & Impett, E. A. (2017). How implicit theories of sexuality shape sexual and relationship well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(2), 238-279. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000078
- NHS, ‘Low sex drive (loss of libido)’: https://www.nhs.uk/symptoms/loss-of-libido/
- Cover photo: PHOTO: “Adult couple holding hands” BY ALICE DONOVAN ROUSE / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS (CC0), EDITED