A dead bedroom is a scenario where two people in a relationship experience a severe lack of physical intimacy that is prompting a lot of conflict in the partnership.
There is a subreddit called r/DeadBedrooms with nearly half a million people in it (461k to be exact, at the time of this writing).
So, you are not exactly alone if you resonate with what the dead bedroom feels like.
And yet the first thing we do is pathologize. Shame. Judge.
“I’m not attractive.”
“I’m not lovable.”
“I’m not enough.”
“I’m doing something wrong.”
“I should know how to handle this.”
“I am uniquely fucked.”
This is not a “you” problem. This is a systemic problem where we have been conditioned to believe that our humanity is a problem.
Capitalism and the patriarchy and white supremacy and every kind of oppressive system want you to believe that something is wrong with you so that you can keep racing and being “better” than other people according to some arbitrary standard of goodness and ethics that nobody even knows where it really even came from. (Maybe the Bible. And who wrote the Bible? Not God.)
Which is why, if you find yourself not “good enough” or “better,” you easily find yourself in making yourself a problem.
And it’s affecting not just poor people and women and non-white people. It is affecting everybody.
The collective decision that we’ve made to consent to this rat race has gotten us forgetting about what we really want and how much we inherently deserve it.
And here’s the reality: if you really want sex, you inherently deserve it. The end.
There is no justification, no rational basis, no prerequisite required for going after your desires. That is a lie that only benefits the people who want you miserable. Which are oppressive systems that are only interested in using you as a soldier to perpetuate its supremacist ideals around what is better and what is worse. Upholding these supremacist beliefs keeps us chasing after ideals rather than honoring the truth of where we are right now.
That ends now.
I have two scripts for two positions you may find yourself in: (1) you are the one with the lower libido or (2) you are the one with the higher libido.
How to approach talking about the libido differential with your partner.
There are more complex scenarios, but let’s start with these two.
Also, I hate scripts. But I hate them only if they are used as a replacement for what feels true to you. I am okay with them when they facilitate your own experimentation with words in a way that carries your truth most congruently.
From what I have experienced, even if you say all the right things, the transmission will not reach the other if it not a true reflection of how you are really thinking and feeling.
Either way, my own annoyances are my business. I trust that you will use these however you want as you are resourceful in your own way.
So, here we are.
(1) You are the one with lower libido
Hey, I know it’s been a while since we’ve been intimate, and I know that I’ve come up with all kinds of reasons that feel like excuses each time. I would love to have a conversation about this if you are willing and available. [insert here space to obtain your partner’s consent]
I want to start by saying that I love you so much, and I want to examine with you what it looks like to love one another deeply and in a way that is truthful to both of us.
Let me first address the elephant in the room: I have been avoiding sex. It’s not because I don’t find you attractive. Or maybe I actually don’t find you attractive. I don’t really know the truth because I never really got a chance to explore my own sexuality. I never got to explore how I want to connect with myself sexually. Never got a chance to look at what actually gives me pleasure.
Because I have been so occupied with how my sexuality is affecting you.
The reason I am occupied with how my sexuality is affecting you is that I don’t want to lose you. I love you so much. But I also realize that my fear of losing you and loving you are two different issues. In fact, those two issues may be in conflict because I wonder: am I really loving you when I am avoiding talking about hard things for the sake of not losing you?
When I am avoiding talking about hard things, I do so out of fear of disappointing you or upsetting you in some way. And when I do that, I am refusing to see the parts of you that are difficult for me to experience.
But here is what I have come to define love as: the willingness to extend myself to you for our mutual thriving.
If I am unwilling to extend myself to see more of you, am I really loving?
If I am unwilling to extend myself to love all of you, whom I am actually claiming to love?
I don’t want to love just parts of you. I don’t want to claim that I love you when I am not loving all of you.
When I say I love you, I want to mean it from the bottom of my heart. That means I am willing to experience the parts of you that may be harder for me to experience and partner with you as we go through those experiences together. This is how I want to extend myself, if you are open to it.
Which involves me telling you the truth because if I am to love all of you, I need to bring all of myself to engage with that love.
If I am not bringing all of myself to love you, I don’t know who is doing the loving.
So ultimately, I want to partner with you in knowing more of each other so that we get to see more of each other and love each other fully, as we are.
To me, that looks like building in some space for us to bring whatever story or desire that we’re grappling with. What if we start with the hour we have tomorrow after the kids go to sleep? (for example) [insert space to talk about logistics that are specific and relevant to you]
During this time, I want to establish: who wants to be heard first, how we want to set aside our own stories while one of us does the listening, and how we want to repair in case of rupture. How does that sound?
(2) You are the one with the higher libido
Hey, I know that it’s been a while since we’ve been intimate, and I know that I’ve reacted in ways that have not been the most ideal in response to your lower libido. I haven’t been so great at honoring your no every time I wanted a yes, and I would like to change that. Are you willing and available to partner with me on this? I would like to start by sharing where I am now and then talk about having a conversation about it. [insert space to obtain consent from partner]
What I have come to realize is that I have sexual needs, and I have been feeling both ashamed and entitled about having those needs. With the storm of thoughts and emotions swirling around my sexuality, I have ended up trying to make you responsible for having my needs met even when I tried my hardest to not make it your problem.
I have been resentful and angry about the ways you did not want to meet my needs because I made it mean that I am not attractive to you anymore, which I made it mean that you don’t love me anymore. And those stories turned into the belief that I am unlovable and objectively unattractive. Love and sex started becoming less and less accessible to me.
But I realize that those are stories that I want to rewrite, and I want to come back to and start with how much I love you and how I want to rebuild my relationship with you.
I want to have the kind of relationship with you where I honor your truth as much as I honor mine. Like when you don’t have desire for sex, I want to learn more about what that experience is like for you without making it mean anything about myself or my worth. And when I have stories about myself or my worth, I want to explore that with your witnessing without requiring you to tend to those stories and those wounds.
Partnering with you means we offer each other the safety and spaciousness to feel like we can talk about our wounds and our feelings without feeling like something is wrong with us.
I know for a fact that you are not “wrong.” Neither am I. It is not possible for us to be “wrong.” You are just you. You are human. So am I. And you are a human that I love. That means there are so many parts of you that I don’t even know about, and what I really want is to know more of the person that I love. That means I suspend any judgments, expectations, assumptions, or requirements when I talk to you.
I want to know more about your sexuality. I want to know more about things about you that have nothing to do with your sexuality. I want to know more of you and connect with you more deeply.
As we get to know more of each other, I hope we can know more about what we really want and how we want to get there. That might mean more scheduled sex. It might mean more spontaneous sex. It might mean an open marriage. It might mean we never have sex again. It might mean so many things, I am willing to experiment with you in finding out what’s next for us even if it might feel messy along the way.
Whatever the outcome, I find each possibility to be neutral. Of course, I might have feelings and grief around some of the changes that might be required in our marriage, but I am willing to experience those things and take responsibility for those feelings if it means that we create the kind of partnership where we both feel safe to be more of who we are.
Do you want to talk about setting up some times when we can bring some of the things that we’ve been meaning to get off our chest? [insert logistics discussion]
At the center of both invitations is the devotion to regarding the other as a human being.
So in order to craft your own invitation to talk to your partner about what matters to you, the first and foremost work is to remind yourself of your own humanity. When you find yourself pathologizing and shaming yourself, ask whether you are treating yourself as some idealized fictional character or as a human being.
Where you allow yourself to be more human, you get to connect with your partner’s humanity more deeply and truthfully.
Remember, we are here on this planet to love.
To love messily is not to be shamed but to be celebrated, witnessed, and cherished.
*
The Opener is a space where you get to practice difficult conversations that are specific to YOUR scenario.
And honestly, if you know how to have open conversations with your partner about sex, there is no difficult conversation you cannot handle.
You will be entirely untouchable.
Want to negotiate your salary? Easy. Because you can handle every shade of truth.
Want to stand up for a cause you care about? Easy. Because you know how to advocate for the parts of you you used to feel most ashamed about.
Want to speak on a stage? Easy. Because you know that, in the end, all that we’re here to do is love.
With each difficult conversation we have with our partners, we love more skillfully.
The effectiveness you are looking for in every area of your life is waiting for you in the skillfulness you cultivate in your closest relationships.
The Opener is a Discord serve where we practice having open conversations about sex, opening up our marriage, and the most difficult topics you’ve been avoiding. Whether it’s in real time during our live calls or through our discussion channel.
Where we liberate our own love story, we weave ourselves into collective liberation.
Practice love with us in community.
Join here or send me a message if you want to talk about joining.