Why I have a greater libido for men other than my husband

And how we've transmuted this libido differential to a marriage that works for us

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon a couple days ago. The kids were sleeping. Dan and I were lounging around, and he wanted to have sex.

I was like, “Okay, sure.”

And then we had sex. The kids were stirring, so he went to get them. I went to the bathroom to pee, and I found myself tearing up.

What was this weird feeling?

It had been a minute since I said “okay, sure” to sex with Dan. Ever since we opened up our marriage, we had been less frequent and more spontaneous in our sex life because I no longer felt a sense of obligation to be the only one to supply sexual resources to Dan. We had been getting our cups filled elsewhere as our libido arose because we have found that our libidos cannot coincide all the time.

So, oftentimes, when Dan came to me with a sexual advance, I have been turning him down because I listened to my body.

It was easier to listen to my body when I felt safe to say no and did not feel like I would be facing the consequence of upsetting him.

For a while, when we were monogamously married, I would feel like I would have to say yes even when I didn’t want to because I had internalized the conditioning that being available for sex was how I was a “good wife.”

Not only that, I would feel like relieving him sexually was a way to maintain peace and harmony in our marriage because I had experienced instances where it felt like his sexual frustration came out sideways. The story in my head was that he became more irritable about things he typically wouldn’t if he were sexually satisfied.

I felt that the only way to address the frustration was to put my body up to the altar even when I didn’t want to.

And even when I felt like I was doing the “good wife” thing very well, earning all the fucking gold stars, I still felt guilt and shame around the performance I was putting on just to fill that role.

I thought, “Wait a minute, do I actually love Dan, or am I just putting on a mask so we can maintain this manufactured peace and harmony?”

The answer, I found, was that it was both. I loved Dan, and I resented my own performance.

We had been grilled all our lives to believe that if we love our spouse, we have sex with them.

This is a lie and a manipulation.

Manipulation is a statement that attempts to control our actions by putting a condition on our value in the form of an if/then sentiment. Example: If you really cared about me, you would do the dishes.

Same thing here. “If you really loved your husband, you would have sex with him.”

When you really think about it, this sentence is such a crock of shit. Because it’s not true for me. What is true for me is the following:

• I love my husband.

• I have sex with him on my own terms. Only when I want to.

Those two true statements are unrelated to each other. They are unrelated because I feel more intimate and more in love with Dan when I can fart in front of him than when I have sex with him. When I laugh at an inside joke, not because it’s actually funny but because I just fucking love him. When I hug him after a long day knowing about the hundred billion ways he has my back when I am at my rock bottom.

Sex is not the only way or the best way to experience intimacy with our partners. It is simply one way that is available to us when we so desire.

So why is it that I have a higher libido for other men than I have for Dan in general?

Dan said it best when I brought up the tears that Saturday afternoon. Here is how our conversation went.

Me:

I am feeling a bit of resentment and sadness because I think I just said yes even though I didn’t really want to. It’s been a while since I did this, and the fact that I did it again for the first time in a while is really showing me how much this feels like a violation to my own body.

When I was peeing I was thinking to myself, “What am I doing with my body? What do I think my body is?”

And the unfortunate answer to that question was that I still had this belief that my body wasn’t really important. That it was simply a vessel for other people’s pleasure. I was still used to the idea that it’s “not a big deal” to use my body just for a few minutes if it meant that everybody was happy.

But I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t honoring my body in those few minutes by not listening to what she really wanted. And if I am not honoring my body even in those few minutes, then how am I honoring my body at all?

I think I also picked up yesterday that you had been frustrated about a few things here and there, and even though I know in my heart and my mind that it wasn’t your sexual frustration coming out sideways, I think I went into a bit of a panic mode, which informed the way I ignored my body as an ineffective means to assuage my panic.

Dan:

I really appreciate you telling me all of this. I know that, in the past, I have made you responsible for my needs. I had resentment around you not being available for sex, and sometimes my frustration came out sideways. Even though my frustrations yesterday had nothing to do with sex, I can see how that prompted the kind of panic response you had and how you responded to my desire for sex earlier today.

The other day, you had asked me if I had any feelings around you having NRE (new relationship energy) and increased libido for other people, and I told you I am happy for you, and I mean it. Of course you’re going to have more sexual desire and be more in touch with your sexuality with new people because you don’t have to carry any kind of context and history the way you do in our marriage.

In our marriage, for all those years, you’ve grappled with the conditioning that you have to be sexually available even when you don’t want to. And in a lot of ways, that probably created a wound that alerts your body to respond in a certain way when sex comes up in our marriage. In other relationships, you get to start from a blank slate.

I am glad that you feel safe to tell me exactly where you are, and I want to be a resource in how you tend to that wound. Are there some ways I can be that for you?

Me:

I think it’s two things. First is that when you ask for sex, I want to feel like my desires are being fully regarded. I know you already do this, and another way to do that is to actively remain curious about whether I want it as much as you do. I want to get rid of the feeling altogether that I don’t have much of a choice, and I can work with you on how that curiosity can be reflected in our conversations. [I am leaving out specific examples to honor Dan’s request for privacy on that particular information.]

The second is your willingness to examine the ways your sexual frustration may come out sideways in our marriage. I am aware that sometimes we get frustrated about things even if it is completely unrelated to sex. I am aware that I get triggered by your frustration based on the history and context of our relationship. But if you are willing to examine how they can coincide, I would appreciate that and examine that with you without judgment.

Dan:

I am happy to pick up those responsibilities. Now it’s about showing each other grace because we will mess up. We are good at this. We can do this together.

So when people ask me whether I am afraid that Dan is going to leave me or whether I am going to leave him, the chances of it happening is so low because we have built the kind of safe space that takes years of practice and love to build.

It is a space where we can empty all our pockets and lay everything out on the table without feeling like we are absolute idiots.

As long as our marriage feels safe for us, we will use the privilege of using this space as our home from which we can build relationships with other people.

How did we get here?

Love.

As bell hooks says:

[Love is] the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. Love is as love does. Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

Dan and I were both willing to extend ourselves to one another by setting aside our own judgments, expectations, assumptions, and stories around how things ought to be in the world.

Whatever upsets me is my experience and my responsibility. Dan gets to be a resource if he so chooses, but I do not require that from him. That is why he gets to make the choice himself on whether he wants to be that resource for me.

The more we take responsibility for our own stories, the more we create space for others to care for us and love us on their own terms. More freely. More expansively. More truly.

Of course it’s painful. It is fucking painful to be wrong. It’s painful to recognize that our partners never “caused” any hurt. It’s painful to recognize that they only pointed to the hurt, almost as if to flag for us so that we can take a look at it and tend to it.

It is infinitely easier to blame and shame sources outside of ourselves.

But we realize that this path is rarely sustainable.

So, in our marriage, we partner on crafting the kind of love that works for both of us. When our triggers come up, when conflict arises, when ruptures happen, we find a way to examine what all those things are pointing to within ourselves.

When we have the capacity, we become a resource for the other in experiencing these large emotions that are not meant to be experienced in solitude. In that way, we partner on loving each other more deeply. We partner on loving ourselves more deeply.

The more we become skilled at the practice of love, the less fear and shame takes hold on our humanity.

The more we feel like we can tackle together, in partnership and in community.

*

By the way, you’re the first to know: I am dropping a brand new fireside happening Friday, May 17, at 11am Eastern.

It is called “Resolving conflict in marriage.”

This is for you if:

• You want to address recurring issues in the marriage that just doesn’t seem to go away.

• You don’t want to be afraid of bringing up things that feel important to you and the relationship.

• You’re battling constant feelings of anger, resentment, jealousy, envy, disappointment, frustration, and other uncomfortable feelings in your marriage that don’t seem to know where to go.

• You find yourself thinking, “This can’t be how I’m supposed to live for the rest of my life, constantly dealing with conflict.”

• You find yourself asking, “Am I loving my partner the right way? Is love supposed to feel this shitty?”

• You’re burning through so much time and energy dealing with conflicts in marriage that you’re losing focus at work.

• You feel like you just never seem to be doing the right thing in your marriage.

By the end of the fireside, you’ll walk away with actionable tools to relate and love your partner more deeply through conflict and differences.

Register here.

*Note: I am a non-monogamous relationship coach, but you are not required to be interested in opening up your marriage to attend this fireside. I do not use the practice of evangelizing anyone to open up their marriage as I do not find it an effective practice of relating.