Men in relationships often struggle to understand why their female partner went from loving sex to wanting nothing to do with it. Men feel hurt and rejected when their advances are turned down. Even in a bad relationship, most men will still desire sex. But the majority of women will not.
Sex serves as the barometer of a relationship. One of the most telling signs that there are relationships issues is that a woman who was once interested in sex will lose interest. Or the sex that was once passionate will become boring and stale, and she will turn into a starfish.
A man’s brain resembles a bento box, with separate compartments for the different parts of life, and even for the different parts of a relationship.
A woman’s brain resembles a bowl of angel hair spaghetti, where all the parts of life, and especially all the parts of a relationship, are intertwined and inseparable from each other.
Although some women can compartmentalize sex for a hookup situation, very few women can do so within a relationship. For women, the emotional and the physical are intertwined. If there are issues related to your emotional connection and emotional intimacy, this will cause issues in the bedroom.
In the below, I am taking you into the minds of a variety of women. Not all women think the same way. Not all women have the same expectations. But if the woman in your life has lost interest in sex, it’s likely related to one (or more) of the reasons below.
Some of the issues below stem from relationship or communication issues. Others stem from toxic behaviors in the woman or the man. It may be that your issues can be resolved with better communication. Other issues may go deeper and may be the result of years of built-up resentment or incompatible and unresolvable expectations. And if you are dealing with toxic behaviors that either one of you is unwilling to change, you may need to end the relationship.
Sometimes it’s you. Sometimes it’s her. But often it’s the both of you.
She’s Upset About Unresolved Issues
Remember that fight you had a few nights ago? Or maybe it wasn’t even a fight. Maybe she was cleaning up the kitchen while you were laying on the couch. And she asked you to take out the trash. You said you would do it later, but you never did. So she did it.
Tonight, you try to initiate sex with her, and she turns you down. You feel hurt and rejected. You’re not thinking about how you didn’t take out the trash two nights ago. You’ve completely forgotten about it.
But she hasn’t.
Because you didn’t take out the trash two nights ago, and you never acknowledged that you forgot to do it, she doesn’t want to have sex with you tonight.
Are you scrunching up your forehead, trying to figure out what taking out the trash has to do with sex? Because in your mind, one has nothing to do with the other.
Welcome to the mind of a woman.
As I said, envision a bowl of spaghetti. Everything that happens in the relationship is intertwined together. In her mind, all of the unresolved issues pile up, and she attributes meaning to them. The meaning she ascribes to your actions impacts her desire for you in the bedroom.
If this is a one-off situation, she probably won’t care. But if this happens routinely, where she asks you to do something and you don’t do it, she interprets your actions to mean that you don’t care about her and that she doesn’t matter to you. And she doesn’t want to have sex with someone who doesn’t care about her and who she doesn’t matter to.
This can relate to any number of issues where she feels hurt and thinks there was not adequate repair.
Perhaps you were abrupt getting off the phone with her and you never apologized.
Maybe you promised her you would get home from work early to watch the kids so she could go to yoga, and for the third night in a row, you didn’t make it home in time.
Or you made plans with her on a Saturday afternoon, but instead of leaving the club right after you finished playing golf, you had a few drinks with your buddies. Therefore you were several hours late picking her up.
In her mind, these kinds of things indicate that you don’t care about her. And if she feels that you don’t care about her, she will lose her desire to engage in physical intimacy with you.
She Wants More of Your Time and Attention
If a woman likes you, she will want to spend time with you. And she will want that time to be quality. She will want your focused attention when she’s with you. She will also want your attention when she’s not with you.
The amount of time a woman expects from you can vary wildly. Some women may have unreasonably high expectations about the amount of time you should be spending with them. They may also expect almost constant communication between the two of you when you’re apart, including near-immediate responses to text messages or phone calls, even when you’re at work.
Other women may have very busy lives and desire space, and therefore they aren’t looking to spend as much time with you or text with you frequently throughout the day.
And many women will fall in between the two.
Regardless of how much time a woman expects, or if her expectations are reasonable, if you’re not meeting her expectations, she will feel less connected to you. And she may become resentful, again believing the lack of time you are spending with her indicates that you don’t care about her and that she doesn’t matter to you.
Women also connect through talking much more than men do. Female friendships include lots of talking about personal issues, and she will often expect the same from her partner. Verbal communication is important to her as it establishes emotional intimacy, and without emotional intimacy, she will not want to engage in physical intimacy.
When you’re with her, if she is trying to talk to you, and you are on your phone, watching TV, or are otherwise distracted, she interprets that to mean: “He doesn’t care about me. I don’t matter to him.”
Therefore she thinks: “Why would I want to have sex with him when he doesn’t care about me?”
She Thinks You’re Not Treating Her Well
A woman doesn’t want to have sex with a man who doesn’t treat her well.
This may or may not be subjective. There are plenty of toxic relationships where both parties do not treat each other well. There are also relationships where this is more one-sided and one person tolerates poor treatment from the other. And there are relationships where someone is being treated well, but their expectations are unreasonable, and they believe they’re not being treated well.
Regardless of if you legitimately are not treating her well or if she simply believes you are not treating her well, the belief that she is not being treated well will quickly shut down her sexual desire for you.
Every person deserves to be treated with kindness and respect. This means you are respectful of her time, thoughts, feelings, individuality, space, and possessions.
It is especially important to remain kind and respectful during arguments. Toxic fighting is poison to relationships, as it destroys safety and trust in relationships. If you attack her during arguments, you are most definitely negatively impacting your sex life. This includes devaluing her, putting her down, comparing her to other women, or saying or doing hurtful things to her.
A woman will also not feel she is being treated well if you treat her as a function instead of as a person. When I tell people I am divorced, often they will tell me about their friends who got divorced. In the stories I am told, it is almost always the woman who divorced the man, and the most common reason is that he didn’t do much around the house and he didn’t help her enough.
If a woman wants you to help her with chores, childcare, or any other task, and you refuse to help her, in her mind you are telling her the following: “I don’t care how exhausted you are because I don’t care about you. I’m refusing to help you because you don’t matter to me.”
I cannot emphasize this point enough. If there is a relationship pattern where you expect the woman to serve you, or she believes that you don’t fairly contribute, and she thinks you are not helping her as much as you should be, she will feel that she is not being treated well. She therefore will not want to have sex with you.
In the working mom Facebook groups I’m in, women will often complain about their husbands. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a Facebook comment that says:
“The only way I could get him to fairly contribute was to divorce him.”
In these same groups, women will post about their low libidos and lack of interest in having sex with their husbands. Almost always a divorced woman chimes in, commenting about how she thought she had lost her sex drive, but once she got divorced, it magically reappeared.
She may not end the relationship, but if she believes you aren’t treating her well and aren’t fairly contributing, she will lose her sexual desire for you.
She Thinks You’re Shutting Down Her Emotions
A woman’s sexual self is directly tied to her emotional self. If she feels emotionally shut down she will become sexually shut down. She needs to feel that she can express her emotions to you and that she is not emotionally “too much” for you. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:
If you want to keep her wild, you need to hold her when she’s raw
Many men will shut down women when they are expressing their emotions. They are dismissive and invalidating. This feels incredibly hurtful to a woman. If she feels she cannot be open with you emotionally, she will feel that she cannot be open with you sexually. She may not consciously realize this is what is happening, but the more emotionally shut off she feels from you, the more sexually shut off she will feel from you.
There is a big caveat here related to toxic behaviors. Some women can be highly emotionally reactive, and the way they express themselves is very emasculating and hurtful to the man. I am not saying that you should tolerate an emotionally reactive woman.
But even if she is emotionally reactive, she most likely will not perceive herself to be that way. She will think that she is being “vulnerable” with you by reactivity telling you how she feels. She will therefore respond to being shut down the same way that an emotionally healthy woman does, by shutting down sexually.
She Doesn’t Feel Safe With You
I’ve written an entire post on what a woman needs from a man to feel safe.
Trust and safety are the foundation of a relationship. Trust and safety are also key to a woman’s sexual desire and ability to be open sexually with a man.
I’ve touched on some of the most critical points that impact safety already in this post, but I do highly suggest you read the safety post if you want to gain a better understanding of how women think and feel regarding safety in a relationship.
The items listed below are the 14 things she needs from you to feel safe:
- Your Integrity
- Your Leadership
- Your Actions Match Your Words
- You Make Her a Priority
- You Act Like a Partner
- You Prioritize Her Physical and Mental Health
- You Support Her Goals and Dreams
- You Accept Her
- You Regulate and Take Responsibility for Your Emotions
- You Fight Fair
- You Communicate and Listen
- You Can Hold Space for Her Emotions
- You Respect Her Boundaries and Privacy
- You Hold Firm to Your Own Boundaries
When these aspects of a relationship are lacking, a woman may not consciously realize that she doesn’t feel safe with you, but on some level, she will feel that something is off. Over time, this lack of emotional safety will bleed into the bedroom and impact her sexual desire for you.
By the same token, if she is an emotionally healthy woman who feels safe with you, she will be more than willing to meet your needs.
You’re Not Meeting Her Expectations
Women have a lot of expectations they believe men should meet. These expectations can relate to anything, including communication, gifts, time and attention, vacations, levels of commitment, compliments, etc. Sometimes she will communicate these to you. Other times she will expect you to “just know.”
Your flight home from your business trip was delayed, and she didn’t get to spend the afternoon with you like you were planning. Of course, you should cancel your planned night out with your buddies to hang out with her.
It’s your six-month anniversary. She told you that she doesn’t want a gift, but she’s been hinting about a Tiffany’s necklace she loves. Of course, she expects you to know to buy it for her.
She had a hair appointment today and is wearing a new dress for your date. Of course, you’re going to compliment her on both her hair and how she looks in her dress.
A woman’s expectations may be reasonable or unreasonable. They may or may not be clearly communicated. But if you’re not meeting them, and she becomes upset because you’re not doing what she thinks you should be doing, she will lose her sexual desire for you.
She Doesn’t Understand How Your Mind Works and She’s Analyzing Everything You Do
You saw her text while you were at work on a call. Right after the call your boss needed you to work on an urgent matter. Then you had to jump on a few more calls. Then you got distracted by some emails. You’ve been completely focused on work and have forgotten about her text. You suddenly remember and decide that you’ll just call her on your way home from work.
Unbeknownst to you, she is currently flipping out, angry at you, and thinking that you don’t like her anymore, you don’t care about her, and you’re planning on breaking up with her.
Once again, welcome to the mind of a woman.
Women are evolutionarily designed to be much more relationship-focused than men, which means they frequently think about the status of their relationships. This is especially if they have an anxious attachment style, which many women do. Women often don’t understand how men can compartmentalize a relationship from the other aspects of their lives.
And though there are women who are more singularly focused, or who would ascribe you not responding to a text as you simply being busy, there are many more women who would start analyzing that behavior and predicting relationship doomsday.
Another male behavior that many women don’t understand is a man’s need for space. While this sometimes could be related to a relationship issue, many times men need space because they process through things differently than women do. They don’t want to sit around and talk about their feelings like women do.
When men have things they need to work through, they may feel a strong drive to either be alone or to be out doing guy stuff with their male friends. But women often believe that a man’s desire for time and space away from her means that he thinks something is wrong with her and the relationship.
Numerous male behaviors have no correlation to the status of the relationship. But women will attempt to decode, assign meaning to, and then get upset by their interpretations of these behaviors. If a woman is upset with you because of these behaviors, regardless of whether you believe it is warranted, she is a woman who is not going to want to have sex with you.
She Doesn’t Understand That You’re Reacting to the Ways She Has Hurt You
As discussed in the books “The Male Brain” and “The Female Brain,” by Louann Brizendine, men and women have biological and physiological differences driven by their differing brain structures and hormonal constitutions. Due to these differences, men and women perceive the world differently and process emotions differently.
Many women engage in behaviors that men consider to be hurtful, but women are frequently unaware that their behaviors could be perceived as hurtful. Women often expect men to respond and communicate the same way that women do, however men are not designed that way.
When women engage in these hurtful behaviors, many men struggle to articulate that the way the woman is acting is hurting them. Anger is often seen as the only acceptable negative emotion for a man to display. Discussing more vulnerable emotions, such as grief or sadness, can make a man feel very uncomfortable. This is especially true if he does not feel emotionally safe with the woman, or if she is invalidating and dismissive of his emotions.
When men are subjected to these behaviors, they often feel hurt and unable to express their hurt in a way their partner can understand. In response to their hurt, men often become angry, shut down, and withdraw.
This anger, shutdown, and withdrawal can be very triggering to a woman. It may cause her to question your feelings and commitment. She may become angry and upset with you, and she will pull away sexually.
This is a negative loop that many couples get stuck in, as each person feels hurt by the other person’s actions, and then each continues to act in ways that cause more hurt.
She’s Punishing You
In the points I mention above, the majority of women are not purposefully withholding sex as an attempt to hurt the man. This is true even if you believe the woman’s expectations are unreasonable, and that she should not feel hurt by your behaviors.
Due to the way a woman’s brain works, and the interplay between all aspects of the relationship, she may be losing her desire because of the way she feels about the relationship. If she feels hurt or unsafe, or she feels there is a lack of emotional intimacy, she will feel a decrease in her desire for physical intimacy.
However, some women will weaponize sex and withdraw it as a way to punish the man for not doing what she wants. This is not the type of woman you want to keep in your life unless she is willing to work on changing her behavior.
Any type of punishment in an adult relationship is harmful and toxic behavior. This goes for both the man and the woman. Punishing your partner is very damaging and is the quickest way to drive a stake into the heart of your relationship. There is no safety in a relationship if your partner is willing to intentionally hurt you.
It is important to be able to differentiate between a loss of sexual desire vs. punishing behavior. If your partner does not exhibit other toxic behaviors, it is likely a loss of desire. If your partner does exhibit other toxic behaviors, it may be punishing behavior.
Final Thoughts
Hurtful relationship patterns tend to go around in circles. If you’re in a relationship where sex has become a hot button issue, there are likely a multitude of hurtful behaviors going around. And it is easy to get stuck in these negative patterns.
Some of the above-mentioned issues can be resolved by better communication and understanding between the partners. However, if you have been together for a long time, there may be a giant pile of built-up resentments that need to be worked through to get to the root of the issues.
There needs to be a willingness from each person to understand the other person’s point of view. Relationship issues are unable to be resolved when the partners dismiss and invalidate each other’s needs. Dismissive and invalidating behaviors will only serve to make the emotional and physical intimacy gaps larger.
The points above will help you understand what the woman in your life is thinking when it comes to physical intimacy. You can use this as a tool to open communication surrounding what is often an uncomfortable issue for partners to discuss.
Often there is so much hurt between partners that they do not feel safe openly communicating their needs to each other. Or they are so stuck in unhealthy communication patterns that healthy communication has become impossible. If this is the case, a third party, like a couples therapist, may be needed.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: Jamie Street on Unsplash