Desire Discrepancy Lesson #2: Look For The Blocks

I’m continuing my series on desire discrepancy this week. If you missed last week’s post on normalizing variation, you can find it here.

What do you do if you’re seeing a couple with a big desire discrepancy, their marriage is on the rocks, and you recognize that you can’t wave a magic wand and make one partner want just as much sex as the other one? Sometimes there are things you can do that will increase desire for the lower desire partner, and other times there are not. The good news is, even if you can’t directly affect desire, you can certainly help your clients remove obstacles that prevent desire from blooming.

There are lots of factors that can impede or inhibit desire, and often they fall right into your wheelhouse as a therapist. Whether or not you’ve had training in sex therapy, I’m certain you have the skills to work with issues like anxiety and depression, both of which strongly inhibit desire.

My Will Lily assessment will help you identify some very common blocks–for instance, sex pain, which is, quite understandably, a major inhibitor of desire. If your client is experiencing sex pain, they absolutely must resolve it if they are going to have any kind of positive experience of desire.

Similarly, internal or external pressure is a common inhibitor of desire. Even without full-blown coercion, it’s very common for people to feel subtly pressured into having sex they don’t really want to have, for a variety of reasons–fear of disappointing their partner, for instance, or a belief that once a sexual interaction starts, they don’t have a right to stop or redirect the activity. Over time, subtle pressure can really put a damper on desire and do lasting damage to a relationship. Will Lily can help you identify cases like this in the very first session.

As I continue this series, I’m going to be talking in more detail about some of the factors that can inhibit desire. In the meantime, keep looking for the blocks. They can take all kinds of forms. Are your clients dealing with intensely demanding, stressful work schedules? Are they listening with one ear for the baby crying in the next room? Are they dealing with grief, or working through past trauma?

Identifying and working with factors that inhibit desire is absolutely necessary to increasing desire. No matter how much desire there is, these factors will stop the action.  Helping your clients remove obstacles is what creates space for desire to blossom.