Q&A: Is it possible for the woman to be the higher drive partner?
Full Transcript
Do you know that in about 30% of marriages the woman is the one with the higher sex drive and want sex more often?
That might surprise you because it seems like in every story you hear every antidote. We share it’s the husband who wants sex and the wife who doesn’t and so still yeah. There are more marriages where the husband has higher desire, but if you’re in a marriage where the wife is the one that has the higher sex drive, you’re not weird. There’s nothing wrong with you, that can just be a normal variation between a man and a woman.
And so the first thing I would say to you is take off any extra shame or blame your feeling because you don’t think that you’re fitting some stereotype. You know, we’re people we have different hormone levels and different love languages and sex means something different for a variety of us. And so what you want to do is focus on what is healthy and normal within your own relationship without comparing yourself to another couple.
I think another thing that has been really helpful for me in understanding this is, marriage therapist and sex therapists now talk about different kinds of sexual desire. There’s initiating desire, which is the person that usually will request sex that is more aware of a need for sex, but then there’s receptive desire and that’s the person who doesn’t usually think about wanting sex, but once they start becoming sexual with their spouse, they actually say yeah, this is kind of fun, I like this. And whether you have initiating or receptive desire, you have sexual desire, and part of what you’re navigating as a married couple is how do we understand each other’s desire? How do we understand what it looks like in a healthy way to ask for sex and to talk through and negotiate when we’re gonna have sex? And what is it that helps each of you enjoy your sexual relationship? That’s far more important than just looking at who is the higher desire? It’s actually the relationship that you’re negotiating together.