I Have No Sex Drive and It’s Ruining My Relationship: What Now?

Lisa Marie Bobby:

  So I recently recorded a podcast on the subject of sexless marriages, where the spark of intimate connection has essentially died. And I was struck by how many people got in touch with me, resonating with us, or leaving comments about their own experience in this relational kind of liminal space that were just so incredibly poignant to me.

I mean, so many people described feeling trapped, feeling alone. Feeling helpless to change a situation that was just profoundly sad to them. Some of them were kind of angry about it, but just that was the core of how sad is this? And so, of course, I jumped at the chance to dig into this with Allison Gilbert, who was a co author with a legendary sex therapist, Dr. Ruth Westheimer,

 so Alison Gilbert, you have such a depth of understanding and knowledge of her perspective, her approach. And if we could just channel that beautiful energy of hers, what do you think Dr. Ruth would say to somebody? Like many of my listeners, people who have gotten touched, who are coming in with questions like I just do not feel like being sexually intimate with my partner anymore, and I want to be on a certain level, but I am just not feeling it, and it’s creating a lot of problems in my relationship.

They are mad at me, and I just don’t even know what to do. What did you say? I imagine she would say, to look very closely at your relationship, if you’re having trouble in the bedroom, number one, take a close look at your partnership. Are you feeling seen?

Are you feeling valued? Are you feeling valuable to your partner? That’s number one, because no one likes to feel lonely, even in a relationship. And that can happen a lot of times. But I would also say something that may be very hard to hear. Dr. Ruth would say, take a hard look at yourself. And I could read you a portion of the Joy of Connections that deals just with this.

Okay? This is some tough love. She would say, you will not be able to sustain. Healthy relationships. If you don’t love yourself first, no friend or sexual partner can do all of that heavy lifting for you. Only after I began to appreciate how smart I was, how advanced I was in school, did I recognize that regardless of my height, and by the way, She was famously four foot seven, and that made her feel quite other, that she realized, and I’m going to go on and quote her, that I was of love.

I want the same for you. And so if we’re having trouble within the confines of our very intimate relationships, Dr. Ruth would say, take a look in the mirror. Hmm. So the relationship has somebody coming in saying, I have no sex drive and my husband is really mad at me. The relationship there between this person who is not feeling it and their ability to love themselves.

Good. Make that more explicit for our listeners. How do those two things connect? It’s Dr. Ruth’s menu for connection. There are five components and the biggest one is self because we are responsible ultimately, and most importantly, for how we relate, not just to ourselves, but to other human beings who are in our lives, whether or not they are friends.

or whether they are sexual and romantic partners. So self intentionally is the biggest component of Dr. Ruth’s menu for connection. But then there are four others, family, friends, and lovers, of course, because Dr. Ruth is a sex therapist. So friends and lovers. community, and we cannot leave out technology.

So there are five components for us to have richer, deeper, and more meaningful connections. But going back to your question, the most important component is self, is to work on what might be causing friction in your relationships. And oftentimes, Dr. Ruth would say. It starts closest to home and where you have the most power for change is to look in the mirror.

Okay. Well, and so then summarize, so somebody coming in saying, I don’t have a sex drive, it’s messing up my relationship. What do I do? Like that answer is. My darling, you need to go so much deeper. Like that, that question is sort of scratching the surface. It implies that the asker really perhaps legitimately has no idea.

It’s like their sexuality is sort of cut off from all these other dimensions of self and Dr. Ruth is saying, you gotta get all the way in there and do some very deep personal exploration in order to find. The answer to that question,

I’m not saying that you need to go into, you know, therapy for five years to figure out the answers to these questions. Thank God.

It is straightforward. So, another example I would say is that, you know what? If you don’t have energy left for your romantic partner, one of the other ideas in the Joy of Connections, evaluate Your routine. What is depleting you so much during the day? How are you prioritizing your relationships?

Traveling around town, if you are working too many hours, if you’re not giving your partner that attention that any good relationship needs to be nurtured, then if you evaluate your routine, you could see perhaps What’s missing. But again, that’s about proactivity. Yeah. That’s about you taking control, you looking at your own behaviors so you can bring the best that you can to whatever relationship you have.

Right. The joy of connections is about romance, but it’s also about friendships. Got it. Well, and that, that’s great advice. Oh my gosh. I mean, I think, I think everybody who has a. Job, house, kids, life, I mean kids so relate to that and, and that’s fantastic, you know, like how are you operating your life so that you feel legitimately exhausted and like there is nothing else to give 8 o’clock at night or whatever, or at other times you’re just like, that’s very, an empowering message to say, slow down, take a look at what you’re doing.

Because you’re right, if you are totally running yourself ragged and depleting yourself, your cup is so empty that you do not have anything to share with other people. And that that’s something that becomes more actionable. One little step leads to another little step and that is doable and then we can make big changes that can really Upend and improve our lives, whether romantically or platonically, but it’s up to us.

Dr. Ruth would say, loneliness is curable, but we need to be proactive to make it work. Fantastic advice. Okay. Well, thank you so much for, for talking about this and, and really, uh, giving us a different perspective on just that common question of what do I do if my SX drive is gone? Like there’s, there’s a lot that we could start looking into and potentially changing.

 And so the next question that I have for you, Allison, I’m curious to know what Dr. Ruth might say to someone who is really craving a deeper, more satisfying relationship. Sexual connection, so intimate and emotional connection with a partner who feels closed off to them.

I have so many people reach out to me that are like, my wife, my husband just does not want to be intimate with me. And I feel trapped in this relationship. I feel lonely. I feel stuck. I don’t know what to do with the things I’m trying to do are not working. Is there any hope for this relationship? I think there’s so much hope.

And one piece of advice is for couples to do fun things together to reignite that sense of intimacy. And partnered activities are really fun.

So whether or not it’s pickleball or tennis or taking dance classes together or pottery, whatever it is that can get you out of the house and in relationship with your partner, where there’s just fun where you can be team mates outside of the house. It could really be a lot of fun. Ignite this wonderful warmth between you two, because you have to work together in a fun atmosphere to accomplish a goal against, perhaps.

Another team, and so that’s just one example, but she would warn you, couples should never do everything all the time together. I love that. Dr. Ruth, um, had this wonderful marriage and, uh, she was married to Fred Westheimer for 35 years before he passed away. And she would be the first person to share. They were not attached at the hip.

They did a lot of different things together. And that actually, I would say, made their relationship even stronger. Dr. Roos, uh, primary, one of her primary pieces of advice would be to stop hyper focusing on what’s happening in the bedroom and instead kind of go a little bit bigger and find other points of focus.

Connection of spark of ways to, uh, to have fun together almost because that kind of energy will then translate back into your sexual connection. But I think that’s great advice because, you know, as a marriage and family therapist, what I often see is that when people feel disconnected, it begins to lead to these feelings of resentment, anger.

that creates all of these emotional barriers. I mean, it turns into, I don’t like you enough to want to go and play kickball with you because we aren’t having sex. We haven’t had sex in five years. Why would I want to go to a quilting show with you? You know, like that kind of thing. But Dr. Ruth is saying, put that down, put that down and, and find areas.

Moments where you can reconnect, perhaps let go of this idea of emotional or relational fusion. And of course it wouldn’t be so binary. It’s never so black and white. It might be a wonderful combination of all of the above. I think she was very direct, and so if you have problems in the bedroom, she would address the problems in the, in the bedroom.

What the Joy of Connections is trying to illuminate is that we can go bigger. We can go broader, and hopefully all of that cumulatively will help you have a more satisfying and fulfilling relationship. Okay, great advice.

All right. So then very lastly, Allison, one of the things that I wanted to pose is that I not infrequently talk with people who have been feeling so frustrated or disengaged from their relationship. Um, or, or sometimes a relationship has just begun to feel very, very boring over a period of time, and Because I think we all do have this natural desire to have a deep, intimate connection and this feeling of like spark or chemistry with someone.

can develop attachments to other people. And maybe it’s just a crush, but I mean, sometimes it can turn into things like an emotional affair or fantasizing about other people during sex. Or of course, you know, sometimes if it goes unfettered, it turns into an actual full blown affair. What would Dr. Ruth say to somebody who is grappling with this experience, um, you know, maybe somewhere along that spectrum, but feeling really worried about it and not knowing how to fix it, to, to redirect their energy back to their primary partner?

We have a whole section in the book about what to do when a relationship feels it’s gone so south. That it feels like you can’t resuscitate it. And she’ll be the first one as a lifelong therapist to say, go get therapy.

However, some point, she would even say, it might be time to haul it. Meaning, haul a relationship time to end. And if you’re there at that point, move forward. Get separated. Get a divorce. Move forward because everyone deserves. A rich and fulfilling relationship, and sometimes, at the end of the day, it might be better to move forward in a different path than to stick with what you have.

Now that might sound surprising to you, but at the ultimate end of the day, this book is about connections, and if you’re not feeling seen, if you don’t feel like you belong, even in your own home, and you’ve tried. Whatever you can to make it better, and you’ve seen a therapist and it’s still not working, Dr.

Ruth would say it might be time to move forward in a completely different direction, and that’s okay. She did it herself. She was married three times. And the third time was, in fact, the charm, and she was married to Fred Westheimer for 35 years. And she described in the book that he was the love of her life.

That’s amazing. Well, no, that’s good. You know, I think, um, In my experience, people so often struggle with very deep ambivalence, and they can oftentimes carry a lot of guilt, shame around wanting something different or something more. I think they worry about hurting their partner that they’ve, you know, made vows to, maybe they love very much on, on one level, even though they’re not having the kind of relational experience.

that they want. But I also like it too that you are saying don’t just, you know, if it’s, if it’s not working, be done. Because I think that many people do need a deeper exploration process and to get into even very high quality couples therapy. Because many times I think before people do that, they genuinely do not know what is possible for a relationship.

And just because they’ve tried everything that they know how to do doesn’t mean that there isn’t. More potential and more opportunity, but, but you’re saying that if you really do that work. thoughtfully and, and deeply. And then at the end of the day, realize that this is not ever going to be what you want or need it to be, but that that is okay to say that out loud and can be a really courageous and affirming decision that opens the door to more for you.

But maybe your partner too, maybe they’re not having a great time either. Is that true? For your community who don’t know true trailblazer that the wonderful Dr. Ruth Westheimer was. You talked about shame back in the 1980s when she became Dr. Ruth, the taboo at the time was AIDS, when the gay community was made to feel othered.

And the thread that connects the AIDS epidemic to today’s loneliness epidemic and what Dr. Ruth so wanted to do was to eradicate any shame regarding not feeling connected even to our romantic partner, but it’s okay, it happens.

Because everyone, regardless of their age, sex, gender, whether or not they are abled, bodied, whether or not there’s disability, everyone is entitled and should have a great sex life. As Dr. Ruth would say, surely they are. Really. Open, in need of, and should have, wonderful connections. What an empowering message that I think is different than what people internalize.

Dr. Ruth would say, you deserve to be happy. You deserve to have fun. You deserve to enjoy your sex life. And it is okay to want that and to, you know, make that happen. Wonderful. Well, Alison Gilbert, thank you so much for taking this time to speak with me today. It has been such a pleasure to get to know you and, and I think through you to get to know Dr.

Ruth. What a cool person. And what Dr. Ruth would say that if you buy the Joy of Connections, you are guaranteed good sex for the rest of your life. Is there a money back guarantee on that? Yeah. That would be pretty funny. All right. Well, and, um, so, so the book it is, it is out anywhere in particular. We should send people to learn more about you and Dr.

Ruth’s last work or just any book store. Thank you so much. The Joy of Connections is available anywhere books are sold online or in person. And, um, do yourself a favor. It’s gotten some tremendous press coverage. It has been reviewed. It has been. Vetted. It will help you forge and maintain and nurture meaningful connections in your life.

And that’s what she wanted for you. So do yourself a favor and grab yourself a copy. Love it. Thank you. Thank you again. so much.

 ​