One of the most common problems I see as a sex therapist is when a sex-negative partner is involved with a person who craves a lot of sex, and the partner with the lower interest shames the partner with the higher interest.
You may have one partner who is satisfied by having sex once or twice a month at most, while the other one needs intimacy every day — if not several times a day. That’s alright, it’s rare to have perfectly matching libidos, but when the person who wants less sex or sex with less variety shames the one who wants more, then we’re looking at sex negativity.
Making matters worse, it is difficult to find the cause of this negativity — which is why people turn to sex therapists to help them figure it out and suggest remedies.
In my experience, the problem may be as simple/not simple as incompatible libidos. Yet sometimes, it’s because they have emotional baggage. And sometimes, it’s because their sexual intimacy leaves them frustrated.
Let’s unpack the phenomenon and explore how it occurs and how it impacts relationships.
What is Sex Negativity in a Relationship?
Sex Negativity in a relationship has a lot of nuanced differences from the kind of sex negativity expressed publicly, where people openly criticize LGBTQ+/poly/swinging and other non-conventional types of eroticism. Your partner may be open-minded about what others do or support Equality, yet still bring a sex-negative attitude to bed.
How Sex Negativity Is Expressed in Relationships
Typically, sex negativity shows up as rejection and shaming. Your partner diminishes your sexual needs or holds narrow ideas about when, where, how to do it, and how much sex is “right.” Even if you are not sure what their objection to sex may be, you can tell by their behavior that they don’t want it — at least not with you.
They may skewer your performance, rebuff your attempts at intimacy, or reject your overtures. They may blame you for being too sexual, usually throwing around terms like “sexual addiction” to describe your lively interest in erotic intimacy.
Client Cases
An aggrieved wife contacted me to ask if I could “cure” her husband’s “sex addiction.” She labeled her husband a pervert for trying to initiate intimacy 3 or more times a week. She considered him freakish for a man his age (he was only 50) to still need that much sex.
Then there was a male client whose wife would deflect his advances by telling him his penis was too small to satisfy her. They’d had pre-marital sex, which he recalled as active and very good. But at some point, she switched gears and claimed she needed someone bigger to get her aroused.
Another client was married to a woman who had turned down sex for the last 20 of their 21-year marriage. As he described his heartache it dawned on him that she was likely asexual but had wanted a baby. Once she bore their only child, her interest in sex vanished. He didn’t fault her but her expectation that he would implicitly accept an asexual lifestyle maddened him. She told him that masturbation and porn were “cheating on her.”
Sex Negativity Has No Gender
Women are just as likely as men to be the target of sex negativity in bed.
Client Cases
A female client came to me because her husband called her a nymphomaniac for craving daily orgasms. He shamed her for having a libido that was higher than his own, arguing that it was unnatural for a female. She didn’t dare tell him that she masturbated daily because she was afraid he would say that proved him right.
A middle-aged male came to me because he didn’t want to have sex with his wife. He wanted her to stop fighting with him about it. He justified withdrawing sex from her because she did not turn him on. It had nothing to do with the quality of their intimacy, her weight, or other typical complaints. It was her nipples. He said they were too big, like “pancakes,” and too “dark,” whereas he preferred small, rosy nipples. He made it sound like it was all her fault.
Sex Negativity and Creative Sex
If you are kinky and partnered with a non-kinky person, you may already know the pain and frustration of not feeling free to express your full sexual identity. You may feel similarly if you are bisexual, a swinger, poly, or want to explore creative forms of sex, including using sex toys, having threesomes, enjoying anal stimulation, and even — rare but not as rare as one might think — loving oral sex. Perhaps you managed to feel fulfilled in the early years by intercourse but as you get more experience and the honeymoon sex vibes fade away, you need more, and they refuse to allow change.
Many clients have complained that while their partner had liberal sex attitudes towards others, particularly friends and acquaintances, in the privacy of their bedrooms, they were prudes. They had strict rules they expected their partner to obey. No amount of talking, fighting, or trying to reason with the sex-negative person could change their mind. Their rejection chipped away at my clients’ sexual self-esteem. The sex-negative partner usually won, too, leaving the more sexually alive person feeling inadequate, selfish, or dirty.
In my many years of working with kinky people, I’ve seen all too many whose partners demonized them for being kinky. They spy on them for evidence of kinky activity, throw away any toys or garments they find, pick fights about their online activities, and tell them “You care more about your fetish than me!”
Sex Negativity is Complex and Emotional
There are a host of reasons why some people can’t handle sex. The most frequent cause is incompatible libidos. Different levels of libido can be painful if the person with the lower libido tries to make the one with greater needs feel guilty or ashamed of asking for sex.
It may be tied to an unresolved sexual trauma that haunts them. It may be a religious upbringing that taught them to feel shame if they stray from missionary position intercourse. Or, as previously mentioned, it could be that while their partner is satisfied with the type of sex they have, they end up frustrated and don’t want repeat performances.
The worst-case scenario is when the sex-negative partner expects their partner to lead a sexless life. The sex-positive person feels they have to hide their porn, their online friendships, along with their masturbation. They live in dread that they’ll be discovered — and divorced.
Sex Negativity Should Not Win But It Does
If you are living with a sex-negative partner, it is reasonable to ask them to get counseling. Yet more often than not, the partner of the sex-negative person is the one who makes the appointment. This is because most sex-negative people are likely to fight change. They can’t accept that they are the problem. They won’t confront their demons.
After all, they’ve spent years blaming everything on their partner. They do not experience the hell the sex-positive person lives daily. The sex-negative person feels justified to say no without explaining why they do. They feel so righteous inside, that they don’t feel they owe their partner any explanations.
And what makes them feel so righteous? It’s because, more often than not, the sex-positive person tip-toes around them. They don’t call their partners out as bullies, gaslighters, or prudes, or succeed at negotiating a better path.
Most people, in my experience, are afraid of conflict. They feel intimidated and hopeless. They fall into the trap of believing that sex negativity is a cultural norm and therefore they must buy into it as well. And that’s how sex negativity wins in the end. It casts a dark shadow over the sex-positive person and leaves them to grapple with sadness and frustration all alone.
*This is part 1 of a 5-part series. Next up: Confronting Internalized Sex Negativity*
photo credit: Unstable Diffusion
