Have you conditioned your partner to badger you for sex?

It is quite the cultural norm for men to complain about the lack of sex in a monogamous relationship. Many men whine about always having to initiating first. Sometimes they send passive signals that they want sex, waiting for their partner to initiate. When they do this they’re hoping to manipulate their partner to join a poor dynamic that only leads to contempt and dissatisfaction.

Meet Heather and Steven. They have been married for 10 years and have two children.  From the outside, their relationship looks steady and fulfilling and connecting.  But in the bedroom, it feels like they both sleep under the bed, where the monsters of their insecurities and vulnerabilities hide.

While I sit and listen to Steven describe their sex life, this is what I hear:

“We have sex maybe once or twice a month… she never initiates….she has no sex drive.” I can see him expose the sub context of his beliefs; that sex with Heather validates who he is as a man. His efforts to increase Heather’s sexual desire include the purchase of sex toys, plans for weekend romance trips all the while trying to do everything to make Heather want more sex. 

Unfortunately, his efforts to increase her desire leaves him feeling powerless. His frequent, almost daily, invitations allow her to remain passive. She can have all the sex she wants, whenever she wants, without ever initiating it. Steven is entirely dependent on what Heather wants.

But this is not just a Steven problem. The dance of intimacy always requires two. One sad truth is that Heather has conditioned Steven to badger her for sex.

Besides rewarding Steven’s whining for sex, she is teaching him that his whining motivates her sexually.

Heather doesn’t have sex with Steven out of her natural desire. She does it when he makes her feel sufficiently guilty, or frustrated. Sometime she has sex because she fears he might cheat on her if she hasn’t “given in” lately.

Conditioning can take many forms.

Steven thinks he is going to starve sexually if he waits to initiate when he is horny. His constant uncertainty of whether he will receive sex or not, causes him to have too much anxiety to wait for it. 

Heather has trained Steven to initiate more frequently than he actually wants to. Whether we’d like to admit it or not, the partner with the least desire for sex will control sexual contact and frequency. Even in an amazing relationship. This is one of the many conundrums of sex in monogamous relationships.

The solution to remove badgering from a relationship requires a concentrated effort and hard work for both partners. Each relationship has unique factors that contribute to the badgering sex problem.

In the case of Heather and Steven, they have two major issues holding them back. Heather has self-worth barriers to her sexuality. One traumatizing experience in her youth with a schoolteacher made her feel helpless to other’s desires. She felt others could take what they wanted and she had to give in. She didn’t feel worthy of her own desire because she feared giving herself up.

A Gateway into Self-Love: Masturbation

Heather occasionally masturbated even though, she and Steven rarely had sex. It gave her a little more room to feel comfortable, but not enough to ever truly want sex with Steven. During her alone time she would push herself to orgasm because “that’s what masturbating is about.”

This is far from the truth. In fact, forcing ourselves to orgasm during masturbation is a form of self-abuse. If Heather believed she was adequate as she was, there would be no need to try to reach orgasm. Over time, masturbating would become a gateway into a deep soul-searching exploration.

Questions for Heather were:  “what do you think you’re worth?” Was she good enough to not cut her time short? Was she deserving enough to touch herself in any way that she desired? Or was she a slave to the perceptions of other people’s standards? 

All of us have many conceptions about how sex, masturbation, and eroticism should be. This leaves very little room for us to be just ourselves. Sex, if we allow it, can have massive impacts on our self-development as a lover and as a person. It can teach us about our self-worth, and how to assert our needs. Also, how to be comfortable in giving ourselves the time and pleasure we authentically want.

Heather began to have more orgasms over time. She started feeling better about herself. Her conception that she was sexually defective faded. It took her taking on her self-worth issues before she could have fulfilling orgasms with Steven. Over time she started to initiate more. She started to push the upper boundaries of her sexual relationship with Steven as her newfound growth encouraged her to dive deeper into the newfound cave of her sexual desires.

And then Steven stopped wanting sex.

Any emotional change in a partner causes a shift in the relationship. Heather’s sexual progress didn’t validate Steven’s belief that she was sexually inept. It proved quite the opposite.

Heather wanted and initiated sex not because of her partner, but because she likes herself more. Her sense of self improved, which in turn challenged Steven’s sense of himself. Steven’s self-worth before Heather’s personal growth was influenced by her “sexual defectiveness.” Steven could artificially inflate himself because his partner’s performance lacked luster.

Her self-improvement caused Steven a great deal of anxiety. So much that he tried to put her back in the box of sexual inadequacy. When she stood her ground, Steven was left with a two-choice dilemma: to stop valuing himself by his sexual performance or to leave the relationship. Luckily for Heather, Steven stepped up to the challenge and began evaluating the stories he had about his own value.

His dependence on validation from others caused problems for the both of them. He, like so many of us, believed that indifference was the driver of the no-sex bus. But as Steven began to learn how to hold onto himself in times of sexual uncertainty in the relationship, the relationship grew.

He no longer used Heather’s sexual responses as a validation of his self-worth. Rather, he let her experience her sexual self in tandem with his own exploration. He initiated without trying to make Heather want sex.

Sexual conflict invites you to stretch both yourself and your relationship. You can either accept the invitation to walk into the scary forest of yourself and change from within, or you can simply badger sexual desire out of your relationship. It’s up to you. What will be your choice?