ThirdAge Insider: Dr. David Schnarch

There is always a good reason why someone doesn't want sex.

Couples blame their low level of sexual activity on a variety of convenient excuses: differences in their sex drives, hormones, or gender, the demands of careers and children, and as many more as you can dream up, but the real reason is usually your or your partner's lack of sexual desire.

WHY LIFE GETS IN THE WAY What controls sexual desire in a committed relationship? First, recognize that satisfying sexual activity comes not from wanting good sex, but rather from wanting your partner. The demands of life may occasionally interfere with a committed couples' sexual activity, but under scrutiny, most such reasons turn out to be smokescreens for some of the most painful and heartbreaking truths of our lives and our relationships.

I've learned in my clinical practice that arguments about sexual frequency usually reflect both partners' life stories: Someone seeking validation through sex is married to someone who feels like they're being sucked dry. Or someone who sexualizes all intimate feelings is hitched to someone who can't put sex and love together.

VULNERABILITY AND DESIRE But the most common reason why someone might not want sex is the most heartbreaking: Someone who desperately needs to be needed has married someone who desperately does not want to want. Take, for instance, the child of an alcoholic who's learned that a surefire recipe for disappointment is expecting the parent to be interested in your day at school, the fact that you're hungry, or you're longing for five minutes in their lap. Wanting itself becomes recognized as a path to pain, distress, and disappointment. Over time, this child learns how not to want.

Passion, intimacy, and eroticism in a long-term committed relationship has less to do with "blue balls" and more to do with accepting the vulnerabilities of WANTING. Wanting your partner, choosing him, caring about what happens to her, makes you vulnerable. Sexual desire involves opening your heart. And given how many people have been burned loving a prior partner or parent, the tragic frequency of low sexual desire is easy to understand.

Wanting your partner sexually involves a level of exposure that many of us refuse to accept. As long as we think of sexual desire as a biological drive, it's not immediately apparent. But think of sexual desire as wanting and you'll see it. Wanting a specific person. Longing for him, cherishing her. Accepting the realities of illness and aging, and still wanting. Grieving the inevitable losses and death. Wanting your partner makes him or her unique in your life. And irreplaceable.

WHO REALLY WANTS TO WANT? There's no guarantee all your wants will be fulfilled, and it's a fair certainty that they won't. Long-term sexual desire is not for people with "fears of abandonment" or those who demand that their partners "be there for them." Keeping sexual desire alive in a long-term relationship is an act of integrity. If you wish the manifold pleasures and benefits of a good sex life in your relationship, find the strength to want.

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