“I Love You, but I Don’t Want You”: Why Sexual Desire for Your Partner Fades

In the previous two articles, we talked about how sexual desire can change in a long-term relationship even when things between two people are generally good. We looked at how uncertainty and fantasy work at the beginning of a relationship, and then at why a couple needs to remain not only one big shared “we,” but also two separate people who can still be curious about each other.

But sometimes there is no need to go that far into theories of passion, think about new lingerie, or try to create the perfect context, because the problem may be much closer and much simpler: it may be sitting right there between the two people.

And this brings me back to one of my favourite ideas: before we start looking in the underwear, it is worth checking what is happening in the head.

Let’s imagine Dasha and Pasha

Dasha and Pasha also loved each other very much once, and perhaps they still do, but at some point a lot of things began to accumulate in their relationship.

For example, they lived very happily together for several years, and then they had their first child. Having a first child is very often a serious crisis for a couple, even if the relationship was good before, and not because a baby somehow magically “ruins a marriage,” but because almost everything changes at once: routines, sleep, money, responsibility, household tasks, roles, time together, and the ability to be spontaneous.

Perhaps Dasha and Pasha used to have one set of arrangements, and then reality changed. Pasha now takes on more of the financial responsibility, Dasha spends most of her time with the baby, and each of them gradually starts feeling that they are the one doing more.

Pasha says, “I work all day,” and Dasha replies, “And I’m with the baby all day,” and instead of two people trying to understand how to get through a difficult period together, they slowly become two contestants in a competition: who is more exhausted, who has done more for the family, who has it harder, who feels less appreciated, and who is ultimately to blame for everyone feeling miserable.

And this is still a fairly mild example, because a major crisis does not have to be the birth of a child. It can be a move, emigration, war, job loss, health problems, financial instability, caring for ageing parents, or any other situation in which the old relationship system stops working the way it used to.

If there were already misunderstandings between the partners that they were not very good at discussing, a crisis can make them much worse. And even if there were no major problems before, new ones can appear simply because the new reality requires new agreements while both people are still trying to live according to the old ones.

It is hard to desire someone you are constantly angry with

On the one hand, this sounds painfully obvious, but for some reason people often forget it when sex comes up. They say, “The passion is gone,” while in reality they have been fighting an invisible war for the past six months.

Dasha, for example, may be angry with Pasha because she feels that he simply does not see how much she does at home. Pasha may be angry with Dasha because he feels that she no longer sees him as a man and only notices him as the person who is supposed to bring something home, buy something, pay for something, or get something done.

Perhaps Dasha has become so immersed in motherhood that there is barely any space left in her life where she is not “Mum.” Perhaps Pasha does not fully understand how much attention a small child requires, and he expects that after spending the entire day with the baby, Dasha will somehow magically transform in the evening into the same woman who once turned up to dates with her hair done and still had the energy to genuinely ask how his day had been.

Or perhaps they are both exhausted and both absolutely convinced that the other person could be doing more, and resentment gradually starts piling up.

It does not have to be anything huge or dramatic, either. Sometimes it is the completely ordinary everyday stuff that gets dismissed for years as “oh, it’s nothing.”

For example, you agreed that you would clean the house together every Saturday, but every other Saturday your partner somehow manages to disappear at exactly the right moment, leaving you with a wonderful choice: clean everything yourself or sit in the mess and stare at it as a monument to all your broken agreements.

Or maybe you have spent years arguing about how much money to give your parents, whose mother is allowed to turn up without warning, who gets up with the child at night, who plans the holidays, or why one person is constantly remembering doctors’ appointments, school, after-school activities, bills, gifts for relatives, dog food, and the fact that the washing powder has run out, while the other sincerely believes that “you only have to tell me what needs doing.”

The reasons can be absolutely anything, and you could list them for hours, but if these issues are never resolved, they accumulate, and resentment, anger, a sense of unfairness, and the feeling that I am not seen, appreciated, or respected accumulate with them.

And then it may genuinely be much easier to say, “I don’t feel like having sex tonight,” than to open that entire box and explain, “Actually, I’m angry about those socks, the Saturday cleaning, that time you didn’t support me in front of your mother, and another three hundred and forty-two things that for some reason I have never properly said out loud.”

So sometimes a lack of sexual desire for your partner is not some mysterious sexual problem at all. It can be a perfectly understandable response to what has been happening between two people for quite a long time.

Now let’s imagine Ostap and Khrystia

From the outside, Ostap and Khrystia also look like they are doing wonderfully. Their friends see a lovely family, Ostap goes to work and earns good money, they travel, they have children, and overall they look like a perfectly successful couple.

But if you spent a little time living near them, you might notice one interesting detail: Khrystia decides almost everything.

She decides what they are having for dinner because she asked Ostap what he wanted a few times in the past and got answers along the lines of, “I don’t know, whatever you cook is fine.” Ostap forgets to pay the bills, so Khrystia reminds him. She sends him to the supermarket only with a shopping list, but he still forgets something, after which she gets annoyed and explains how he should do it properly next time.

She decides where they will go on holiday, which flights to buy, which hotel to book, which school the children will attend, what they need to buy, and what to pack for the trip. She may even buy Ostap’s socks, underwear, and jeans because “he’ll just buy some rubbish if he does it himself.”

At the same time, Ostap may genuinely be a fully functioning adult man who works, makes decisions at work, earns money, and handles all kinds of things perfectly well outside the home. But within the relationship, things gradually reach the point where if Khrystia did not remind him where his toothbrush was, he might spend another five minutes walking around the flat asking where it had gone.

I am exaggerating a little, obviously, but the dynamic itself is extremely common. At some point the couple stops looking like “adult — adult,” “partner — partner,” and starts looking more like “mother — teenager.”

And it can work in the opposite direction as well. It is not only Khrystia making every decision for Ostap. There is also the hypothetical Masha saying, “Oh, I don’t know, my husband said we’re going there, so that’s where we’re going,” or, “He handles all the finances, I don’t get involved,” or, “He bought me this ring, I have no idea what it cost, my husband takes care of everything.”

Then the dynamic may look more like “father — daughter,” and the issue has nothing to do with gender. It is about the roles people gradually occupy within a relationship.

The problem is not that we sometimes become “the parent” or “the child”

It is important not to draw the overly simple conclusion that healthy couples should walk around with serious adult expressions all the time, because in real, healthy relationships people constantly move between different roles, and that flexibility is a good thing.

In one situation I may be more caring and take on more responsibility because my partner is ill or going through a difficult period, while in another he may be the one who organises everything, makes decisions, calms me down, and says, “I’ve got this. You rest.”

Sometimes we are two very serious adults discussing the mortgage, the children, and taxes, and an hour later we are running into a river, shouting something ridiculous, and behaving like two children. We can be friends, we can be parents to our children, we can compete over who makes better croissants or preserves tomatoes more efficiently, and we can take turns being the stronger or the more vulnerable one. That flexibility of roles within a couple is completely normal.

The problem begins when the relationship gets stuck for a long time in one rigid structure, where one person is always the big, responsible, controlling one who decides everything, while the other is always the small, dependent one who needs to be reminded, instructed, organised, and sometimes practically raised.

And this is where sexuality can genuinely begin to suffer, because for sexual intimacy to exist, at some point I need to see an adult standing in front of me again.

Not my little child, not someone I have to raise, not “Mum” who is about to tell me where my socks are, but a partner, a lover, another adult person.

So when somebody says, “I love him, but I don’t desire him at all,” it can be useful to ask not only how often they have sex, but also who that person has psychologically become inside the relationship. It is quite difficult to sexually desire a metaphorical “mother” or “father.”

Or maybe it is not about your relationship at all

After all that, I would also take a moment to look at the person themselves, because sometimes we spend a long time asking why I don’t want sex with my partner, only to discover that the person does not really want much of anything.

Not romance, not adventure, not even particularly their partner. What they want is sleep, something warm to eat, and perhaps another round of sleep afterwards.

A person may be ill, taking medication, going through hormonal changes, experiencing depression, anxiety, or emotional burnout. They may not have slept properly for years because of young children, may be living under chronic stress because of war or emigration, struggling with financial instability, working twelve-hour days, caring for someone who is ill, or simply living for too long in a state where the body is barely managing the basic tasks of everyday life.

Under those conditions, a drop in libido is hardly surprising. When the body lacks sleep, recovery, a sense of safety, and basic resources, sexual desire may simply fall very far down the priority list.

So before saying, “Oh God, everything is ruined, we don’t have sex anymore, we need to break up,” it can be useful to ask a much simpler question: what is actually happening to me, and do I currently want anything in this life apart from getting some sleep?

Because sometimes, given the choice between sleep and sex, sleep really is more important, and not because I am some cynical woman who dismisses sexuality and passion, but because for someone who has not properly recovered for months, sleep is genuinely a much more urgent need.

So if there has been a loss of sexual desire in your relationship, I would not immediately conclude that the problem must be your partner or the love between you. Sometimes it makes more sense to look first at your own physical and emotional state.

Before trying to “bring the passion back,” it helps to understand what is actually happening

I think this is one of the most important things to do before panic-buying new lingerie, booking romantic weekends, or putting sex twice a week into the calendar.

When people search for how to get sexual desire back for your partner, there is a strong temptation to find one action that will fix everything, but it is probably more useful to first understand what is going on.

Do I not want this particular person because there is too much anger and resentment between us?

Is it difficult for me to see my partner as a sexually attractive adult because I have spent years being their mother, father, or caretaker, or because I have become the child in the relationship and they make every decision for me?

Is the issue not my partner at all, but the fact that I am so exhausted that I have no energy left for sex, romance, or much desire of any kind?

Are there things between us that should have been talked about a long time ago, but saying “not tonight” was much easier?

Because the phrase “the passion is gone” can hide very different stories, and if you do not understand which story is yours, you can spend years trying to solve the wrong problem.

In the next part, I want to look at something else: what usually happens when a couple notices all of this, gets scared, and starts trying very hard to “bring the passion back,” why sex can suddenly start feeling like an exam, and what intimacy can actually look like after ten or twenty years together.