Question 1

The children are back to their school routine. You're back to arguing about them

Accepted Answer

The holidays are over. The backpacks are back by the door, the alarm clock rings again in the morning, activities resume, and the class WhatsApp groups come back to life. Once again we need to wake up on time, prepare food for school, drive, pick up, help with homework, turn off screens, and get children and teenagers back to sleep schedules that fit school days.  
Along with the routine, the disagreements between parents return too. How much screen time? Who&#8217;s responsible for homework? What time can the teenager go out? How much should we help the struggling child and how much let him cope on his own?    
On the surface we&#8217;re arguing about raising the children. Beneath the argument about bedtime or the phone, a deeper struggle can be taking place: about the way each of us understands parenting, about the home we came from, about our worth as parents, and about the ability to stay a team even when we see the child differently.

ניווט במאמר

Why do we argue so much about raising the children?
Very few things touch our identity the way parenting does. When my partner disagrees with the way I respond to the child, I can hear much more than a different opinion about parenting. 
The sentence &#8220;I think we need to set a boundary for her&#8221; might sound inside me like &#8220;You don&#8217;t know how to set boundaries.&#8221; The sentence &#8220;We should listen to him before we decide&#8221; can sound like &#8220;You don&#8217;t see your own child.&#8221;
A practical disagreement can very quickly become a struggle over our worth as parents. At this stage we&#8217;re less curious about what our partner sees and more occupied with proving our way is right. 
I can think the child needs a boundary right now and hear that my partner sees a different need in her. I can believe our teenager needs more independence and make room for the fact that my partner is worried. I can hold my position and see that facing me stands another parent, equally valid, who sees things differently than I do.  
Two parents who love the same child can see him differently
Every parent is a person in their own right. Each of us has a different temperament, different sensitivities, different life experience, and different relationships with each of the children. A mother can see an overwhelmed child who needs flexibility right now. A father can see capability to cope in that same child and think another concession won&#8217;t serve her. It&#8217;s possible both are seeing something important.    
The difficulty begins when my partner&#8217;s way becomes evidence in my eyes that he doesn&#8217;t see the child correctly or isn&#8217;t a good enough parent. At that moment we may stop thinking together about the child and start conducting a struggle over the question of which of us is the parent who knows what&#8217;s right for him. 
Shared parenting is also measured by our ability to stay a parenting team when we see the child and his needs differently.
This ability allows me to hold my position in the presence of another parent, equally valid, who sees things I may not see.
You&#8217;re not returning to routine alone, your families of origin are returning with you too
When two people become a couple, two family stories also meet. When they become parents, this meeting takes on very concrete daily expression.
One grew up in a rigid home and promised herself her children would be able to talk to her about everything. The other grew up in a home where boundaries were blurred and wants his children to feel there are adults in the house capable of holding a framework.  One grew up with parents who demanded he manage on his own, so it&#8217;s important to him to teach the children independence. The other remembers how alone she felt when she had to manage by herself, so it&#8217;s important to her that her children know they can always ask for help. 
Both love the children. Both want what&#8217;s best for them. Both also arrive at this moment from a different home.  
The family story can add a layer to the intensity with which we respond to a parenting disagreement. We bring to parenting things we received and want to continue, and also experiences we&#8217;re asking not to repeat. The internal promise &#8220;In my home it will be different&#8221; can take on very significant place in how I respond to my partner.  
When he suggests a way that reminds me of something from the home I grew up in, I may already be reacting to more than the disagreement happening between us now. You can stop and ask: &#8220;When I&#8217;m fighting now for what&#8217;s right for my child, what belongs to the child in front of me and what is meeting something in me from the child I was?&#8221; 
The past can help me understand the intensity of my reaction. The choice of how to act with it today belongs to me. 
The more I take an extreme position, the more my partner may take the opposite one
In work with couples I encounter again and again a similar movement: the more rigid one parent becomes, the softer the other becomes. The more one protects the children, the more the other feels he must set boundaries. The more he insists the child needs to learn to cope, the more she feels she must protect him from his rigidity.  
Each is certain he&#8217;s reacting to a problem he sees in the other. Within the couple system, each one&#8217;s reaction begins to reinforce the other&#8217;s reaction. 
Over time partners can divide the roles between them without having decided to do so. The more I hold the softness, the more my partner may hold the boundary. The more he holds the boundary, the more I feel a need to bring more softness. This way each of us may become more extreme within the role he received in the system, even though in other situations he&#8217;s capable of being both soft and authoritative.   
She says: &#8220;If you were a little more sensitive to him, I wouldn&#8217;t have to protect him all the time.&#8221; He says: &#8220;If you set boundaries for him, I wouldn&#8217;t have to be the bad guy all the time.&#8221; Each explains his behavior through the other&#8217;s behavior.
I want to return the gaze to myself: How am I participating in creating this dynamic, and what from my part am I willing to change even if my partner doesn&#8217;t change?
I&#8217;m responsible for my position, for the words I choose, for how I speak about my partner in front of the children, and for the way I behave when he doesn&#8217;t agree with me. This responsibility allows me to choose who I want to be within the relationship even when I have no control over his choices. 
Are you still arguing for the child&#8217;s benefit?
At the start of the argument I may have genuinely tried to protect something important to me for my child. Ten minutes later something else can already be happening between us. It&#8217;s important to me to prove I&#8217;m right. I want my partner to admit he was wrong. I collect examples from the past that prove his way doesn&#8217;t work and wait for the moment when it turns out what I said from the start was right.    
The child is still at the center of the conversation, yet at the same time the struggle has also become a struggle between us.
This is a point where it&#8217;s worth asking: &#8220;Am I still fighting for the child&#8217;s benefit, or have I started fighting for my victory over my partner?&#8221;
Love for the children can live inside us alongside the need to be right, to receive recognition, or to win a couple&#8217;s struggle. The ability to identify the moment I moved from concern for the child to struggle with my partner allows me to stop and choose how I want to continue. 
Who&#8217;s the &#8220;good parent&#8221; and who&#8217;s the &#8220;bad parent&#8221; in your home?
In couple polarization around the children, fixed roles can form. One is the tough one and the other is the soft one. One is responsible and the other goes with the flow. One sets boundaries and the other understands the feeling. One &#8220;sees the child&#8221; and the other &#8220;sees reality.&#8221;    
As these roles become fixed, partners may start to believe they truly describe them. Instead of meeting a parent who&#8217;s currently holding a certain position, we start to see &#8220;soft parent&#8221; versus &#8220;tough parent,&#8221; &#8220;responsible parent&#8221; versus &#8220;parent who gives in.&#8221; 
The children also learn this family map. They know whom to approach when they want approval, who&#8217;s likely to say no, who might convince whom, and when it&#8217;s worth trying again with the other parent. Children live within a family system and learn how it operates.  
The child responds to each of his parents and also to the relationship between them. He learns the distance and closeness, the polarization, the division of roles, and the places where it&#8217;s possible to move between the parents. The responsibility for this structure remains with the adults.  
When the child becomes the place through which the partners conduct their struggle, it&#8217;s worth returning the conversation to where it belongs: to the couple.
The children don&#8217;t need to decide which of you is right
Our children can live with two parents who have different styles, different boundaries, and different sensitivities. The situation becomes more complex when the child is required to choose a side, protect one parent from the other, serve as messenger between them, or become the arena in which they try to settle the couple&#8217;s struggle. 
The responsibility for the relationship between the parents and for managing the disagreement belongs to the adults. The child can remain outside the need to determine which of them is right or to choose one of them over the other. 
You can disagree even in front of the children without canceling each other. You can say: &#8220;Dad and I think differently about this and we&#8217;ll talk between us.&#8221; This sentence leaves the disagreement with those responsible for managing it. 
When the parents return to themselves the responsibility for the disagreement, the child can return to his place: to be their child.
Couple exercise: Before the next argument about the children
Choose one disagreement around raising the children that recurs between you: screens, homework, bedtime, boundaries, money, friends, studies, independence, or household chores.
Before you try to reach agreement, take a few minutes separately. Each of you is invited to reflect on four questions. 
1. What do I really want for our child?
Try to get to what lies beneath the solution you&#8217;re proposing. If it&#8217;s important to you to set a boundary, what are you hoping the child will receive or learn from it? If you want to give more space, what&#8217;s important to you to allow him?  
Formulate for yourself in one sentence what you&#8217;re trying to protect for the child.
2. What about my partner&#8217;s position triggers me so much?
Pay attention to the body too. What happens to your breathing when your partner presents his position? Does the body contract? Does an urge arise to interrupt him, explain again, or immediately bring an example that proves he&#8217;s wrong?   
Ask yourself: &#8220;What am I afraid of if this time we do things his or her way?&#8221;
3. What from this intensity is familiar to me from the home I grew up in?
Check whether something in the disagreement is familiar to you from earlier relationships. Perhaps you know a very rigid home, a home without clear boundaries, expectation of early independence, or a feeling there was no one to help when things were hard. 
Ask yourself: &#8220;What do I want to take with me from the home I grew up in, and what do I want to do differently in the family I&#8217;m building today?&#8221;
4. Who do I want to be within this conversation?
Think about the way you want to speak and listen, about the things it&#8217;s important for you to stand on, and about the places where you&#8217;re willing to examine yourself.
Ask: &#8220;When I look tomorrow at the way I behaved in this conversation, what behavior will allow me to respect myself?&#8221;
After each of you has answered for yourself, come back to talk.
Instead of opening with a sentence like &#8220;You always give in to her,&#8221; you can say: &#8220;I&#8217;m worried that we&#8217;re struggling to set a boundary for her around the screen. It&#8217;s important to me that we think about this together.&#8221;
Instead of &#8220;You just don&#8217;t understand what she&#8217;s going through,&#8221; you can say: &#8220;I see how much she&#8217;s struggling during this period, and it&#8217;s important to me that her difficulty be part of our decision.&#8221;
Try to understand what each of you sees in the child, what he fears, what he&#8217;s asking to protect for him, and what part he&#8217;s willing to take responsibility for. From there you can return to the practical decision. 
The children are back to routine. What kind of couple relationship is returning with you? 
After the fall holidays we&#8217;re very busy with the question of how to get the children back to routine. It&#8217;s worth also looking at what&#8217;s returning to routine between us: which arguments recur, which roles we immediately take on, and where I already know in advance what my partner will say before he&#8217;s said it. 
Raising children brings together very precious and sensitive things: our love for the children, our identity as parents, the couple relationship we&#8217;ve built, and the family stories we came from. That&#8217;s why an apparently small disagreement about a screen, homework, or bedtime can very quickly take on much greater meaning. 
Two parents can remain two different people. They can see different things, influence each other, examine themselves, and gradually build a parenting way that belongs to the family they&#8217;re creating together. 
The children are back to routine. The interesting question for me is what routine we&#8217;ll create for them, and what kind of couple we want to be within it. 
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Question 2

Your family is always there. Mine isn't: the couple gap no one talks about

Accepted Answer

&#8220;Of course we&#8217;ll do the holiday at my parents&#8217; place. Where else would we do it?&#8221;
It&#8217;s a logical question. Your family is in contact with you, your partner&#8217;s family isn&#8217;t. Your parents invite you, your siblings show up, the kids know their cousins, and there&#8217;s a table you can sit around. So you go to your family.
The next holiday, you&#8217;ll probably go to them again. And on the birthday. And when you need help with the kids, you&#8217;ll call your parents. Slowly, without either of you deciding it, your family becomes the family around which your shared life organizes itself.
It&#8217;s a natural movement. Life gravitates toward the place where connection exists, and this is an enormous gap within a relationship.

ניווט במאמר

The family that&#8217;s present becomes the default
When you&#8217;re disconnected from your family of origin and your partner is connected to his, you bring into the relationship two very different family realities. On one side there are people who call, invite, help, celebrate, and want to see the grandchildren. On the other side there&#8217;s disconnection.
Your shared life naturally gravitates toward the side where connection exists. That&#8217;s where the holiday meal is, that&#8217;s where grandma and grandpa are, that&#8217;s where someone can watch the kids, that&#8217;s where family gatherings happen. What starts as a natural, convenient solution can over the years become an entire structure of life.
No one decided that his family would be the central family. It&#8217;s simply the family that&#8217;s present.
The family that&#8217;s present becomes the default.
And when the family that&#8217;s present becomes the default, it starts to shape the home you&#8217;re building together.
You can be part of his family and still feel you don&#8217;t have a family
It&#8217;s possible his parents truly love you. His mother might call you even when he&#8217;s not around, his father might come help you, his siblings might see you as a sister. Your children might be wrapped in grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins that you&#8217;re very glad they have.
All of this can be real, and at the same time you can sit at Friday dinner and feel a pang when you see your partner walk into his parents&#8217; house without knocking. It&#8217;s the house he came from. When he and his sister remember something from childhood, you can laugh with them and know you&#8217;re sitting beside a history that isn&#8217;t yours. When his mother hugs him, you can be happy for him and ache for yourself.
Being loved in his family and being a daughter to that family are two different things.
This difference can remain almost invisible. Precisely because they accept you, precisely because they&#8217;re good people, and precisely because there&#8217;s so much to be grateful for, it&#8217;s harder to say that it also hurts.
You can love his family and envy what he has
Envy of the family of the person you love isn&#8217;t easy to admit. It&#8217;s easier to be angry about the number of gatherings, about his mother&#8217;s phone calls, about the connection with his siblings, or about the fact that you&#8217;re going to them again on Saturday.
Beneath the anger can be a much simpler pain: you want what he has.
You see that he can be annoyed with his mother and still call her the next day. He can fight with his brother and remain his brother. Your children know the house where he grew up and his family stories. He has a family past he can still step into in the present.
You don&#8217;t want to take these connections away from him. You might even protect and encourage them. And still, his closeness to his family brings you face to face with what you don&#8217;t have.
His family doesn&#8217;t create this pain. It can illuminate it.
This pain easily enters the relationship in disguise
The pain doesn&#8217;t always arrive in the couple conversation by its real name.
Instead of saying &#8220;It&#8217;s hard for me to see how much you belong and how much I feel I don&#8217;t have that,&#8221; you might say &#8220;We&#8217;re always at your parents&#8217; place.&#8221; Instead of saying &#8220;It hurts to see your relationship with your mother,&#8221; you might ask why she needs to call every day.
Your partner hears criticism of the people he loves and starts defending them. The more he defends them, the more you can feel he&#8217;s choosing them over you. The more you attack his connection with them, the more he feels he&#8217;s being asked to choose between his relationship and his family.
Inside this cycle it&#8217;s already hard to see what started it.
Your experience is real. If you feel on the outside, the pain of being on the outside deserves space. That feeling still doesn&#8217;t prove your partner is leaving you on the outside. If his closeness to his mother stirs loneliness in you, the loneliness is real. It doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean his relationship with her comes at your expense.
This distinction changes the conversation. It allows you to bring your pain to your partner without immediately turning it into an indictment against him or his family.
It&#8217;s the same distinction I expand on in the article about fear of intimacy in relationships: recognizing what&#8217;s stirred in me without turning the other person&#8217;s response into a measure of my worth or proof of their intentions.
When you ask for a boundary, it&#8217;s worth knowing what you&#8217;re really asking for
His family can have habits that don&#8217;t suit you. Parents can be too involved, siblings can enter places that aren&#8217;t theirs, and you might truly be spending more time with his family than fits the life you want to build.
Boundaries are an important part of the relationship with family of origin. And within this gap it&#8217;s worth checking one more thing: are you asking for a boundary, or do you need proof that he&#8217;s choosing you?
You might want to see him tell his mother &#8220;no&#8221; so you can feel he&#8217;s said &#8220;yes&#8221; to you. You might want him to skip a family gathering so you know you&#8217;re more important. The argument about Friday dinner might hold within it a much deeper request: &#8220;Tell me I&#8217;m your family now.&#8221;
This request is understandable. It also places on your partner a task that can&#8217;t truly be completed. No number of times he chooses you over his family will be able to give you retroactively the family you didn&#8217;t have.
I wrote extensively about this weight—created when a partner becomes a primary source of belonging and security—in the article My partner can&#8217;t be the family I didn&#8217;t have. Here I&#8217;m interested in a different question: what happens to the relationship when one side still has an active, present family, and the other lives disconnected from theirs?
And you also need to see what&#8217;s become taken for granted
If you&#8217;re in good contact with your family of origin, it&#8217;s very easy not to see the advantage you have. You&#8217;re used to your mother calling, your parents inviting you for the holiday, having someone to turn to when you need help, and having people who&#8217;ve known you since before you met your partner.
When your family is the only active family in your lives, its habits can imperceptibly become the habits of your relationship. Its holidays become your holidays. Its schedule enters your schedule. Its traditions become the traditions your children know.
&#8220;Where else would we do the holiday?&#8221; can sound like a technical question. Beneath it lies an assumption worth checking: if your family has a table and hers doesn&#8217;t, of course you&#8217;ll sit around your table.
It doesn&#8217;t have to be obvious.
The fact that your partner is disconnected from her family doesn&#8217;t automatically grant your family the space that&#8217;s been vacated. That space also belongs to the home you&#8217;re building.
You can be a son to your family and a partner within the family you&#8217;ve built
Your connection with your family isn&#8217;t an obstacle to differentiation. The question is how you hold that connection now, when you&#8217;re also a partner and have built your own home.
You can love your parents and choose with your partner what your holidays will look like. You can be close to your siblings and set a boundary when something that belongs to your relationship goes outside. You can be grateful for the help you receive from your family without turning that help into a right to interfere in your decisions.
And within all this, you can hear your partner&#8217;s pain without rushing to explain how much your family loves her. Their love for her doesn&#8217;t cancel her loss.
You also don&#8217;t need to apologize for what you have or shrink your connections to protect her from the pain. You&#8217;re called to see it and stay beside her in it, without handing it the steering wheel of your lives.
The family that&#8217;s present doesn&#8217;t need to fill all the space
When one side is missing, there&#8217;s a natural tendency to let the existing side expand. Another holiday at their place. Another Saturday. Another tradition. Another bit of help. Another decision that organizes itself around that family.
Over the years you can discover that the family you&#8217;ve built has taken on, almost without noticing, the shape of one of your families of origin.
This is a point worth pausing at. Your home also needs things that have no history with either of you. A tradition you create. A holiday you choose to celebrate at home. People you invite because they&#8217;re part of the life you&#8217;ve built. Your own way of being a family.
Not every space left by the absent family needs to be filled by the present family. Part of that space can become a place where something new is created.
Building a third home
In my view, this is one of the most meaningful tasks for a couple living with this gap.
You don&#8217;t need to turn his family into your family. He doesn&#8217;t need to distance himself from his family so you&#8217;ll be equal. You also don&#8217;t need to build your lives around the absence.
You can create a third home.
Part of it will carry good things he brings from his family. Part of it will carry what you want to bring, even if there&#8217;s no current connection with the family you came from. Part of it will be entirely new.
You&#8217;ll decide what a holiday looks like at your place, how much space the extended family gets, where the line is between help and involvement, which traditions you want to pass to the children, and who the people are you want around your table.
This home doesn&#8217;t need to choose between two families of origin. It needs to be yours.
Your support system can&#8217;t rest only on him and his family
If you&#8217;re disconnected from your family of origin, it&#8217;s natural that your partner&#8217;s connections will also give you a sense of family. There&#8217;s a lot of good in that. The difficulty starts when your family and social world passes almost entirely through him.
Then your partner holds both the relationship with you and a large part of your path to a sense of belonging. His family becomes a place you lean on, and at the same time a place that hurts because it reminds you of what you don&#8217;t have.
Your responsibility is to gradually expand that world. Cultivate friendships, build community, deepen meaningful connections, and create around you people who are part of your life because of their connection to you. People you can invite to the holiday table because you chose them and they chose you.
They won&#8217;t replace the family you came from. They can be part of the support system you&#8217;re building for yourself today.
Personal exercise: What has become our default?
If you&#8217;re disconnected from your family of origin, write for yourself in which places your partner&#8217;s family has become the default of your shared life: holidays, Saturdays, help with the kids, events, traditions, vacations, money, or decision-making.
Now mark what among these things is truly good for you and you want.
Then ask yourself where within this structure you&#8217;re missing your own space, and where your pain about what you don&#8217;t have turns into anger about what he has.
If you&#8217;re in contact with your family of origin, check what space your family has taken in your relationship simply because it&#8217;s the family that&#8217;s present. Which things that seem natural to you have become taken for granted for both of you without you truly choosing them together?
And finally, choose one thing you want to create yourselves: a tradition, a meal, a holiday, a connection, or one family decision that doesn&#8217;t arise from the need to distance from one family or compensate for the absence of the other.
Something that belongs to you.
The family you have and the family I don&#8217;t
This gap won&#8217;t disappear because we love each other.
You can love his family and ache that you don&#8217;t have what he has. You can be close to your family and see that this closeness brings your partner face to face with loss. Both things can live in the same home.
When the pain gets a name, it no longer has to disguise itself as a fight over another Friday dinner or about mom&#8217;s phone call. And when the family that&#8217;s present stops being the automatic default, you can start choosing what from it enters your home and what you want to create yourselves.
&#8220;Of course we&#8217;ll do the holiday at my parents&#8217; place. Where else would we do it?&#8221;
Now you can hear within that question another question:
&#8220;How do we want our family to look?&#8221;
That question no longer has an answer that either family of origin can give in your place.
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Question 3

"If you wanted me, you'd want sex": When the gap in sexuality becomes a test of love

Accepted Answer

&#8220;I&#8217;m always the one who initiates. If I don&#8217;t start, a month can go by and nothing happens.&#8221;
&#8220;I&#8217;m already afraid to hug him. I don&#8217;t know if the hug can just stay a hug, or if I&#8217;ll have to explain again why I don&#8217;t want to continue.&#8221;
A gap in sexual desire starts to hurt long before anyone counts how many times we had sex this month. It hurts when one partner feels again and again that they want more, and the other feels again and again that more is wanted from them than they want to give, and then the conclusions arrive:

&#8220;If you were attracted to me, you&#8217;d want me.&#8221;
&#8220;If you really loved me, you&#8217;d respect that I don&#8217;t want to.&#8221;
&#8220;If I&#8217;m always the one initiating, I&#8217;m probably no longer desirable.&#8221;
&#8220;If I&#8217;m constantly disappointing you, maybe something&#8217;s wrong with me.&#8221;

At this point, sex already holds much more than sex. It becomes a measure of love, attraction, closeness, and worth. Every initiation and every refusal takes on meaning, and both partners may find themselves trying to get through sexuality an answer to a much deeper question: Am I still loved and desired in your eyes?

ניווט במאמר

A gap in sexual desire is first of all a gap
Two people don&#8217;t arrive at a relationship with the same sexuality. Even within a long-term relationship, each person&#8217;s desire can change at different times and be affected by age, stress, physical and mental state, medications, parenthood, relationship quality, sense of security, and body image.
The mere fact that one partner wants more doesn&#8217;t yet tell us what the state of the relationship is. What happens between the partners around the gap tells us much more. I can want you more than you want me and experience pain. I can feel lonely, frustrated, and undesired. This experience is real and deserves space. The question is what I do with this pain, and especially what meaning I give it.
A gap in desire is one example of something broader that happens when two people who love each other want different things. I wrote extensively about the possibility of staying close even within difference in the article on gaps in relationships.
When your desire becomes proof that you love me
Sexual rejection touches a vulnerable place. The desire of the person we love can make us feel desired, loved, and wanted. When they don&#8217;t want sexual contact at that moment or at the same frequency we want, it&#8217;s easy to move from our experience to a conclusion about ourselves, about them, and about the relationship.
There&#8217;s a significant difference between &#8220;It hurts me that you don&#8217;t want to right now&#8221; and &#8220;You&#8217;re no longer attracted to me.&#8221; There&#8217;s a difference between &#8220;I feel rejected&#8221; and &#8220;If you loved me, you&#8217;d want to sleep with me.&#8221;
The pain belongs to me and it&#8217;s real; my interpretation of what you feel toward me requires checking.
When I need your desire to know I&#8217;m loved, every &#8220;no&#8221; takes on enormous weight. It&#8217;s no longer a response to a particular sexual invitation. It can sound inside me like &#8220;I don&#8217;t want you,&#8221; &#8220;You no longer attract me,&#8221; or even &#8220;I don&#8217;t love you enough.&#8221;
Through the lens of worthiness, a deeper question arises: Can I continue to know I&#8217;m worthy even in the moment when the person I&#8217;m with doesn&#8217;t want sexual contact?
This stance asks me to feel the pain and stay connected to my worth. The desire of the person facing me matters to me, and it can touch me deeply, yet their body doesn&#8217;t determine how worthy I am and how worthy I am of love.
The person who wants less can also start proving love through the body
The love test works in the other direction too. If every time I say &#8220;no&#8221; you get hurt, withdraw, become angry, or cast doubt on the relationship, I can start learning that my boundary hurts you.Gradually, a different equation can form inside me: if I love you, I should want to, and if I don&#8217;t want to, maybe I should respond so you won&#8217;t feel rejected. From here, sexuality can develop that happens out of a desire to prevent disappointment, restore peace, maintain closeness, or prove the relationship is still okay.
Differentiation allows me to meet your disappointment and stay connected to myself. I can see that it hurts you, be sensitive to that pain, and say &#8220;I don&#8217;t want to right now.&#8221; I can also bear the fact that you&#8217;re disappointed in me at the moment, maintain my boundary, and recognize that your disappointment is real.
I expanded on the ability to stay connected to ourselves even facing the disappointment of the person we love in the complete guide to differentiation in relationships.
My love for you isn&#8217;t measured anew each time through my ability to generate desire, and the fact that I want less leaves me a full partner in the conversation about our sexuality.
When sex becomes a test, every touch starts to carry expectation
One partner feels they&#8217;re missing sexual contact and therefore initiates more, raises the topic, checks if something will happen tonight, and tries to understand why the other doesn&#8217;t want to. The other partner starts experiencing sexuality as an area where there&#8217;s expectation. As the pressure grows, they may withdraw more.
The withdrawal increases the pain and anxiety of the first, who tries again to get closer. After a while, even touch that was once simple takes on new meaning. A hug is no longer necessarily just a hug, and a kiss can raise the question of where it&#8217;s supposed to lead.
The person who wants less starts being careful about touch so as not to create expectation. The person who wants more also experiences the decrease in non-sexual touch as further proof of distance. This way each reacts to the other&#8217;s reaction and the cycle strengthens.
As anxiety around sexuality rises, reactivity also rises. One tries to achieve more closeness to calm down, and the other tries to achieve more distance to calm down. Attention shifts more and more to what the other is doing and less to what&#8217;s happening inside me and to the way I myself participate in the cycle.
A gap in desire that could have remained a difference between two people becomes a whole system of tests: Do you want me, am I attractive enough, can I get close without committing to sex, can I refuse and stay close to you.
The work begins when each person manages to identify their part in the cycle and ask what they do when anxiety rises.
Bringing my desire without demanding it prove love to me
I can bring my sexual desire into the relationship in a clear, direct, and vulnerable way.

&#8220;I want you.&#8221;
&#8220;Sexuality between us matters to me.&#8221;
&#8220;I miss our touch.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s hard for me how little sex there is between us.&#8221;

These sentences tell you about me. They leave you the possibility to feel differently than I do.
The differentiation lies in my ability to stay connected to my desire even when you don&#8217;t respond to it. I can want, ask, be disappointed, and talk about the meaning of sexuality for me. I can also check if beneath my desire lies an additional need: for you to prove I&#8217;m still desirable, to confirm our relationship is secure, or to help me feel worthy again. 
Your body and desire remain yours.
From the other side, I can say I don&#8217;t want sexual contact right now. My responsibility is to be honest about myself and be willing to meet with you the broader question of sexuality between us.
Instead of looking for who has the problem, check what each person does within the gap
A gap in desire invites partners to look for the person who has the problem.

&#8220;He has an excessive need for sex.&#8221;
&#8220;She has no desire.&#8221;
&#8220;He pressures.&#8221;
&#8220;She rejects me.&#8221;

Once one partner is defined as the problem, the other can stop looking at themselves. Through the lens of differentiation, the more interesting question is what each of us does within the gap.
The person who wants more can check what happens to them when told no. What meaning do they give the refusal? Are they able to bring their desire without turning it into a demand? Do they punish for disappointment through anger, coldness, silence, or withdrawal? Do they need sex also to receive confirmation that they&#8217;re loved and desired?
The person who wants less can check what happens to them facing the desire of the person they&#8217;re with. Are they able to talk about their sexuality directly? Are they waiting for the other to stop wanting so they won&#8217;t have to meet the gap? Are they using avoidance instead of saying something that&#8217;s hard for them to say? Are they agreeing to contact they don&#8217;t want because it&#8217;s hard for them to bear the other&#8217;s disappointment?
Worthiness also includes integrity. I can know I&#8217;m worthy and at the same time identify my behavior that harms the relationship and take responsibility for it.
When my worth remains mine, we can talk about sexuality itself
If my sense of worth depends on you wanting me, every refusal from you can become a threat. I need your response to feel desirable.
On the other side too, worthiness can erode. If I believe that to be a good and loving partner I need to respond to your desire, I may distance myself from my body and from the ability to feel what I really want.
Worthiness allows two people to remain of value even within the mismatch. I&#8217;m worthy even when you don&#8217;t want sexual contact now. You&#8217;re worthy even when I&#8217;m disappointed in you. I can set a boundary and remain a loving partner, and I can want more from you without turning my desire into shame or defect.
From this stance, sex can stop serving as a continuous test of the relationship. We can start talking about sexuality itself: what feels good to us, what we&#8217;re missing, what turns us off, what arouses us, and what we&#8217;d like to create together.
It may be that our desire simply awakens differently
When talking about a gap in desire, it&#8217;s worth checking also how each person&#8217;s desire awakens. In one person, sexual desire can appear on its own, even before contact is made. In the other, desire can start from a neutral state and awaken when there are conditions that suit them, like privacy, calm, closeness, a sense of connection, and pleasant touch.
The distinction between spontaneous desire and responsive desire can change the story partners tell themselves. A person who didn&#8217;t think about sex during the day can discover desire after the conditions in which their desire awakens were created. Therefore the sentence &#8220;I always want and she never wants&#8221; may describe only part of what&#8217;s happening between them.
This distinction invites us to be curious about how our desire works. Instead of quickly using the number of initiations as proof of the degree of attraction or love, we can check what allows each of us to approach sexuality.
Shared responsibility begins with curiosity toward both our sexualities
In a persistent gap, a division of roles can form. The person who wants more becomes responsible for sexuality: they initiate, raise the topic, and try to find solutions.The person who wants less becomes the one who decides if there will be sexuality and when. This division leaves both trapped.
Shared responsibility can exist even when desire differs. It requires both partners to be present regarding the sexual life they share. The person who wants more can ask themselves what they&#8217;re seeking through sex: pleasure, touch, closeness, a sense of being desired, calming after distance, or security in the relationship. They can check which of these needs are deeply connected for them to sexuality and which can receive space in additional ways too.
The person who wants less can be interested in their desire with the same seriousness. What allows me to get close? What turns me off? How do I experience sexuality between us? What would I want to happen differently? What&#8217;s hard for me to say to the person I&#8217;m with?
The responsibility is shared. The answers can remain different.
Sexual desire also has body and psyche
A gap in desire can also be related to the body and mental state. Hormonal changes, medications, pain during sex, depression, anxiety, stress, fatigue, illness, changes in body image, and previous sexual experiences can affect desire.
Significant or persistent change in desire, pain, or difficulty in sexual function warrant appropriate medical or professional clarification. It&#8217;s worth leaving open the possibility that sexuality is affected by several factors simultaneously.
This is an especially important distinction when the gap has already become a test of love. A decrease in desire can hurt a partner very much, yet it&#8217;s worth clarifying what&#8217;s happening before drawing from it a conclusion about the degree of love, attraction, or commitment in the relationship.
Within couples work, I&#8217;m also interested in the question of what we do with the gap after it&#8217;s already between us. Are we able to be interested in it, or does every conversation about it become a trial where one is accused and the other defends?
Talking about what hurts without testing love
A conversation about sexuality happens differently when I stop explaining to you who you are and start telling you what&#8217;s happening in me. Instead of &#8220;You never want me,&#8221; it&#8217;s possible to say: &#8220;Sexuality between us matters to me. When it hardly happens I feel pain and distance, and I want us to talk about what&#8217;s happening between us.&#8221;
Instead of &#8220;All you care about is sex,&#8221; it&#8217;s possible to say: &#8220;When I feel that every touch might turn into a sexual initiation, I start avoiding even touch I actually want. I want us to be able to be close without me having to know in advance where the touch will lead.&#8221;
The difference is deeper than successful phrasing. I bring you my experience without turning it into a truth about you. I say what I want and leave you responsibility for your desire. I maintain my boundary and stay within the relationship.
The hardest part is staying in the conversation even when your experience isn&#8217;t the experience I hoped to hear.
Personal exercise: What story am I telling myself about the gap between us?
Take a page and think about the last time a gap in sexual desire between you hurt you. There&#8217;s no need to analyze your partner. This reflection is about what&#8217;s happening in you.
Write and complete the sentences:

&#8220;When my partner wants less or more than me, I feel&#8230;&#8221;
&#8220;In that moment I tell myself this means that&#8230;&#8221;
&#8220;When I believe this story, I tend to&#8230;&#8221;

Stop for a moment and notice the difference between what happened and the meaning you gave it.
&#8220;He didn&#8217;t want to have sex with me&#8221; is a description of what happened. &#8220;I no longer attract him&#8221; is a meaning I give to what happened.
&#8220;She wanted sex and I didn&#8217;t&#8221; is a description of the gap. &#8220;I disappoint her and I&#8217;m not a good enough partner&#8221; is a conclusion about myself.
Now add one sentence:

&#8220;Within this gap, what belongs to me and I want to take responsibility for is&#8230;&#8221;

Maybe it&#8217;s the way you react to refusal, maybe the avoidance of conversation. Maybe the tendency to agree when you don&#8217;t want to. And maybe the anger, the withdrawal, or the need to receive from the person facing you confirmation that you&#8217;re still desired and loved.
There&#8217;s no need to solve the desire gap at the end of the exercise. Try to see a bit more clearly what actually happened, what meaning you gave to what happened, and what&#8217;s in your responsibility.
Love isn&#8217;t measured by how many times we wanted at the same time
A gap in desire brings us face to face with a complex fact: my desire and your desire don&#8217;t always meet.
I can feel pain when you don&#8217;t want sexual contact and maintain my worthiness. I can not want and stay present in your pain. I can want change in our sex life and leave you full ownership of your body. I can set a boundary and bear the fact that you&#8217;re disappointed in me.
The gap in sexuality starts managing the relationship when it&#8217;s required to answer again and again questions it can&#8217;t answer alone: how much you love me, how much I attract you, how much I matter to you, whether we&#8217;re still okay.
Couple sexuality takes place between two people with their own body, desire, and boundaries. Deep intimacy allows us to meet also the difference between us, without turning every &#8220;yes&#8221; into proof of love and every &#8220;no&#8221; into proof of rejection.
I can want you without your desire determining how worthy I am. I can not want sexual contact right now without my boundary determining how much I love you.
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