How Do I Cope Knowing That My Girlfriend Is Not Sexually Attracted To Me?
Cathy: How do I cope with knowing my girlfriend doesn’t want to be sexual with me anymore or she’s not sexually attracted to me? This is Reid Mihalko from http://www.ReidAboutSex.com
Reid: This is Cathy Vartuli from the http://www.TheIntimacyDojo.com and we love it when people send in questions.
Cathy: Yeah. This person said I explained to her that it’s quite an emotional thing for me and that I still love her and it makes me feel unattractive and undesirable knowing that my partner doesn’t want anything sexual between us anymore. How can I cope with this?
Reid: Sure. First off the Airlines flew this morning, lost my bag and all I had with me is this tux so were tuxing in up today. This is an interesting one because this go deep in a lot of different directions, first off we’re not a therapist nor we play therapist on television or the internet. We’re coaches and we’re giving advice and we don’t even, we think it’s a good advice but you’ll be the judge. Deep questions like this you might want to get some support or go get some therapist or counselor just to kind of have somebody else that you can talk with and get witness by. We can answer the question but it’s not the same as back and forth conversation or having somebody who’s trained to listen and offer feedback, let me say that. Second, around you know being in a non-sexual relationship or sounds like relationships that were sexual and then they become non-sexual.
Cathy: I think part of the problem is that our society teaches us that if you really love somebody romantically you want to be sexual with them and if you ever wanted to be sexual with them you always wanted to be sexual with them. It’s just like this you either you have the key to the door or you don’t have the key to the door. And the truth is people’s needs change a different times, their interests change, what turns them on changes and sometimes we can keep changing together and evolving we wanted to have sex in our whole lifetimes but to me each day we’re choosing each other.
Reid: And then there are people in situations where maybe they’re changing medication or maybe you know there’s big conversations with people who are expert on these ideas like folks who are getting treatment for cancer and chemotherapy and how that impacts libido and certain medications can impact libido…
Cathy: Changing birth controls can change that as well on what you’re attracted to.
Reid: So like bringing in to the other situation of looking at why the sex left and where where what’s happening there and that’s not necessarily a bad thing it’s just a thing and can you have conversations to see what’s happening and talk more about what’s going on in the relationship.
Cathy: The other thing you can look at it doesn’t to me I’ve been on both sides where I still wanted to have sex with somebody didn’t have with me or they wanted to have sex with me and I didn’t want to have it with them and I never found that really helpful to try to convince them to be different because one that just leaves me on the side of pulling at them if I’m trying to convince them or someone trying to convince me I feel pressured and I want to pull away more. It’s not wrong to ask for what you need or want but kind of saying why won’t you, will you, can you please do this with me?
And the long run it never works for me I loved to know if other people have different experiences working on my own feelings and knowing okay if this person doesn’t want me how can I support my own belief and my attractiveness and my value without needing their coz having sex with someone you love is a big boost. It feels really good and our society teaches us that means that you’re valuable how else can you reinforce your value, how else you can support your value and yourself if you’re in an open relationship going out and finding people that do want to connect with you but also doing work on low self-esteem and low confidence that you’re having this might be a wakeup call of things work to address like notice what in particular your feeling low status or less attractive around like certain activities make you feel that and use that as detective work to figure out where you can poster that up for pull up some support.
Reid: The big pieces for me are coz we don’t know the details of the situation but the approach to the situation I think is useful for all us coz even if you’re in relationship right now where you’re having a lot of sex that might shift. So being able to one build the relationship were you can have deep conversations that don’t necessarily have answers feel like you can support each other in the unknown or even in the known and be able to have a grown up conversations, get therapy for yourselves, go to counseling together, take a workshop together or separately so that your, these are all opportunities for growth for as long as there’s no physical or emotional abuse you know I think it’s up for grabs if you want to stay in this situation and try to work through it or if you want transition in the situation. If you’re in emotional or physical abuse that’s a situation you need to take care of yourself, and you know, I’m not going to tell people you have to get out of the situation but you should be getting support. I’m going to say no matter what the situation is if it’s emotional or physical abuse get support. I have opinions about you should get out of the relationship but I know that that’s kind of not everybody has a situation where they can. So there’s not “ have to’s” or “get to’s” these are complex issues but like Cathy said you know how can you be true to yourself and start peeling apart the untangled mess that culture hands us.
Cathy: And if you can start noticing on what your self-talk is and maybe softening that a little bit if your girlfriend doesn’t go out to touch her arm and she pulls away it can really be a big impact and it can be really be hurtful like there a lot of emotions that come up and if you’re start telling yourself see you’re stupid and no one’s wants you which I’ve done many times that’s just adds to the wound versus I’m noticing I want to say these things what’s a little gentle? How can I soften that? How can I be more supportive of myself?
Reid: Usually what’s going on is usually what’s going on for them, what’s going on for you is you is that you’re telling yourself you’re using the current situation to tell yourself or confirm things that you think about yourself which are usually never the positive things.
Cathy: And unfortunately we tend not to do that I know that it’s really tough situation with lots of emotions and if you can be gentle with yourself and use this as a way of momentum to improve how you feel about yourself and how supportive you feel in the world that can be…
Reid: And not but not the least this is what is also tricky because we collapse desirability and sex we also realize if you’re in America I would guess other parts of the world as well, we have only a few crayons and the crayon box of what sex is so if you can broaden the range of it’s not just sex but it’s sanctuality, it’s intimacy, it’s touch, it’s caring coz we think sex is the ultimate act of caring which can make people feel pressured coz now I have to have sex with you to feel like you care like is there cuddling? Is there is massage? Is there walking down the street holding hands? Or what are things that you can do that are also the ways of the feeling connected and feeling intimate and feeling desired. And again this is a hard answer that a hard question to answer were really dig into in eight minutes. But thank you so much and continue sending us a deep question we really appreciate it.
Cathy: Thanks for your vulnerability.