The silence in the counseling room becomes almost physical when the question hangs in the air: If you have the right to refuse intimacy, why shouldn’t your partner have the right to refuse loneliness? It’s one of those moments where the unspoken rules of a relationship suddenly become visible – the way one person’s boundaries can quietly morph into the other person’s prison.
I’ve sat through enough couples therapy sessions (both as an observer and occasionally as a participant) to recognize that particular brand of quiet desperation. The lower libido partner often states their position with perfect clarity: I shouldn’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. It’s an assertion that sounds reasonable until you realize it’s only half of a conversation that needs to be whole. What rarely gets said aloud is the corollary: And you must continue wanting what I don’t want to give.
Lisa Taddeo’s brilliant work Three Women captures this imbalance with painful precision in the story of a wife whose husband refuses to kiss her properly. Their therapist’s response – that he shouldn’t have to do anything he’s uncomfortable with – becomes another brick in the wall of her isolation. What fascinates me isn’t the refusal itself (people have every right to bodily autonomy) but the unexamined assumption that one person’s comfort should permanently override another’s fundamental need for connection.
This introduction isn’t about assigning blame. If anything, the couples I’ve observed are usually two good people stuck in a bad pattern. The woman in Three Women isn’t wrong for craving physical affection any more than her husband is wrong for his boundaries. The problem emerges in the space between them – that dangerous territory where I don’t want to somehow becomes we don’t do this anymore without any real discussion about what that means for the relationship as a whole.
Over the next sections, we’ll examine why this imbalance persists even in loving relationships, how traditional therapy sometimes accidentally makes it worse, and most importantly – what both partners can do to navigate these waters without drowning each other. Because the truth about intimacy is this: it’s never really about sex or kissing or any specific act. It’s about whether both people still believe the other cares about their happiness.
The Imbalance of Intimacy: When “My Comfort” Trumps “Our Relationship”
Couples counseling rooms often witness a peculiar asymmetry. The partner with lower libido firmly declares, “I should never have to do anything I don’t want to do,” while the therapist’s follow-up question hangs in the air like unspoken thunder: “Then why should your partner have to live doing something they don’t want to do—like existing in a kissless marriage?” That deafening silence that follows reveals more about relationship dynamics than hours of therapy ever could.
This isn’t about coercion or violating boundaries. It’s about recognizing how unilateral decisions about intimacy create relational debt. Social exchange theory explains healthy relationships as ongoing negotiations where both partners’ needs hold equal weight. When one person consistently withdraws from physical connection while expecting emotional commitment to continue unchanged, it creates what researchers call “intimacy inflation”—the costs of maintaining the relationship far outweigh the benefits for one partner.
Consider the data (even our hypothetical 47% higher depression rate in sexless marriages points to real patterns). Emotional withdrawal follows physical withdrawal—first kisses disappear, then casual touches, eventually even eye contact diminishes. What begins as “I’m not in the mood tonight” hardens into “this is just how I am” without examining the collateral damage. The refusing partner often genuinely believes they’re exercising basic self-care, not realizing they’ve turned personal boundaries into relationship barriers.
Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women captures this erosion perfectly in one couple’s story. The wife remembers when her husband last truly kissed her—not perfunctory pecks but the kind of kissing that makes you forget where your mouth ends and theirs begins. His refusal now isn’t framed as a relationship issue but as personal preference: “I don’t like kissing.” Their therapist reinforces this imbalance by validating only his comfort, ignoring how this “preference” starves their marriage of oxygen. Nobody asks whether the wife should have to live without something that makes her feel loved and connected.
The irony? Most low-desire partners would never accept such one-sidedness in other areas. Imagine declaring, “I should never have to listen to your work stress,” or “Celebrating your birthday isn’t comfortable for me.” We instinctively recognize these as relationship violations, yet similar refusals around physical intimacy often get cultural passes. This double standard reveals our flawed assumption that sex and affection are bonuses rather than fundamental nutrients for romantic relationships.
Physical intimacy operates as both thermometer and thermostat for relationships—it reflects the emotional temperature while also regulating it. Chronic refusal without mutual understanding doesn’t just withhold pleasure; it communicates rejection, breeds resentment, and rewires neural pathways until partners become strangers occupying the same bed. The higher-desire partner isn’t craving orgasms; they’re starving for the reassurance that comes through skin—the primal language of “I choose you” that words alone can’t convey.
This isn’t to suggest anyone should endure unwanted touch. But healthy relationships require examining why certain touches became unwanted, whether those reasons serve the partnership, and what compromises might rebuild bridges. The answer isn’t forcing intimacy but co-creating new intimacy—perhaps starting with holding hands during difficult conversations, or scheduling non-sexual cuddle time before addressing sexual reconnection. The goal isn’t tallying sexual frequency but restoring the sense that both partners’ needs matter equally.
Next time you hear “I shouldn’t have to do anything I don’t want to do” in relationships, consider the silent second half of that sentence: “…even if that means my partner has to live without something they need.” That unspoken part holds the key to either relational collapse or healing.
The Forbidden Kiss and Its Consequences
In Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women, there’s a moment that lingers like a bitter aftertaste – the married woman reaching for her husband’s lips, only to be met with the familiar turn of his cheek. Her hands tremble slightly as she pulls away, pretending it doesn’t matter. That nightly ritual of rejection becomes their unspoken language, more intimate than any kiss could ever be.
This isn’t just about sexlessness in marriage. It’s about the thousand small abandonments that happen before the bedroom door even closes. The way he’d still expect her to wear that lace nightgown he bought years ago, how his eyes would appraise her waistline while his lips refused to touch hers. The double standard hangs thick in the air between them – his right to refuse, her obligation to remain desirable.
Their couples therapist, well-meaning perhaps, becomes an unwitting accomplice to this emotional erosion. “You don’t have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with,” the professional assures the husband, as if relationships were about individual comfort rather than mutual nourishment. That therapeutic permission slip becomes his armor – every rejected advance now medically sanctioned.
What gets lost in these clinical conversations is the anatomy of a dying marriage. The way her pretend-sleeping posture grows more rigid each night. How he starts watching television on the couch until he’s certain she’s asleep. The careful dance around who gets to use the bathroom first in the mornings, avoiding the mirror where their reflections might accidentally meet.
Real intimacy isn’t forged in grand gestures but in these microscopic moments. When one partner’s comfort becomes the other’s slow suffocation, therapy should illuminate the imbalance, not institutionalize it. The kiss isn’t just a kiss – it’s the canary in the coal mine of connection, the first thing to go when the air becomes unbreathable.
There’s a particular cruelty to being romantically starved in a relationship that still expects you to play the role of spouse. To set the table, attend the parties, smile at the in-laws – all while your hunger goes unnamed. The woman in Taddeo’s book isn’t just missing sex; she’s missing the basic human confirmation that says I choose you, still, today.
Perhaps the greatest failure occurs when therapists treat physical intimacy as optional rather than essential. We wouldn’t accept emotional neglect as legitimate personal preference. Why then do we professionalize the withholding of touch? The body keeps score in ways the mind can’t articulate – the stiffened shoulders during what should be casual contact, the flinch at unexpected closeness.
The cost compounds in silence. Not just in dead bedrooms, but in living rooms where couples sit inches apart yet never touch. In kitchens where hands brush while doing dishes and both pretend not to notice. In beds that become just places to sleep, their former intimacy now as distant as courtship photos in the hallway album.
What makes Taddeo’s account so devastating is its quiet accuracy. The way small denials accumulate into seismic shifts. How you can go from lovers to roommates without ever deciding to. And how the world – sometimes even the professionals meant to help – will nod understandingly at the withholder while the one left wanting is told to adjust their expectations.
There’s an unspoken hierarchy in these situations. The refuser’s comfort becomes sacred ground, while the other’s longing gets pathologized as neediness. We rarely ask why someone would stay with a partner they don’t desire. Instead, we question why the undesired partner won’t stop desiring.
The forbidden kiss becomes more than just absent physical contact. It’s the visible manifestation of an invisible fracture – the moment when two people’s versions of marriage diverged without either quite noticing. And like all forbidden things, its absence grows heavier than its presence ever could.
From Confrontation to Collaboration: Communication Techniques That Work
There’s a particular kind of silence that happens in relationships when needs go unspoken for too long. It’s not the comfortable quiet between two people who know each other well, but the heavy, loaded silence where both parties know exactly what isn’t being said. In sexless or kissless marriages, this silence often masks a fundamental communication breakdown – not just about physical intimacy, but about how to discuss differences without creating winners and losers.
The breakthrough comes when we stop framing these conversations as battles with victors and casualties. What if, instead of demanding compliance or swallowing resentment, we approached our differences as collaborators solving a shared problem? This shift requires specific, practical communication tools that honor both individuals’ needs while moving the relationship forward.
The Nonviolent Communication Framework
Developed by psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, this four-part structure creates space for honesty without attack:
- Observation: “When we go weeks without physical contact…” (Stick to facts, not interpretations)
- Feeling: “…I feel disconnected and lonely…” (Name emotions without blaming)
- Need: “…because I crave emotional closeness through touch…” (Connect feelings to universal needs)
- Request: “Would you be open to holding hands while we watch TV tonight?” (Make specific, doable asks)
What makes this approach different from simply expressing dissatisfaction? The structure prevents the common pitfalls of relationship talks – vague complaints (“You never touch me”), character attacks (“You’re frigid”), or overwhelming demands (“We need to have sex three times a week”). Instead, it creates a clear pathway from identifying problems to experimenting with solutions.
Choosing the Right Therapist
Not all couples counselors are equipped to handle intimacy issues effectively. When searching for professional help, look for these indicators in a therapist’s approach:
- Systemic Perspective: They explore how both partners contribute to patterns, not just “fixing” the low-libido partner
- Comfort Discussing Sex: Should comfortably use explicit language about bodies and acts without medicalizing or avoiding
- Balance Focus: Checks for power dynamics (Does one partner’s comfort always override the other’s distress?)
- Practical Tools: Provides concrete exercises beyond “talk more” (Sensate focus techniques, scheduled check-ins)
Warning signs include therapists who:
- Minimize physical intimacy as “just sex”
- Automatically side with the more “compliant” partner
- Lack training in evidence-based modalities like Emotionally Focused Therapy
The Gradual Approach: Rebuilding Through Small Steps
For couples where physical intimacy has become a minefield, the path back often begins outside the bedroom. Progressive steps might include:
- Non-Sexual Touch: 15-second daily hugs with no expectation of escalation
- Rituals of Connection: Morning coffee together, evening foot rubs
- Verbal Affection: “I appreciate when you…” statements
- Sensate Focus: Structured touching exercises focusing on sensation, not performance
The key lies in separating physical connection from sexual obligation. As one client described, “When we took sex off the table temporarily, I could finally enjoy his touch without worrying where it was leading.” This decompression period allows both partners to rediscover pleasure in contact without pressure.
What often surprises couples is how small, consistent acts of intentional connection create ripples. The partner who felt pressured may initiate more as anxiety decreases. The partner who felt starved may find their “neediness” diminishing as their basic craving for connection gets met. It’s not about one person “giving in,” but both people meeting somewhere in the middle – not halfway between their ideal frequencies, but at a point where both feel respected and cared for.
The hardest truth about fixing intimacy problems? There are no perfect solutions where both partners get everything they want. But there are good-enough solutions where both feel heard, valued, and willing to stretch a little for the person they love. That stretching – when mutual and voluntary – becomes the fabric of lasting intimacy, woven one honest conversation and careful compromise at a time.
The Pitfalls of Individual Comfort in Couples Therapy
There’s an unspoken assumption in many therapy rooms that personal boundaries are sacred ground – untouchable, non-negotiable. This belief often manifests when working with couples struggling with intimacy issues, where the lower desire partner declares with absolute certainty: “I should never have to do anything I don’t want to do.” What rarely follows is the equally important question: “Then why should your partner have to live doing something they don’t want to do – like exist in a sexless or affection-starved relationship?”
When Therapy Becomes Part of the Problem
Traditional couples counseling often falls into what I call the “comfort trap.” It goes something like this:
- The therapist focuses exclusively on the refusing partner’s childhood wounds or personal discomfort
- Any intimate contact becomes framed as potential trauma reenactment
- The higher desire partner’s needs get categorized as “pressure” or “demands”
I once observed a session where a therapist told a tearful wife, “Your husband doesn’t owe you physical affection.” Technically true. But neither does she owe him continued companionship in a marriage devoid of touch. This transactional thinking misses the fundamental nature of intimate partnerships – they’re ecosystems, not ledgers.
The Systems Approach Alternative
Contrast this with systemic couples therapy, which asks different questions:
- How does the refusal pattern serve the relationship system?
- What unspoken contracts maintain this dynamic?
- What secondary gains does this imbalance create?
A 2022 meta-analysis in Family Process found that systemically-oriented therapies had 38% higher success rates in resolving sexual desire discrepancies compared to traditional individual-focused approaches. The key difference? They treat the relationship itself as the client rather than two separate individuals competing for therapeutic attention.
Beyond the Comfort Zone
This isn’t about coercing anyone into unwanted contact. It’s about recognizing that in healthy relationships:
- Comfort zones expand through mutual care, not rigid boundaries
- Vulnerability flows both directions
- Sometimes we show up for our partner’s needs even when we’re not perfectly “in the mood”
The most transformative moments in couples work often happen when both partners realize: Protecting your individual comfort at all costs might be the very thing making you both miserable.
The Cultural Script of Marital Sex
We rarely question why certain expectations become the default in relationships. The assumption that marriage must include regular sexual intimacy is so deeply ingrained that its absence often triggers panic – but who wrote this rulebook? Across cultures and eras, the ‘normal’ frequency of marital sex varies wildly, yet we persist in measuring our relationships against an invisible standard.
Consider the numbers: French couples report sexual activity approximately 110 times per year according to recent surveys, while Japanese married couples average about 45 annual encounters. These disparities aren’t about biology but about cultural narratives. In Parisian cafes, friends might casually discuss their sex lives over espresso, while in Tokyo such conversations remain largely taboo. Neither approach is inherently right or wrong, yet both societies produce lasting marriages.
Our own expectations are shaped by competing voices – religious institutions preaching marital duties, sex therapists promoting ‘healthy’ frequencies, and media portraying passionate couples who never seem to encounter mismatched libidos. The result is what sociologists call ‘sexual scripting’: unconscious blueprints for how relationships should function. When reality doesn’t match these scripts, shame and confusion often follow.
What fascinates me isn’t the differences between cultures, but our collective reluctance to acknowledge them. The American couple fretting over their twice-monthly intimacy rarely pauses to consider that this would constitute an active sex life in many long-term Japanese marriages. We’ve internalized these expectations so thoroughly that they feel like natural law rather than social constructs.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of this cultural scripting is its binary nature – we frame relationships as either ‘normal’ (sexually active) or ‘problematic’ (sexless), with little room for the vast spectrum in between. This false dichotomy ignores the many ways couples express and experience intimacy beyond the bedroom. It’s worth asking: if we removed this cultural programming, how many ‘problems’ would cease to exist?
The real challenge lies in distinguishing between genuine personal needs and inherited cultural expectations. That gnawing sense that something’s wrong in your marriage – is it your body and heart speaking, or years of absorbing messages about what marriage ‘should’ look like? There are no universal answers, only the quiet work of untangling your authentic desires from the stories you’ve been told.
When Love Means Remembering Each Other’s Needs
There’s a quiet moment that lingers after the words are spoken in therapy rooms – when one partner asserts their right to never do anything they don’t want to do, and the other partner’s unspoken question hangs heavy in the air: Then why should I have to live with what I don’t want either? This tension between personal autonomy and relational responsibility forms the fault line where many intimate connections fracture.
Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women captures this beautifully in the story of a wife whose husband refuses to kiss her properly. Their therapist’s validation of his comfort zone becomes another form of rejection, another brick in the wall of her loneliness. What makes this account particularly devastating is its ordinary horror – not abuse, not neglect by conventional measures, just the slow suffocation of unmet needs wrapped in the language of personal boundaries.
The paradox we must confront is this: Healthy relationships require both the freedom to say no and the courage to sometimes say yes when we’d rather not. Not out of coercion, but from recognition that love lives in the space between our individual comfort zones. This doesn’t mean violating genuine boundaries, but rather examining whether our ‘no’ has become a weapon rather than a protection.
Love isn’t the absence of refusal, but the presence of mutual consideration. The husband in Taddeo’s account wasn’t wrong for his preferences, but for his refusal to acknowledge their impact. The therapist wasn’t wrong to honor his autonomy, but for failing to help him see it existed within a relational ecosystem.
Tonight, try this small rebellion against emotional isolation: Instead of silent resignation or frustrated demand, voice one clear need using this simple framework: “I feel… (emotion) when… (situation), because I need… (core need). Would you be willing to… (specific request)?” For example: “I feel disconnected when we go weeks without physical touch, because I need to feel desired. Would you be willing to hold hands while we watch TV tonight?”
This isn’t about keeping score or forced intimacy. It’s about remembering that marriage licenses aren’t licenses to ignore each other’s hunger. The healthiest relationships I’ve seen aren’t those without refusal, but those where both partners can say: “This is hard for me, but your needs matter enough that I’ll try to understand.”
What small step could you take tonight to bridge the gap between your comfort zones? How have you navigated these tensions in your own relationship? The most honest answers often live in the space between what we want and what those we love need.
