This is a follow up to the video that apparently woke some people up this week

Ajouté : 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Okay, so I posted this video yesterday and the comment section Wow. Just Wow. And before I go into this long-winded video of education, I need to be very clear that I am not here to assess anyone. I'm not diagnosing anyone. I'm not telling anyone what's happening in their relationship based on a comment section. So, that is not what this is going to be. But, what I can and I will speak to is what I'm observing.

[00:00:21]And what I observed through that comment section is full of people who are clearly hurting. What I ended up seeing in my office more times than not isn't couples walking through the door where everything is just hunky-fucking-dory.

[00:00:32]They are showing up because there is a gap in desire and nobody knows what the [ __ ] is going on or how to handle all of that. So, you then have one partner who's overwhelmed. They're starting to shut down around sex. And then you have the other partner who becomes really frustrated and then they start to push.

[00:00:45]And then that vicious loop starts to kick in where the more one person is pushing, the more the other one then pulls away. And the more that they pull away, the more the other one pushes.

[00:00:53]Now, you got both people who feel like absolute dog [ __ ] One feels rejected.

[00:00:57]One feels pressured. And then neither one feels connected. And then the thing that really drives me batshit crazy is that pressure, it doesn't create desire.

[00:01:03]It destroys it every single [ __ ] time without fail. And that isn't just a clinical observation. The research backs this up consistently. You know your girl's got her receipts because in a 2008 study, what they found is that people who are pursuing sex with approach goals, so meaning they wanted to be there. They wanted the intimacy.

[00:01:19]They wanted that connection. They ended up maintaining higher sexual desire over time and were buffered against the natural decline in the desire that ends up kind of happening in long-term relationships. So, in other words, wanting to be there matters a lot. Now, the flip side of that comes this 2005 study which found that when people are engaging in sex for avoidance-based reasons, so to avoid conflict, to avoid disappointing their partner, to avoid maybe a negative reaction, both their own and their partner's relationship satisfactions suffered. And this then was replicated in a 2013 study across three studies. So, pursuing sex to avoid disappointing a partner was then also associated with lower sexual satisfaction and lower relationship satisfaction for both people. Both people. Not just the one feeling pressured. And to finish off, there is this 2024 study that found that when someone perceives their partner's desire as significantly higher than their own, it can actually cause a decrease in terms of their willingness to then engage, so not increasing it. Where we see pressure in any then direction moving the needle in the wrong [ __ ] direction. So, the research on this is pretty consistent across the decades.

[00:02:19]Wanting to be there sustains one's desire, but feeling like you have to be there can erode it for everyone involved. Now, I just want to take a second because anyone who felt something watching that last video, so let's say wanting sex in your relationship, that matters. Feeling rejected matters. This is very real and painful in terms of an experience and I'm not dismissing it and I even said that in the video. I also said, "With that being said, pain doesn't then create obligation and rejection doesn't mean your partner owes you access to their body." I don't know about you, but getting sex from someone who doesn't want to give it, is that the goal? Because I would argue that both people wanting each other, whatever that may look like. So, knowing your partner maybe wants you because they want sex with you, or knowing that your partner wants you because they are making room for intentional time with you.