It’s been six weeks since George was born, and I’m sitting in the waiting room of my OB-GYN. I look down at George, who is snoozing in his car seat, and continue to rock him back and forth using my foot. Trekking to the city was difficult. George kept crying in the back seat and I hit traffic at every turn. Now, I’ve been waiting for forty-five minutes and he’s getting fussy. I’m not sure how much longer he or I can wait.
Finally I hear “Elizabeth” called from the swinging door at the front of the room. I pick up George’s car seat and follow a nurse, who takes my vitals and drops me in an exam room. The doctor arrives and checks out the results of my C-section and does an internal exam.
I’m wondering how it’s possible that this is the extent of the first follow-up appointment after birth. Is she going to check in on me and discover how much I’m struggling emotionally?
She doesn’t. But what she does say is that I am cleared for sex and exercise. Woohoo, I think sarcastically, the last two things I want to do!
I leave the office and text my husband the good news. I’m trying to be sexy and fun with some emoji innuendo, but I’m not feeling it. My breasts are leaking, George is screaming, and I feel uncomfortable in my body. According to the text I get back, my husband is definitely feeling it.
I get home and think the rest of the day about how much I want to feel sexually close to my husband, while also wondering if it’s going to “have to” happen tonight. When the sun goes down and we get into bed, he makes a move. I let him know I’m tired.
“Oh, okay babe,” he says and gives me a kiss. I turn over. I hear him turn over too and let out a big sigh. The light from his phone reflects off the opposite wall. I know he’s upset.
I lay awake thinking about how I am failing him. About how strange it is to go from a relationship where you stay actively engaged in bed all day to one where all you want to do is roll over and fall asleep.
As time goes on, I learn it’s not that I am failing him. It’s that, for me, stress puts a hard brake on any sex drive I have during the best of times.
This, though, is no consolation to my husband, who feels as if I don’t love him anymore. He internalizes my distance and it begins to impact his self-esteem. Our lack of sex due to my stressors becomes a stressor for him. Our conversations about it become awkward and hurtful.
“It’s because of my stress,” I try and explain.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he responds. “Sex is supposed to help people feel better about their stress.”
I take a deep inhale. I am frustrated. Why would I make this up? I think. I try to explain to him that everyone is different—while some seek out sexual activity to reduce stress, other people avoid it.
Several months later, I am doing some consulting work with a relationship health company. They are offering a workshop on sex that they want me to attend. Self-help isn’t Andrew’s thing, but supporting me is, so we go. In the workshop, the presenter explains that for some people, stress is a deterrent to sex, and for others it relieves it. Andrew looks over at me and jokingly offers, “See, I told you so.” I smile. I am relieved he can take this in. And I remind myself to also take in the reality that not everyone shuts down sexually during stress.
The presenter goes on to share the concept of accelerators and brakes from Emily Nagoski, a sex educator and researcher.1 Accelerators are the things that turn you on and get you ready for the hot stuff, while brakes make you less likely to feel open to engaging. The presenter shares that accelerators can include anything from sexy lingerie to a clean house or a day off from work, while brakes can include too many dishes in the sink, a bad smell, or the thought of losing your job.
This concept is greatly helpful to Andrew and me. It legitimizes that we are different people with different needs, and it also provides a road map for how to create environments and experiences that include more accelerators than brakes. We become a team on this—our job, together, is to remove each other’s brakes not just for sexy time, but for a peaceful life overall. It also becomes each of our responsibilities to create an environment that is primed for intimacy so we can both take part in pressing on the accelerator.
In my thousands of hours of work with couples, I know that Andrew and I aren’t alone in our sexual and intimacy challenges in the face of stress. Sex, like other forms of closeness, is negatively impacted when people are stressed for long periods of time. Unfortunately, I have also found that many couples don’t pinpoint their lack of a sex life to stress; they instead resort to blaming themselves or the other person. They tell themselves stories like, “My partner must not love me anymore,” or “I’m just not sexy enough.” And, as they tell themselves these stories, their relationship with sex and each other becomes more complicated and difficult to touch. The already taboo topic becomes more fraught with anxiety and pain, grows legs, and becomes a monster.
When sex isn’t going well for one or both members of a couple, some common beliefs that arise are:
Not only is a couple’s ability to navigate conflict impacted by stress, but so is their sex life. This is because of psychological reasons—stress is distracting—but also because of changes in hormones, like an increase in cortisol, which is related to stress. Research has shown that physiologically, stress is negatively correlated with sexual behavior and satisfaction between couples. For women, high levels of chronic stress are related to the loss of many aspects of sexual pleasure—including lower levels of genital sexual arousal. For men, stress impacts erectile function.2
Like anything else relating to stress, it’s important to think about how to navigate sex as a team. When couples work toward coping with stress and facing the side effects of it together, they improve their outcome. One step is depersonalizing the issue (even though, I know, it’s deeply personal) and working toward understanding the physiological impacts of stress on sex. When you do this, you can work together to remove barriers to sexy time.
I’m sitting in a bedroom at my dad’s beach condo. Andrew told me he would hold down the fort with family while I took a few days away from the house to focus on work. My dad’s condo was available, so I drove down for a few quiet winter days at the shore. It’s been nice to wake up, get a coffee, and not have to worry about anything but myself for the day. I feel grateful to my husband, who recognizes when I need a break.
I’m fiddling around behind the bed, looking for the outlet. I need to plug in my computer for a session I have in a few minutes. Chris and Tiffany have been seeing me for a few months now. They first came in because they recognized that something significant was happening to their relationship, and they didn’t know how to fix it. They described endless nights laying in the same bed with their backs to each other. “Going to bed feels painful now,” Tiffany shared. “I know as soon as I lay down, we are both going to ignore the elephant in the room. It’s just awkward.”
Tiffany said that she wants to be close to Chris but finds that when she reaches out to cuddle him or leans over to offer a kiss, it is like trying to connect with a brick wall. “I get nothing in return,” she said. “He kind of accepts the touch but doesn’t reciprocate.”
Chris becomes defensive in our sessions. He asks her things like, “What do you expect from me when I feel like shit about myself?” Or, “Don’t you see I am tired at the end of the night?” Chris lost his job five months ago and hasn’t been able to find steady work since. He’s found himself in a crisis of identity—a man who identifies as a masculine provider for his family is now home watching the news most days. He hasn’t been able to contribute to their bills. To him, none of this is acceptable. And he can’t understand how it is possible that Tiffany finds him desirable.
Tiffany doesn’t understand why Chris doesn’t believe her when she says she is still into him. Instead, she tells herself a convoluted story to make sense of it. “I think he uses this all as a justification for just not being into me,” she shared. This belief makes Tiffany feel rejected, shut down, and unsure of whether or not she is wanted and desired in the relationship.
I finally find the outlet and my laptop makes the “ding” sound to let me know it’s getting the electricity it needs. I pull the screen open and click “start” on the virtual appointment. Tiffany and Chris sit across from me, many miles away. They look tired and upset. “Good morning!” I say. “I can tell something is going on, so let’s jump right in.”
Before I can say more, Tiffany starts to cry. “I don’t think things can get better, Liz. It’s so obvious that Chris doesn’t love me anymore, and I can’t take it. I left the house last night because it was just too upsetting to lay in bed beside someone who doesn’t even want me to be there.”
Tiffany is like the fleeing deer, who runs when distressed. She takes a big inhale as she continues to cry. She is defeated and feels rejected.
I look toward Chris who is looking somewhere off-screen. I don’t see a man who doesn’t love his wife; I see a man who feels ashamed that right now he can’t love her in the way he believes he should. He is stressed and defeated. “Chris,” I say gently. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know what else to say,” he says quietly. “I am failing her everywhere. Especially if she doesn’t believe I love her. I already know I’m not enough . . . but hearing it again and again is too much for me.”
I take a deep breath. I know that so much of this has been created by an internal dialogue they both have about what it means to have desire and be desirable. So much of it isn’t informed by what their partner is saying, but by what they believe in their mind to be true.
“I think you are both telling yourselves stories that aren’t true instead of listening to what is actually happening.”
They look at me. “What do you mean?” Tiffany asks. “Of course it’s true. In happy relationships people have sex. When people are into each other, they have sex. This isn’t some made-up story. It’s reality.”
“Yeah, and it’s also a reality that there is no way in hell a woman could be attracted to a man who isn’t working,” says Chris.
“I am sorry to tell you that neither of those things are actually reality. They are things you think, but they aren’t the only truth. You aren’t listening to each other,” I continue. “You are letting the stories you tell yourself be louder than what your partner is sharing.”
I ask them to both repeat their stance. Tiffany shares with Chris that she is attracted to him, that she does desire him, and that the job situation doesn’t impact that at all for her. I ask Chris to take it in. Chris shares with Tiffany that his lack of desire and sexual energy is related to feeling incredible stress and disappointment in himself. I ask Tiffany to take that in too.
I go on to share with them that stress impacts libido—the desire you have for sex. That it isn’t always true that a lack of “drive” is due to disinterest or lack of love. For Tiffany and Chris, there is no easy fix to the stress Chris is feeling. Tiffany will need to be patient as he finds his way and understand that right now he doesn’t feel like himself and is stressed about work and finances, but will ultimately be okay.
The lull in sex isn’t the issue—but it will become an issue if they feel stressed about the stress, adding so many layers that a molehill becomes a mountain.
I ask Chris to talk about his brakes. He has a lot right now. When he notices the bills are racking up, when he sees Tiffany leave for work as he sits on the couch, and whenever he gets another job rejection email. All of these things slow down his energy for sex. “Right now, even the things that used to be accelerators are brakes,” he shares. “The other night Tiffany put on sexy lingerie, and all I thought was, ‘I don’t deserve this.’”
I work with Tiffany to understand that every long-term relationship has sexual lulls. I encourage Chris to reassure Tiffany that he loves her, is attracted to her, and is hopeful for a day when their sex life returns to “normal.” Tiffany begins to hear the challenges Chris was feeling from a place of empathy rather than from a place of fear. I encourage her to let him talk about his stress without rushing to make it better for him. When Tiffany learns that this is all she has to do for the moment, she feels relief. When Chris hears he wasn’t failing her, some of his confidence returns.
As Tiffany and Chris get better at accepting the lull in their sex lives and talking about how they both experience stress, we begin to talk about how to increase the “accelerators” that create an environment conducive to intimacy for both of them. Chris shares that even when he is down on himself, he feels the energy to have sex after having a good experience with Tiffany. Tiffany shares that while she is almost always open to having sex, she feels especially close and connected to Chris when they spend time being affectionate during the day.
Over the next several months, Chris works on coming to terms with his own narratives about gender, finding activities that helped him feel purposeful, and eventually gained employment. Tiffany waited patiently from a place of empathy and love as they lived through the season together.
The hormones that are released when you feel stress provide a quick shot of energy that helps you handle a threat in the moment—allowing you to fight it or run away from it. If the stress can be dealt with, the response subsides and your body gets a signal that it’s okay now. This signal allows you to go back to baseline.
However, if stress is being experienced over a long period of time, the body never gets the signal that everything is okay. If this continues, the body will continue to produce more and more cortisol. This process, over time, reduces testosterone production in men and women, which is highly important to your sex drive.3 So, if you’ve noticed that you’re just not into sex, ask yourself if you’ve been stressed for a long period of time. Have there been chronic work stressors? Major parenting transitions? Health issues? Financial worries?
If your partner has been telling you that their lack of desire has to do with their stress, you can now believe that it’s true. There really is a physiological process that happens within the body in response to overwhelming situations. And it impacts sex drive.
Beyond the change in hormones, couples struggling with their sex life are also impacted by the ways in which they think and relate to each other when stressed. As we discussed, it becomes harder to listen, be curious, and problem solve when someone is under a constant bombardment of worry.
Just like it’s hard to talk about a vacation when a lion wants to eat you, it can also be difficult to enjoy kissing, to give yourself permission to lay around and cuddle, or to fantasize about erotic experiences. Our minds don’t like to think about the things we do when we are safe when we feel like we are in danger.
Stressed people also tend to want more time alone, and they might begin to see their partner’s attempts to connect intimately as a violation of their space and react by withdrawing further or becoming aggressive and irritable. The stressed person feels more and more disrespected over time. For example, when my husband would sigh after I said I wasn’t in the mood, I started to think, Why would you even try when you know what kind of day I’ve had! Meanwhile, the other person begins to feel rejected and alone.
We often use the word intimacy as code for sex. But intimacy is about a special kind of closeness you feel with another person—and there are many ways to feel it. If your sex life is hurting, you might want to consider other types of intimacy. When Chris shared with Tiffany that doing activities together helps him feel more confident and connected, Tiffany was able to successfully find ways to be close to him. They worked together to plan hikes and started going fishing on Saturdays.
Doing this improved the relationship in a few ways. It helped Tiffany to feel seen and cared about by Chris due to the quality time he offered her, and it helped Chris feel good about life and himself. It filled up their emotional bank account—giving them more opportunity for good moments together.
All of this acts as a stress reducer in the relationship, which can also improve the sexual relationship.
Couples can experience intimacy with each other emotionally, intellectually, experientially, spiritually, physically, and sexually. Emotional intimacy is when we believe we can share our feelings with each other in a safe way. Intellectual intimacy is the closeness we feel when we learn something together or talk about something interesting. Experiential intimacy happens when we do exciting or novel activities together. Spiritual intimacy occurs when you feel awe together. And physical intimacy includes hand holding, touching, and cuddling.
Expanding the ways in which you feel close reduces stress and increases closeness and a reassuring sense that you matter to each other.
Sex is one of the most difficult topics for couples to approach. Because of this, partners often enter the conversation with a lot of trepidation. They tend to be unclear with each other and fill in the knowledge gaps with their own stories. These stories only make things worse.
When couples rip the Band-Aid off and talk about stress and sex (or any other avoided topic), their relationship improves. Couples can have what is called a dyadic coping conversation to be present and aware of each other’s stress—using empathy, understanding, and curiosity to help their partner cope with their internal stress. They can also spend time talking about what they think about sex, what they desire, and what they hope for. However, they must learn to do this without becoming reactive to each other or shaming each other’s beliefs.
Beyond talking, couples can use safety-promoting behaviors with each other, like play and gentle touch, to reduce the stress response in each other’s bodies, opening the door to the possibility for sexual connection.
Session Notes:
In this session, we explored how sex drive is impacted by stress. The interventions below will help you address how stress is impacting your sex life from a place of love. Learning to accept that physiology can have an impact, that our sex lives experience lulls, that everyone has different accelerators and brakes that fluctuate from time to time, and that there are other ways to connect, can help to reduce the likelihood that your sex life becomes just another stressor.
1. Intervention: Identifying Your Accelerators and Brakes
Talk with each other about your “turn-ons” and “turn-offs.” Share with your partner the contexts, environments, and sensations that tend to put the pedal to the metal and what tends to slam on the brakes.
Examples of accelerators include:
Examples of brakes include:
2. Intervention: Talk About It
Talk about stress with your partner by asking open-ended, empathetic questions and by listening. For example, you can ask questions like:
These questions give your partner permission to discuss their stress without you jumping in to fix it or disagree with it.
Talk about sex by asking curious and open questions like:
3. Intervention: Fill the Emotional Bank Account
Fill your emotional bank account by focusing on other areas of intimacy. Look at each category below and pay attention to how you and your partner fill your intimacy cups over the next week. Then, pick an area of intimacy to focus on together.