In her debut story collection, Watching Women & Girls, Riposte founder Danielle Pender examines the pillars of female life – love, duty, ambition, friendship, and sex – from every angle. Ahead of publication on 23 June, she considers what it takes to sustain sexual attraction with a long-term partner.
By Danielle Pender
Desire, what an intoxicating drug. More potent than any class As, more overwhelming than any hallucinogens. It’s a want, a need, a yearning for someone or something that can consume your thoughts, energy, and sometimes your life. At the beginning of any relationship, desire is the fuel that propels two people toward each other, and it can be an explosive experience. So, it’s no wonder that once we’ve experienced it, we want to chase that high again and again. But, as with all things that burn so intensely, that light can sometimes wane or go out entirely.
It’s a familiar tale; a couple meets, and at the beginning they’re permanently naked – unable to keep their hands off each other, their desire simply cannot be satiated, and when they’re not together their thoughts are consumed by one another. Imagination fuels this electric period as you fantasise about the gaps in the other person’s personality. You’re both on your A-game, you bring your best self to every date, you wear the good underwear, the uncomfortable but hot outfits, you wax and preen regularly – but that kind of upkeep and performance isn’t sustainable, so, over time, you both relax. You begin to wear sweatpants in each other’s company more often; perhaps the bathroom door gets left open. The desire for each other still lingers, but it moves into a lower gear. It becomes more manageable as other areas of life such as jobs, kids, family, and friends need attending to. And then, without notice, the desire that burned so bright at the beginning becomes more difficult to ignite. Perhaps it still flares up but less regularly, or it might dissipate completely. At this point, some couples will go their separate ways in search of that alluring high elsewhere, but what about the couples who are in it for the long haul? Who are still in love and want to stay together but also miss the burning desire that has fizzled out?
We can’t talk about desire without delving into the work of Esther Perel, the renowned psychotherapist who has spent years working with couples and looking into the origins and psychology of desire. In her now-famous TED talk, Perel describes the central conflict in any long-term relationship regarding desire. On the one hand, for a long-term relationship to work, there has to be security, trust, predictability and safety, especially when children are involved. These anchoring and grounding needs are essential to developing a lasting bond; however, this all stands in direct conflict with the things that incite desire: adventure, excitement, mystery, and surprise. Further in her talk, Perel says, “Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance between you and me, while desire is energised by it.” Anyone who has felt their desire for their partner bolstered by a few days apart knows this to be true.
Perel goes on to make the point that whereas, in the past, marriage was seen as an economic arrangement to secure social standing and ensure succession with a person’s various needs being met by a wider cast of people from the community, now, we ask our partners to be our co-parent, best friend, lover, financial partner – our everything. It’s a lot to require of one person. As Perel says, we’re demanding that our partners give us both “comfort” and “edge”.
Understanding this eternal conflict around desire in long-term relationships gives it a broader context. It helps us see that the waning desire we may be experiencing isn’t necessarily a deeper symptom of a failing relationship but more a reflection of our changing societal expectations around marriage and long-term partnerships. However, there are many other reasons why desire fades in relatively happy long-term relationships that are also worth exploring.
Sara has been with her husband for 10 years and married for five. She explains that when they first got together, their sex was always intense. After two years, they moved in together, and very slowly, things started to change; as Sara tells me, “When we lived together, we were in our mid-20s, so we were working and going out a lot, and the domestic side of life wasn’t an issue. After a while, I started to do more around the house, and he didn’t. It’s carried on like that until now we’re 10 years in, and it’s a battle to get him to do anything. He says it just doesn’t bother him.” Sara sees her fading desire for her husband in direct correlation to his lack of input into domestic chores. “It’s almost like I don’t want to please him in bed because he can’t be bothered to please me elsewhere.” It’s not that Sara doesn’t feel sexual desire or have the urge for pleasure, though. “I’m really conflicted about it. The desire for sex is still there, but just not as much with him because of this household issue.”
This issue of energy expended on domestic tasks remains a drain on desire even if both parties are equally invested in maintaining a clean and tidy house. So often, our time and attention are stretched in many directions. In short, modern life is exhausting, and sometimes our sexual desires are so dampened or suppressed by the end of the day that the last thing we feel like doing is having sex with our partners. Sometimes, it can feel like another thing to do.
Amma started to feel like the spark in her relationship had faded after the birth of her second child. “My husband was at work all of the time, I was with the kids when I was on maternity and then when I went back to work I just wanted to sleep the minute the kids had gone to bed.” This relentless schedule will be familiar to many parents. It’s the intense side of having children when many aspects of your life are sacrificed to prioritise the things that need attending to immediately – namely your kids and your job. Amma started to feel a distance growing between her and her husband, which made her feel lonely and depressed – on top of feeling stressed at work and stretched at home. “It just got to be too much. I still deeply loved my husband, and I missed him more than anything, but I just didn’t have that desire, so we decided to set time aside to be together. At first, we’d just go to bed together at 9pm on a Tuesday and Thursday, talk, laugh, chill, and reconnect. That really helped with our intimacy, and it was less pressure than a ‘date night’ or even cooking dinner for each other.” This new schedule led to them prioritising each other more, which led to actual date nights (when they had more energy and time), and now Amma says their desire for each other has been reignited, albeit in a more scheduled capacity, “I think we have this idea that desire should just take us in the moment and should be spontaneous, but I don’t buy that. When you both have a lot going on, you have to make time and space for it to arrive.”
This idea of space is something that Perel talks about a lot. She explains that for desire to exist, it needs space to develop. We need space for our imagination to wander, to explore our own erotic privacy. In one of her past studies on desire, Perel asked participants when they were most drawn to their partners, to which the most common answer was, “when they’re away”.
We need to have the opportunity to miss our partner, to not know everything about them and experience a little mystery. Think about it: the familiarity and closeness that comes with living with someone for a long time can also smother sparks of desire. If you’ve seen your partner carry out their less-than-appealing daily ablutions, if you wash their dirty underwear, if you’ve heard and smelt them in the toilet, it can be hard to separate that version of your partner from the person you’re supposed to have hot and passionate sex with. Amma agrees. “Along with dedicating more time for each other, I separated myself from my husband a little bit. I lock the bathroom door now and encourage him to do the same. It’s not that I’m not comfortable around him, but some things he doesn’t need to see, and I definitely don’t need to hear. It’s like a respectful distance.”
We also need to give ourselves space. Sometimes in the mayhem of modern life, we shut ourselves down, or we lose touch with certain aspects of ourselves, our desires and what gives us real pleasure. Prioritising pleasure can feel self-indulgent when there are family matters to attend to, work that needs doing, or a home that needs cleaning and organising, but putting our own pleasure first is never selfish. Maintaining desire in a long-term relationship means maintaining contact with ourselves. It means living fully in our own bodies and showing up for ourselves. This takes honesty and a level of openness that can feel intimidating, but it’s the best place to start when addressing any kind of issue with desire within your relationship. Who are you when you tap into your personal desires? How do you turn yourself on? And I don’t mean this in just a sexual way; I mean in an energetic, vibrant way – what brings you to life and ignites the fire in you? Is it creating, dancing, doing well at work, being in nature, being with certain people, or going to certain places? Tapping into some of these personal desires can help us better understand ourselves and how we relate to our partners.
While advocating for honesty with ourselves, we can’t overlook the need for honesty within our relationships. Communication, as they say, is key. The chances are if you feel like things have dipped off, then your partner is feeling it too, and the only way to get to the root of the issues is to nurture an open conversation. This is something that Rachel found helpful as she tried to deal with a lot of toxicity around her body and attitude toward sex; as she told me, “It’s been tough to reconcile a lot of negative messages I’ve received in the past about being too available, too sexual. I shut down this part of myself a few years ago after a traumatic experience. Now I’m in a relatively long-term relationship (three years), I’ve been trying to reconnect to a more authentic sexual side of myself so that it doesn’t affect my current relationship like it has in the past, but it’s difficult.” Rachel said that at the beginning of other relationships, she would rely on a more performative element of sex, that she’d use stereotypical moves in her sexual repertoire, but this would always feel fake and eventually affect the desire she experienced in her relationships as she never felt fully satisfied. Talking openly with her current partner has been key to addressing this issue, and the honest dialogue has led to a deeper understanding between them. However, it’s also worth noting that when it comes to sex and desire, an open dialogue with others can often be easier said than done. There is a lot of shame, inhibition and hesitation around admitting our deepest desires to another person, even if that person is your life partner who knows everything about you.
In life, everything is connected, and the wider issues we deal with in our day-to-day existence, such as work, family, physical and mental health or housing, can have a knock-on effect on how we experience desire and how we connect to our partners. The bigger issue that affected desire in Annie’s long-term relationship was money, “My partner had quite a lot of debt when we first got together that I didn’t find out about until we’d been together for 18 months. I helped her work out a plan to deal with it, but she’d end up spending the money she was supposed to be using to pay off the debt. I found it deeply unattractive.” Finally, with some outside help and plenty of patience, Annie’s partner got on top of her financial issues and seeing her thrive again brought the desire back into their relationship. This is something that Perel also talks about: seeing your partner in their element, doing something that they thrive in, can often help revive feelings of desire where they might have been lost.
So, yes, maintaining desire in long-term relationships is hard, but maybe it’s how we frame it. Rather than mourning or lamenting the loss of the nail-biting, gut-churning, mind-blowing desire you used to feel for one another 24/7, it’s about looking for the spaces where desire and yearning can be cultivated. Where you can explore your own desires and pleasure alongside your partners. After all, indulging in every passion we have is a reckless approach to life. Living life at a high-octane level isn’t sustainable; it’s the Hollywood version of what we think a relationship should be, but it isn’t genuine or healthy. Think about your most intense lustful relationship; I’d hazard a guess that at its height you couldn’t focus at work, and that your friendships and other relationships suffered because you were diving headlong into a pit of desire and lust. You simply can’t function like that on the regular.
That’s not to say we need to accept a life of no excitement, adventure and lust; it’s just that with a long-term relationship, these things are pulled into smaller pockets, and that’s OK. The thing to focus on is how you and your partner can nurture and honour your desire for each other in a way that makes sense for you both. Just as we’re all individuals with our own needs and wants, our relationships are unique to each of us, and what works for you might not work for another couple. So go forth, be gentle with yourself and your partner, find your own pleasure, love your body, talk to each other – and, most importantly, have fun.
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