The Real Reason for Sexual Disconnect In Your Marriage

Are you living in a sexless marriage?

Sexual rejection is one of the most painful experiences a spouse can face. It destroys self-esteem, creates a "lonely" atmosphere in the home, and often leads to a cycle of pressure and withdrawal. But most of the advice out there—like "just communicate better" or "make a list"—doesn't actually work. Why? Because sexual frustration is rarely just about the sex itself.

In this deep dive, Dr. Joe Beam unpacks what actually drives desire and what erodes it. Whether you are the spouse feeling rejected or the one feeling pressured to perform, this conversation provides a roadmap to understanding the "why" behind the disconnect.

In this video, Dr. Joe discusses:

The 4 Root Causes: Is the issue Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, or Spiritual?

The "Universal vs. Specific" Test: How to determine if the problem is biological or rooted in the relationship.

The Arousal Myth: Why many women (and some men) don't feel "desire" until after the process starts.

Pornography & Affairs: A candid look at how sexual unfulfillment contributes to—but does not justify—betrayal.

The "Outside/Inside" Rule: How your daily interactions are sabotaging your intimacy.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Sexual rejection is one of the most common marriage issues that we see. And it's also the one people talk about with the least honesty. You ever hear these platitudes where people just, oh, you need better communication, you need to make a list of all the things you want to do and cross things off that you're not comfortable with. Many of that those things just fail. When people feel sexually rejected, it can seem like an emergency. It totally destroys your self-esteem. Uh if only I were better fit, or if I had more resources, or if my spouse loved me, they would do such and such for me. It's an incredibly lonely feeling. One of the worst things is when you're the spouse who can't manufacture those feelings, and you feel like you're letting your partner down. What many people don't realize is that sexual frustration is rarely about intercourse. It's rarely about the sex itself. Most people don't understand the elements that are causing the disconnect. And so they never really understand what to do about them. But on today's show, we're going to unpack what actually drives desire and what erodes it. So if you're stuck somewhere between feeling pressured to perform or feeling your spouse withdraw from you, today's conversation is going to matter to you. With that, it's over to you, Dr. Joe.

Naming Sexual Rejection

Beyond “Communicate Better”

Frequency Fights And Desire Gaps

Porn, Affairs, And Justifications

Why Relationship Fixes Aren’t Enough

SPEAKER_00 1:25

When I talk to marriage counselors and they tell me about that, they have a couple comes in with some kind of a sexual difficulty. The number one presenting problem would be frequency, that one of them wants to have sex more than the other. And then if you get further into that, you realize that after frequency will come certain particular sexual acts, like I want to do this, but she doesn't, or I want to do that, but he doesn't, those kinds of things. Well, we'll talk about that today because of the fact that sex is an important part of marriage. We know that uh there are a lot of people, and not just males, by the way, a tremendous number of females, who are using pornography regularly. And these are often married people, and the other spouse is saying, What's wrong with me? Why do you why do you watch that instead? And then there are people, of course, who have extramarital affairs, and sometimes they will use the justification. Well, I had that affair because of the fact that I am so sexually unfulfilled. Is that ever a valid reason? Well, let's talk about that. You see, when I talk to marriage counselors who've been trained to be marriage counselors about this, they've had little to no training in how to help a couple with sexual issues. Because of the fact that they've been trained that if we can just help them fix the relationship itself, then the sexual issues will fix themselves, but that's not necessarily true. My early mentor back a long, long time ago, many years ago, when I was still in my teens, my early mentor told me that everything that happens outside the bedroom affects what happens inside the bedroom. And everything that happens inside the bedroom affects what happens outside the bedroom. And so, yes, in that sense, the relationship is crucial. But not just in the sense of if we can fix what happens outside the bedroom, then everything inside the bedroom is gonna be okay. Not the case. And so if you talk to somebody who is actually a trained sex therapist, and you come to them with some kind of a problem, for example, the presenting problem I mentioned already, but we have a discrepancy in desire, meaning that one of us wants to have sex a lot more than the other person does. They're gonna, or if you have a particular problem like anogasmia, uh, either he or she can't reach orgasm, or perhaps it's erectile dysfunction with him, or that could be any number of other things. Then there's gonna be two sets of questions that the sex therapist is gonna ask. The first is going to be, is this a universal problem or did it have a beginning date? In other words, have you always been like this, or did this start with some particular situation? For example, a couple I worked with years ago, he had an affair, and uh afterwards he and his wife got back together, and they were going to try to make their marriage work, but but he couldn't function sexually when it came to his wife. So he went back to his affair partner and he could function with her. And so the question they were asking me is why is it that he can function sexually with that the partner outside of the marriage, but not function inside the marriage. And now we have to start examining that. Okay, we have something now that is not universal, it's not always been the case. It happened at a particular time, at a particular time it started there. So let's see if we can figure that out. And that's what we did for them, helped them figure out what was the precipitating factor or what made this change. Now, the other question they're going to ask you is is this universal or specific? Meaning like this. Uh, would this be applicable to everybody that you were going to have sex with or just with this particular partner? And so in the example I just gave you, it was not universal. He could function sexually with the other woman, but he couldn't function sexually with his wife. Now, by asking those two sets of questions, has it always existed or did it have a starting point? And it would be true with everybody, or is it just true with you? You can start getting into it. Now, if it had a particular starting point, and if it's just with the spouse, then yeah, in all likelihood it's about the relationship and you can fix it that way. But sometimes it's existed a long time before that. And sometimes it can be it's it's uh it's been universal. I mean, maybe when I was a teenager or before we ever got married, I tried to have a sexual experience with somebody else, and I couldn't do that either. And that's when you start looking into what we do when we talk about pies. You say, okay, is there a physical reason for this? Something that we need to involve a physician with to help fix this. Some couples, for example, discover on their wedding night, particularly if they go as virgins, that uh the wife may have a very thick hymen that can't be broken by attempting intercourse. And then they have to go see a doctor, and the doctor then is going to have to do something to remove that hymen. So that's a physiological problem. Or let's say the man, well, you understand what I'm saying here. I'm saying if it's physiological, then you need to fix it there. Uh one woman told me years ago, of course, her husband was with her, and she said, I just can't seem to have an orgasm when we are having sex with each other. But when I run, I do, at least based on how my girlfriends describe orgasms, I had that when I'm running. What do you think the problem could be? To which I replied, My guess is it's physiological. It has to do with your body. Probably a hooded clitoris. And in that case, what you do is go see your gynecologist, obstetrician, uh, show him or her this is what's happening, and they may find that you have a very thick hood over the clitoris, or one that doesn't retract like it's supposed to, and then they can do that with some minor surgery and help you figure that out. And so you look at it, is there a physicological reason, physical physiological reason for this? And if so, how do we fix that? Sometimes it's the intellectual reason. You say, What's that? That a person thinks, well, what you want just isn't logical. It doesn't make sense to me because I would think, well, intercourse is what makes babies, and therefore it should be only intercourse. And you want to try some other things in addition to that. And and they're not objecting to it emotionally, not even objecting to it spiritually, but objecting to it because it doesn't hit or fit their thought pattern. Then, of course, another problem you have would be the emotions. If uh a person, for example, was sexually abused when he or she was younger, or if in a previous relationship, even in adulthood, they were treated terribly by the other spouse. Um, maybe a husband, for example, that was mean and cruel to his wife in their sexual encounters, and finally they're divorced and she marries another man, and so he might recommend or suggest that they try something, and she's saying, no, no, no, no. Well, why not? It's not because she intellectually objects to it like it doesn't make sense. It's not even that physiologically she can't do it. It would be, no, this triggers emotions that are exceptionally difficult, and I can't deal with those. And then finally, the spiritual. You say, What do you mean? Well, I've been taught by my church, by my pastor, my Sunday school teacher, my teen group, that this is wrong. You can't do that because it's a sin. Now, that can cause some problems in marriage because sometimes a person will say, But I really want to try that, but based on what I was taught at church, I think it's wrong. One of the things I have done as I've traveled a country doing a seminar called Love, Sex, and Marriage is help people to realize what the Bible really does say about what you can and can't do in marriage. Now you say, well, what has all this got to do with understanding our relationship? Well, if there's a sexual problem, say a discrepancy of desire, a frequency that you disagree on that, or some particular act that one of you wants to do to the other, or that there is some physical or emotional pain involved. All of these things come back then to who is listening to whom. Now, one person says, as a guy told his wife many years ago, he said, I'm the man, I should have the strongest sex drive. Therefore, if I don't want to have sex, you shouldn't either. And she was extremely frustrated because she had sexual needs. And she had the two of them talking together, can you help him understand that it's not just for the man, it's for both of us? But what had to happen there is that each person would truly hear the other. And sometimes you would be involved in sex with the other person, even when you were not exactly feeling like it. You see, when they look at the old Masters and Johnson model of arousal and then plateau and that kind of thing, they used to have a thing ahead of that, ahead of arousal they called desire. But it's been proven, and particularly with women, that you don't necessarily have to have desire before you start doing things to increase arousal, that many women can't differentiate between arousal and desire. That only when they start becoming aroused do they find themselves desiring to have sex. And so what is it telling me if you walk in and you say, well, we're having some serious sex problems? If there's not a physiological reason for it, an emotional reason based on something that happened to you earlier, or a spiritual reason where you say, I have a system of right and wrong, and this is outside of that, then we're gonna look at the relationship itself. Do you genuinely care for the other person? Are you willing sometimes to forgive the word, but sacrifice to be with him and her, be with him or her, meaning that right now you don't necessarily feel like it. But can you function this way so that the other can have the fulfillment that he or she needs? And in that sense, if you're not having sex, we say, okay, figure out if it's physio, physiological, emotional, or spiritual. And if it's not one of those things that needs to be corrected and fixed, it's going to be about the relationship itself. No. Sometimes people say, but okay, we haven't been sexual, and my husband, or it could be the wife, has justified stepping outside the marriage because of the fact that we didn't have sex with each other for a long period of time. Does that justify what he or she did? My response would be, no, but you contributed. You say, What do you mean I contributed? Well, let me refer back to the Bible since I'm a Christian here. In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, it says we should fulfill each other, that my body belongs to my wife and her body belongs to me, and that we should not go without sexual fulfillment except for a time of prayer. Really? So that you will not be tempted because of your lack of self-control. And so if you have been turning down your spouse sexually, I don't mean just an episode, but going for a period of time which is pretty much sexless because you just don't want to be involved, or you're mad at them, or you're punishing them, or all those kinds of things. No, it doesn't justify adultery. It does not. But it makes you a contributor. You may think, well, would the same thing be true of pornography? Yes. Not in the sense that it's your fault they're looking at pornography, not in the sense that maybe your body's not everything you want it to be. Don't think like that. But think in terms of the fact that a spouse who has no sexual fulfillment in the marriage might be tempted to do something else. I'm not justifying the temptation, I'm not justifying the action. Now, the last thing, and I don't have time to answer this today, you might be thinking, well, well, what if my spouse is involved with someone else? Should I still be having sex with him or her? We'll put that question off to another time because it's too complicated to answer in the 60 seconds I have left. But I would like to know one thing. You can write it either on the screen if you're watching that way, or send us an email about it. I've been talking to uh Dr. Holmes, our CEO, Kimberly, about uh doing maybe a two or three hour online webinar about sex, where I'd be teaching for the first hour and a half to two hours, and then for the next hour taking questions and answering as best I can. If you're interested in that, please let us know.