The Loving Truth

Us, Unfiltered part 4: Desire in the Distance

• Sharon Pope

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In this episode, I talk about why desire fades — and why it’s not gone, just buried.

Buried under busyness, emotional distance, resentment, and the weight of responsibilities. A lack of sex isn’t the problem; it’s the symptom.

I break down what desire really needs (safety and aliveness), how routine and predictability smother intimacy, and why familiarity dampens passion over time.

You’ll learn the difference between spontaneous and responsive desire, why emotional closeness has to come first, and how sex becomes a standoff when no one wants to go first.

I offer simple ways to reconnect: eye contact, non-sexual touch, curiosity, small moments of presence, and adding bits of novelty back into your lives.

Desire doesn’t magically return — it grows again through connection.

In the next episode, we’ll wrap the series with what “having it all” actually means when it comes to love, success, and fulfillment.


Rebuild desire and closeness in a real way: join us for the Couples Weekend.

Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?

Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Loving Truth Podcast, where it's all about finding clarity, confidence, and peace in the face of marriage challenges. And now your host, relationship expert, and certified Master Life coach, Sharon Pope.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, loves. This is Sharon Pope, and this is The Loving Truth. We are on the fourth of five in this special series called Us Unfiltered for Couples. And today we're going to be talking about desire. We are going to talk about why it fades and how to get it back and what it really means to reconnect as a couple after a period of disconnection. If you have felt like your desire has gone, then I want to provide a little bit of a reframe for you. And that is that maybe it's not gone. Maybe it's buried. Maybe it's buried underneath all the busyness. Maybe it's buried underneath the emotional disconnection. Or it's buried under the resentments that have been mounting over the years. Or maybe it's buried underneath all of the responsibilities, the weight of the responsibilities that you have gathered over the years and that you now carry as an individual and or as a couple. So many times when a couple starts to think something's gone wrong in the marriage, something is wrong here. It's because you've stopped having sex. Now, sex is not going to look the same after 10, 20, 30, 40 years together. Okay. And that is natural. But maybe you were having sex every day at one point, then it was every other day, then it was twice a week, then it became once a week, then it became every other week, then it became once a month, then it became once every few months. That sort of process can happen over the course of years or even decades of how that can happen. But when you when you get to that point of where you're not really having sex anymore at all, that's when both people, either out loud or quietly saying to themselves, something's wrong. And we think that not having sex is the problem. I'm going to tell you it's very likely not the problem, but it is very likely a symptom of a problem. And so we got to figure out what that problem is. There are many options for what the problem could be. Today, to keep the conversation tight, I'm going to use the one that is very common. And that problem is that we have now emotionally disconnected from one another, which means now that we're not physically connecting with one another. So desire isn't just physical, it's also emotional. And so it needs things like curiosity and it needs playfulness. It needs to be seen. It needs spontaneity. It needs some adventure. Desire needs different things than your marriage might need. So when couples stop engaging with one another emotionally, it sex becomes like one more task that they have to do versus something that they want to do, right? It becomes more of like an obligation or a box that they need to check. And so they stop seeking enjoyment from it and closeness from it. So desire thrives where two things are present: both safety and aliveness. Now, in terms of safety, we need to feel safe in our most intimate relationship if we're going to do our most intimate act with this other person. If we don't feel safe in this relationship, it sort of becomes a non-starter for every other thing that we might want to feel and experience in the marriage. So safety is sort of baseline. We need to have that. But then the second thing is we need that sense of aliveness. And that doesn't just magically happen. Now, this is something that I wish someone would have told me, maybe in my 20s, when I could start to understand it, certainly before I ever got married. I wish someone would have told me that if you do not pay attention to desire in your marriage, you will lose it. It's much like a fire that if you don't tend to that fire, it's going to fizzle out. It's going to go out. And so you have to tend to that fire. You have to take care of it. So there is a brilliant TED talk by Esther Perel where she goes into a little bit of detail on this concept of what creates a great, stable, solid, safe marriage and what desire needs. And so I'll give you like a real Cliff Notes version of this, which is, you know, your marriage to function and feel good, to feel like home, needs things like comfort and predictability and security. But those things will deaden or dampen desire. Desire needs playfulness and spontaneity and adventure and mystery and novelty. And, you know, once you get married and then you have kids, you actually have to plan for your spontaneous moments. Right? So we need some intentionality on the desire side of the equation in our marriages. Otherwise, that fire is going to go out. Because those things don't naturally happen. So you have to plan for adventure, you have to plan for spontaneity, you have to plan for novelty. Because here's another thing. Let's think about your favorite book that you've ever read. You got to the end of it and you were just sad that it was over. You might have even picked up that book another time, like later in your life, and read it again. And you probably still loved it. Maybe not as much as the first time, but you still loved it. I'm gonna guess that you have not read that favorite book a hundred times or two hundred times. And even if you did, which I know you didn't, but even if you did, you would not love it the same way that you loved it the first, second, or third time you read it. And it's the same thing with our sex lives. When we keep having the same sex over and over, of course, desire is going to go down. Because familiarity suppresses desire. And that's important to know. So not only the longer we are together, the more familiar I am with you, the less my I'm going to have desire. But also the more familiar I am with the sex that we keep having, the less I'm going to desire that. If you love, I don't know, lobster tail. And you think it's amazing, you think it's the greatest thing you could ever eat. I promise you, if you had lobster tail for every meal, every day for a year, by the end of that year, you would not be as infatuated with lobster tail. Okay. And that is just how it all works. So we need novelty. We need something new added to the mix. We need to get intentional about keeping the desire alive inside of our relationships. Now, success can dull intimacy. Here's how: the more comfortable life becomes, the more predictable life becomes, the less space there is for novelty and mystery and adventure. It sort of squeezes all that other stuff out. And that's an important piece. And if every day is scheduled and every day is predictable and managed, well, then there's no room for surprise. And so you have to become just much more intentional about keeping desire alive. The home side of the equation, the love, the comfort, the predictability, the security, that is going to naturally happen for most of us. You don't even have to make any real effort around that, but you do to keep desire alive inside your marriage. Now, we often think that we lose desire with time or with age. And there is some truth to that. But many times it is also lost because we emotionally disconnect from one another as a couple. And so for most of us, we can't want someone that we don't feel connected to. So if I don't feel connected to you, I am not going to necessarily want to have sex with you. Now, there's something that is important to know here, another thing that I wish we all would have been told. There are two different types of desire. One is called spontaneous and one is called responsive. Spontaneous desire is when you can just think about having sex, right? It could be Tuesday afternoon at three o'clock and you could just think about it and get turned on. That's amazing. You have spontaneous desire. Okay. But I'll bet you your partner does not have spontaneous desire because for whatever reason we tend to come together. The other type of desire is called responsive desire, which means I can get turned on if I'm responding to something that turns me on. That can be a love note. That can be out having a fun adventure together. That can be a little bit of novelty or something new. So let me give you a very just kind of real-world example and I'll make this up. So I am a responsive desire person. My husband is a, or yeah, and he's a spontaneous desire person. And so let's say that I'm sitting here and I'm working. And if he would come up and ask me, hey, do you want to be intimate right now? More than likely I would say, no, not right now, because that's not where my head is at. Right. And there's nothing here for me to respond to. What I'm responding to is work-related stuff. But let's say that he would start massaging my shoulders and he would start kissing my neck. Now, it's not guaranteed, but am I more likely to get turned on? Of course, because now I'm responding to something. So you've got to think about who, what kind of desire you have and what kind of desire your partner has. You have to understand that neither of you are going to change. This is inherent in who we are. And so, but once you understand that, now you can work with that. And so if you understand, well, my partner is responsive desire, so I just need to give him or her something to respond to. And then at least it creates a possibility for it. And it sets you up for a better opportunity of success when you invite your partner to be intimate with you. So the antidote here, if you are emotionally disconnected from one another, the antidote to begin, the easiest place to begin is not by massaging their shoulders or kissing their neck, but through conversation. The way particularly women, but most human beings connect is through communication and feeling understood, feeling seen, feeling accepted in the midst of that. Because emotional intimacy is the doorway to physical intimacy. Now, we we've got to talk about the one topic that has been around since, I don't know, the beginning of time, which is, and it's not universal, okay? So these are broad brush strokes. Men generally feel closer and will connect to you through physical intimacy, where women need to feel emotionally close to you in order to connect through physical intimacy. And so it's this circular thing where we each need something different, and we each want our own needs to be met first before we give the other person what they need. And so sex becomes a standoff and it almost becomes a weapon. And so that's not helpful in the in the marriage. And many times we're both standing outside of that circle of I need sex to feel connected. Well, I need to feel connected to have sex, and no one's getting their needs met. And no one's even talking about it. Or you're talking about it and no one's willing to step forward and say, I'm willing to go first. So one of the things that I appreciate about Vanessa Marin, she's a sex therapist. She wrote the book Sex Talks. In that book, one of the things that she says is that when there is that sort of standoff between I need sex and I need emotional connection, the person who needs emotional connection needs to get their need met first. That's just how it needs to go. Most people won't take sides on that. And so I appreciated her just taking a side and saying, yeah, you've got to meet that need first. Because uh, because if you think about it, sex, and I'm gonna say particularly for a woman, but obviously not exclusively, but sex is a very, very vulnerable and intimate thing to do with another human being. And I don't think anyone's ever gonna tell you you should do something with your body that you don't want to do. So because of that, that's a hard stop. It's like so we've got to meet the emotional needs first, meet his or her emotional needs, and then he or she might be more open to connecting physically. But we've gotta be willing to do that. So someone's gotta go first in that scenario. It's gotta be get the emotional needs met first for that person. So, in terms of rekindling connection, the things I want you to think about is to start small, right? Just baby steps. And here's what that can look like looking your partner in the eye when they're talking. Saying thank you. Look at your partner when they walk in the room. Like look up from your phone or away from the TV. Say hello. How was your day? Really mean it. Look for the real answer. When they say fine, they give you a one-word answer, say, tell me about it. Um, see where you can insert some spontaneity. I was working with a couple recently where, you know, I specifically said, what is it that you would like for him to do? And she said, I want him to write me little notes. Just surprise me with little notes every now and then. And I was like, easy enough, right? Easy enough. You go to the drugstore, you get some little cards, you write your wife a love note every now and then. And it doesn't have to be poetic, right? It can just be, I hope you have an amazing day. You're a beautiful creature, right? Simple. But those sorts of things feel spontaneous and they go a long way. Now, another thing that you can do is touch your partner. And what I'm talking about is non-sexual touch. This is so, so important. You need to have those moments of where you just have a hand on a hand, a hand on an arm, a hand on a leg, a hand on a lower back, something like that, where it's not sexual, but it is affection. It is affectionate touch. That's really important. So, in terms of starting small, you can do any one of those things, but don't assume that that's gonna turn into sex. Because if the only time you ever touch your partner is when you want sex or when you think it could lead to sex, eventually they're gonna recoil from you because in that moment they may not be in the mood, and this your touch is going to remind them that, like, oh, he wants sex right now, and she'll pull away. So, non-sexual touch is really important. And another thing I want you to do is that when you think about your partner, let's say that they're not with you, let's say that you're at work and I don't know, he's, you know, out with friends or something like that. When you think about them, think about the best parts of them. Don't focus on the parts that drive you crazy. Like our brains love to go solving problems. It doesn't like to just look at things that make us happy. So that's why we often spend way more time thinking about the negative things in our lives than the positive things in our lives. And I wish it was different, but it's not. So when you think about your partner, intentionally think about the best parts of them, the parts of them that you genuinely value and love and appreciate. Because whatever you focus upon, it's going to get bigger. So focus upon the good parts about your partner. Rekindling connection isn't so much about these big grand gestures as much as it's about these small little moments of tuning in and giving your partner your attention. And when you notice your partner again, and I'm saying like really notice them, really see them, look them in the eye. That's when desire can sort of reignite in a more natural way. So intimacy is layered, right? It's emotional, it's physical, it's intellectual, it's even spiritual, and each one feeds into the other. They're not these separate pieces. But when we stop expecting this magic of desire to just happen, instead we nurture desire through closeness, through honesty, through vulnerability and presence. That's when desire can return. And so this week, I want you to do one thing. Choose any from the list that I've already rattled off. One thing that feels like an opportunity to reconnect. And don't expect that one thing to solve all the issues. Like if you haven't been physically intimate with your partner in six months, this is gonna take a minute. Okay. Like it's a bit of a muscle that if you don't use it, you do lose that sense of desire sometimes. So when that's the case, you've got to just sort of reignite it. It's not like you can't build another fire. If we go back to the fire metaphor, you can certainly build another fire, but you're gonna need some kindling. You're gonna need some fire starter stuff. You're gonna need a match or a lighter or two sticks. Like you're gonna need some things to go into that in order to build another fire and get that going again. Okay. So next time, on our last piece in this series, we are going to close the series with the real meaning of having it all. Exploring what true fulfillment looks like, not just professionally and from a monetary perspective, but how do you have external and internal success? Because having it all, I think you'd agree with me, means very, very little when your heart feels empty. All right, until next time, please take really good care. Love, if your marriage looks fine on the outside but feels disconnected on the inside, you're not alone. So many accomplished couples reach a point where conversations turn tense, intimacy fades, and you start wondering, can we find our way back? Or are we avoiding the truth? I host a private luxury couples retreat for relationships at a crossroads. No groups, no exposure, just the two of you and a master coach helping you see the real issues, repair what's broken, and get absolute clarity about your future together. If this speaks to you, explore the details and request a confidential consultation at couplesweekendretreat.com.