How do I fix my desire gap when my partner won't go to therapy?

If you're ready to work on your desire gap but your partner won't go to therapy or coaching, this episode is for you.

The answer to "can I actually fix this alone?" is yes — and today I break down exactly how individual work changes the entire relationship dynamic, even when only one person is ready to start.

Drawing on systems theory and real client stories, we'll cover why waiting for your partner to be ready is costing you — and why going first is often the most powerful move you can make. You'll hear two real stories: a higher-libido partner who discovered what she actually needed (hint: it wasn't more sex), and a lower-libido partner who finally found their authentic "yes" by first owning her "no."

In this episode:

• Why changing yourself changes the entire relationship system
• The two most common reasons people keep individual coaching private — and why both are completely valid
• What actually happens when one partner goes first (it's not what you'd expect)
• Why lower-libido partners especially need solo time before couples work
• The reality check: what your partner's response tells you about what's possible

Whether you're the higher-desire or lower-desire partner, you don't have to stay stuck waiting for someone else's timeline. Your growth ripples out. Always.

🎙️ THE DESIRE GAP BRIDGE™ PROGRAM IS NOW OPEN

10 spots available through March 4th.

If you've tried therapy, books, and scheduled sex and you're still stuck— this is the work that actually addresses what's happening in your nervous system, your body, and your relationship.

6-month personalized coaching following a proven method, guaranteed for couples and individuals. Body-based. No blame, no shame. Both partners served equally.

Enroll by March 4th and receive my curated set of 4 lesser-known books for desire discrepancy situations—not the ones everyone recommends, the ones that actually move the needle.

Details and free consultation bookings at: https://laurajurgens.com/bridge

Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Go to my calendar to book a consultation here.  

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited. 

Transcript

0:01  
Welcome to the desire gap podcast. I'm your host, Dr Laura Jurgens, and whether you want more sex than your partner or less, you are not wrong, and your relationship isn't doomed. You just need better tools to solve the struggles of mismatched libidos. That's what we do here. So welcome and let's dive in. Hey everyone. Quick update before we dive in. Today, I am opening 10 spots this month for the desire gap Bridge Program, which is a six month coaching intensive for either individuals or couples who are ready to actually solve their desire gap. And if you've been thinking about working together, now is a really good time. There are details in the show notes. So we're going to just get going with today's topic, and you can find it there, all right. So today we're talking about how to fix your desire gap when your partner won't go to therapy or coaching, aka going first. So I like to call this going first, working on your relationship when your partner isn't ready yet. There can be so many benefits to this, and there's quite a lot of drawbacks to just staying in frustration and increased disconnection and resentment by waiting for them to be ready on your timeline when they're not. So I want to give you some reframes around that today and some examples of how this can really work for you, and hopefully this can answer some of your questions, especially the question, can I really do anything about this if my partner isn't willing to work on it with me right now? And the answer is yes. Now there are some limitations, and we're going to talk about that too. But a lot of people actually come to me for individual coaching when their partner isn't ready, or if they're not ready to even talk about it with their partner yet, maybe they're not ready to tell their partner they're getting coached at first, and that's completely valid. There are a couple common reasons for keeping it private initially, and they tend to, I mean, they make a lot of sense, and it's really important that you let yourself just be where you are, right? So if this resonates with you, that is normal, and look, all of this goes for whether we're talking about getting coaching, working with me, working with somebody else, jumping into some other type of solving your challenge, whatever you think is best for you. All of this applies. I'm going to talk about it in terms of people who choose to work individually with me when their partner's not ready today. And that will give you that's from, of course, because that's from my experience, right? That will give you a sense of what's possible for you if you choose to either work with me or work with somebody else, for example, on the same issue. So number one, a lot of low desire partners do not want the pressure of their partner's expectations. They don't want their partner to know that they are actually going to get help on this, because they're worried that will make their partner think that coaching will sort of magically make them want sex at their partner's frequency right away, and they're worried about that added pressure, and that is very valid, because if you are a lower desire partner, you and feeling pressured already. You do not want anything that feels like it is going to add pressure, and I am never going to add pressure. So in fact, I'm going to help you relieve pressure on yourself and give you a lot of permission to be exactly where you are, because that is important. And so starting with someone who can help you relieve that pressure without having to worry about your partner in the beginning. Can be really helpful. Number two, they don't want their partner to know how much the dynamic is hurting them and the relationship. So this is the other really common reason that people keep it private that they're going to individual coaching. You're afraid that your partner, knowing that you are ready to actually make this much change, that you are willing to invest time, money and effort into making that change, is going to signal to your partner how much you are hurt and that the relationship is at risk, and that can feel really scary, and so it's important to let yourself have permission to go forward with your own change, or maybe you're coming to coaching because you really want clarity on whether this is solvable and whether your partner will ever be able to meet you and you. Want to see if you can learn to show up in a way that changes the dynamic, such that your partner is actually able to meet you, and that is often what happens. So it's a great instinct, and today I just want to give you some permission to start now, start when you are ready, and help you understand why you're individually working on this matters, even when you're starting initially alone, and how it can be effective for you and what it can do. And we'll talk a little bit about what it can't do, right? So first off, changing yourself changes the entire dynamic. It changes the system. And this is a core principle, actually, from systems theory. When you change one element in a connected system, you profoundly change the entire dynamic. And so what this means for your relationship is you're not alone trying to, like, quote, unquote, fix yourself while your partner stays static, right? The relationship is a living system, and when you shift how you show up, it actually creates completely new possibilities for interaction that didn't exist before your partner responds to a different version of you. And what typically happens when someone takes that leap and goes first, they show up differently. It enables new kinds of interactions. The partner starts getting curious instead of defensive. The partner feels less threatened because they feel more connected and better understood. The partner naturally offers more connection back and eventually, many partners want to join the coaching so you don't have to wait for your partner to be ready in order to feel better. And in fact, you deserve not to have to wait for somebody else's timeline for you to start feeling better. Now, because a lot of the in fact, I always start couples coaching with a lot of individual work first for both people, and so you get to have that right now. You get to lean into starting to feel more alive, less disconnected from yourself, starting to feel more entitled to your boundaries and your pleasure and the things that light you up, starting to feel more free, starting to feel more confident about how you communicate, starting to feel more at ease in your nervous system, right? All of those things you deserve, regardless of somebody else's growth timeline, and when you do those things for yourself, you inevitably, it never fails, you show up differently with the other person. So here's just some like real stories. So higher libido partner story, for example, let me show you what this looks like in real life. So a client came to me as the higher libido partner, obsessing over when her husband might be available for sex. Really devastated that he mostly was not interested in sex with her, and she was feeling understandably rejected, anxious, really disconnected from this guy, and the first layer right of our work together, she started to see that what she was really craving from him wasn't actually the sex, and in fact, their sex wasn't that great, and she was actually not even giving herself permission to really lean into her own sexuality and her own eroticism and self pleasure. And so that was something that really started happening, which was great. She started also learning more what she wanted for when they did connect in the future, but what she was really craving from him was connection and attention. She wanted caring and closeless closeness that had just like largely disappeared from their relationship, and she realized that she was like overcompensating by

9:02  
trying to do everything around the house on her own and sort of earn attention or earn help. And really at the same time, she started noticing how it was that her husband was really depleted and not really in a good place to connect with anybody. And what really shifted was she actually realized that she didn't need his attention as much as she needed permission to enjoy herself, to enjoy her own sexuality on her own, to start having time to herself, to stop overworking so massively, and burning herself out and over caretaking and doing everything in the household, trying to manage her partner, trying to manage her partner's emotions a lot of the time, and taking all that time, carving out self pleasure time, carving out rest time, and starting to have some boundaries around. How she functioned in the household, changed her like it just relaxed everything in her system. And so she was able to actually communicate her needs and feel justified in communicating those needs for the first time in their relationship, and she was able to communicate them really gently and in a completely different way from this, like wound up anxious, you never want me rejection place, right? All of a sudden now they're kinder. They're less resentful. They're less manipulative, manipulative the way that you know you're asking for your needs to be met so she could make genuine invitations for him to join her in relaxing and to slow down and be present with her. And those invitations could actually land, instead of as pressure or criticism that he's doing it wrong, which is how he was receiving everything else before. And instead, it was this gentle, beautiful invitation, and she wound up not feeling like one more thing that he needed to do, right to check off his to do list. So they started having real support and connection time, and he started being able to actually hear what she needed from him, and she started being able to get it. And then they started to be able to connect better sexually, and they started to be able to talk better about it, right, and about what they both wanted, which they'd really not had those conversations before. And so after all that individual work, she was able to ask if he wanted to work with me and her together, and then they did come in as a couple, and they got on the same page sexually. And even though he was still struggling with some of his own personal stress, he actually reached out and got the support he needed for that, and started seeing sexual connection and physical affection as stress relief as well for him, and everything loosened up for them. Her anxiety dropped off, his avoidance dropped off. They started having fun and joy and relaxation together again. Their mental and emotional wellness just bloomed right. The relationship became a haven again. And so the key point here is that none of that would have been possible if she had waited for him to be ready. First she went. First she changed, and it changed everything for the two of them. Okay, so here's the real story for a lower libido partner, because it's not just higher libido partners who come to see me individually. So lower libido partners often come see me on their own. The partner typically joins later, and that's a really great setup, because oftentimes a lower libido partner who's been struggling feeling like they're broken and pressured, really needs solo coaching time first, and that time is necessary. It's necessary to stop the cycles of self blame, of shame, of avoidance and hopelessness, and they need time and support to actually have fun with me, you know, to play a little bit with just, like, really low stakes, like, just to, like, what you know, what kind of touched you, like, on your arm. Like, what is your body into? Right? Like, how could we have fun? How can we release some of this, all this big cloud, right? The cloud of pressure that's just like hanging over their heads. So they need time to start feeling alive and good in themselves and good about themselves, because they've been crapping on themselves for so long, and they also need full permission to own their no out loud instead of through this like passive avoidance. You know, that doesn't feel good to anybody. If you're hiding in your bathroom, pretending to take a shower or something for an hour, waiting for your partner to go to bed, that doesn't feel good. Nobody loves that. So helping you know, but it actually does feel really good to be able to say, Hey, babe, I'm not available for sex right now, but I would still like to connect in some way. Here's what I'm up for, that really does feel good. So like owning your no out loud, but also owning what your yeses are. What do I want and what do I not want? It feels incredibly empowering. People start taking up more space. They start like holding themselves differently, and it goes into the whole rest of their life right there, all of a sudden, now they're like a beautiful example for their kids. They're like showing up at work asking for what they need, right this solo time matters, and they can start to find out what actually does feel like a yes, and this is often why they want to do it without telling their partners. And some of them do tell their partners, but oftentimes it's really important to have that sort of scale. Healing expectations thing, like, Hey, I'm gonna start talking to somebody about this, but it's not like that's gonna magically make my libido match yours exactly, or that like, I'm gonna want to have exactly the kind of sex that you're having. That's not what's gonna happen here. So just like, be patient. I will keep you updated, and I will let you know how you can support me, how you can support this process, right? So you can be open about it. You don't have to hide it, but it's also okay if you keep it private, it's not, I don't think it's hiding so much as it is having something that's just for you that you aren't quite ready to share yet. And I do think that's legitimate. So going first, going on your own pace, and allowing yourself to be truly authentic and be seen and really supported and validated in what your experience is, can just relieve so much stress for people and it we can really start taking a good look at that sort of closet full of resentments, and, you know, scooping them out, cleaning out that closet, and it just feels like this giant burden has been lifted. Right? That cloud of despair and self blame gets lifted. And so that solo work gives you time to figure out with just you and me, no sense of a ticking clock from your partner, what do you actually enjoy? What does light you up? Right? Everyone deserves that, and you can do that work on your own, and it enables you to just really, you know, stop trying to manage your partner's emotions with your body at your own expense. Start setting kind boundaries. Instead of just like waiting for everything to get to a boiling point and then exploding on people, right?

16:49  
You start really enjoying how you are showing up. And when one person in the couple changes that way, it changes everything for the better, right? It really enables a new way of relating, and we get this mutual adult care instead of this over caretaking, like managing type of dynamic, and it's really life changing, and you don't have to wait for your partner to be ready to feel that type of better now. So I just want to make this invitation to everybody who is ready now go first lead the way. Your partner doesn't have to be on your exact timeline. They may not be ready yet, and you can't really force somebody to be ready for something that they're not ready for, but you making the change in you will not only feel better to you, but it will also change the dynamic, because that's how relationships work, right? So if your partner, and look if your partner, here's the reality check, if your partner is total asshat and actually incapable of supporting your growth and joy at all, it is better for you to know that now so you can decide cleanly if you want to pull the plug. But most of you are not in a relationship with a bunch of assholes or even one. Most of you are in relationship with someone who is just not ready to go first with someone who just doesn't feel comfortable yet they don't have the information they need, they haven't done whatever they need, whatever the universe needs, to help them get to the place where they can go first with you. But if you are ready, then don't hold yourself back, because you growing, whether that's working with me or working with somebody else, or doing something else and or if it's in a totally other part of your life, like if it's becoming a mountaineer or whatever it is that you want to do, if you are ready Do it, the work you do on yourself matters, and it will ripple out, and it will change things. So that's what I just want to invite, because so many people are staying stuck, needlessly waiting for somebody who's not quite ready yet, and maybe all that person needs is for whatever shift it is that you're going to bring, right? So if you are ready now, this is actually a really great time, because I have this new six month coaching intensive program where we are focused on rebuilding connection, authentic desire and intimacy that feels good to both of you using this four step desire gap bridge method. It's not talk therapy. It's not generic advice, because that doesn't work for desire gap situations. You all have tried that. I know you have. The generic stuff is not going to work, because your desire gaps are not a generic problem. So what we need, what you need is personalized, body based. Coaching that works with your nervous system, your relationship patterns and your specific blocks, and you can start with or without your partner, and it's literally guaranteed. So if we work together and you don't see a shift in your dynamic, you get your money back. And that's because I know that this works, and I believe in it, and I'm opening 10 spots this month, so if you want to learn more or book a free consult, consultation to see if we're a good fit, you can go to my website, and I'll put the links in the show notes. And if you're not quite ready for coaching, but you want to just stay connected and get practical tips, please keep listening to the podcast, and also grab my free Quick Start Guide, which I am going to tell you about after the episode. Thank you so much for being here and forge ahead go first. Hey. So before you go, I have some more free help for you. If you are okay with sharing your email, I will send you my free guide, five steps to start solving desire differences without blame or shame. This is a practical starting point for individuals and couples. You can opt out of my emails at any time, but I think you'll want to stick around. I am not a spammer. Go get it at www.Laurajurgens.com/libido. Make sure to spell my last name right and the link is in the show notes.