I have worked with individuals and couples for the past 42 years, and I have heard this question countless times: "Why doesn't my partner want to have sex with me?"

Over and over, I discover that there is often ONE major reason he or she doesn't want to have sex.

Take Lawrence as an example. Lawrence learned as an adolescent to use sex addictively. He would find his father's porn magazines that his father thought were hidden away and use them to satisfy himself. As he grew older, he learned to use the Internet for the same purpose - turning to his sexual addiction to fill the inner emptiness that came from his self-abandonment. Because Lawrence had never learned to take responsibility for his own feelings, he had learned to use not only sex, but wine and anger as well to fill his emptiness and take away his aloneness.

When he got married, he never saw his wife, Annie, as an equal. Because he had developed the belief that women were objects to be used by men, Annie was just someone to be used to satisfy his neediness.

Before his work with me, both Annie and Lawrence believed there was something wrong with Annie sexually. Annie did not understand why she didn't want to make love with Lawrence. She didn't know why her body just seemed to shut down sexually when he came on to her. She loved Lawrence, but she could not stand to have sex with him. Sometimes she forced herself rather than endure his anger at her, but lately she was no longer forcing herself. It felt too awful.

It was obvious to me in my first phone session with Lawrence that the problem was that Lawrence was coming to Annie as a needy little boy rather than as a loving man. Most women do not find needy little boys at all attractive or erotic.

Lawrence was convinced that either he wasn't attractive enough, or that there was something wrong with Annie. Neither is true.

As I worked with Lawrence with Inner Bonding®, he gradually learned to take responsibility for his own feelings. He gradually learned how to be loving to himself, how to connect with his spiritual source of love, and how to fill himself with love so that he had love to share with Annie. Gradually, he stopped pulling on Annie for sex and stopped getting angry when she didn't want to have sex with him.

Then, in one of our phone sessions, Lawrence announced, "Annie made love to me the other night, all on her own!"

I had been assuring Lawrence that when he stopped seeing Annie as an object to be used to validate him and fill him up - when he stopped being needy and instead shared his love with her, she would re-discover her sexuality. And, of course, she did!

As long as Lawrence was abandoning himself and making Annie responsible for his sense of worth, he was focused on having control over getting Annie to have sex with him. There was no way that Annie would be turned to him when he was trying to control her and use her. But when Lawrence took on the responsibility of defining his own worth and giving himself the love he was trying so hard to get from Annie, he was able to let go of the control and be present with Annie with love.

Over and over I have seen relationships move back into passion when a needy partner learns how to be loving to themselves and come from love rather than neediness.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
©2010

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