The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

The Selfish Path to Romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and Amazon.com

Of course, I love her, but it's a different kind of love. I mean, it doesn’t burn with the passion and intensity of a Tristan and Isolde. It's more comfortable, more familiar. Maris and I are old friends. We can spend an afternoon together, me at my jigsaw puzzle, she at her auto harp, not a word spoken between us, and be perfectly content.

You know, it's the stuff that most of us don’t talk about.

I want to tell you, I went on a cruise recently, and I sat down at my table with my parents there and with a bunch of strangers, and I picked up a book to read. I’m sitting with my husband, and the book is called The Sex Starved Marriage: Boosting Your Marriage Libido, A Couple’s Guide. Now my father cracked up. He had to get the camera, take pictures, and it became the topic of conversation. Is that a problem in your relationship? Well, with me today is Michele Weiner-Davis, the author of this fabulous, fabulous book.

Welcome to the show, Michele.

Thanks for having me.

Michele, well, you’re brave. I have to tell you, I don’t know if I would go on a cruise with the book with that title and that jacket. You’re brave.

You know, it’s a beautiful cover too, because there’s so much empathy with the man and the woman. You have a beautiful picture on the cover. Anyway, go out and see it if you’re listening to this. It’s a wonderful book. Tell me, what is a sex-starved marriage? I mean, that resonated with me right away. As a therapist, I can think of so many of the couples I work with that are sex-starved, but that’s a wonderful term.

Well, a sex-starved marriage is one where one spouse is desperately longing for more touch, more physical closeness, more sexuality, and the other spouse, for a variety of reasons, isn’t interested and thinks to him or herself, "So what’s the big deal? It’s just about sex." But to the spouse yearning for more touch, it’s huge because it’s about feeling wanted. It’s about feeling masculine if I’m a man, feminine if I’m a woman. It’s about feeling whole. It’s about feeling connected. And when two people have this great misunderstanding between them, what often happens is that intimacy on all levels tends to drop out of the relationship. They stop spending time together, they stop doing things together, they stop laughing at each other’s jokes, they don’t make eye contact with one another anymore, they stop being friends. And when that happens, it truly puts the marriage at risk of infidelity and divorce. The good news is that there are many things people can do to feed their sex-starved marriage and to bring back the closeness, both physically and emotionally.

Here’s one quote that I want to read. This is a quote from your book, The Sex-Starved Marriage: "I am convinced that one of the grossest misunderstandings about sex is the belief many women have that men desire sex because they just want, or better yet, need, a physical release. It is true that men—and some women—love an occasional quickie without much emotional hoopla. However, I’ve been privileged to hear men describe the way they really feel when their wives aren’t interested, and if you’ve assumed your husband wants sex just to get off, what I’ve heard will undoubtedly surprise you." Tell us some of the things you’ve heard, Michele.

Well, it’s easy for me to do that because I’ll tell you about a couple I had in here a few weeks ago. A couple had been married for 15 years, and they were trying to fine-tune their marriage. And at one point, the husband, who was this very soft-spoken, gentle kind of guy, said, "You know, there really is only a two-hour window of opportunity on Friday nights between 10 and 12 where she might be interested in having sex, so at all other times, I don’t even bother approaching her." And I looked over at her, and she was chuckling, and she said, "You know, he’s absolutely right. That’s it. Friday nights, that’s it." And without chuckling, I turned back to him, and I said, "Tell me, what’s that like for you? What has that been like for you?" And for the first time in their marriage, he took a deep breath, and he looked at her, and he said, "You know, when I reach out for you and you’re not there for me, all I can tell you is that…"

Hey, I got to interrupt this because we’ve got to pay some bills. Thirty seconds, that’s it. A very quick ad, and then Alan will be back.

Romance. Oh, I wish guys knew more about what we want from a relationship. Boy, I wish I knew more about what I want. Where’s that ad I saw? Here it is: The Selfish Path to Romance, a serious romance guidebook. Download chapter one for free at SelfishRomance.com and buy it at Amazon.com. Hmm, The Selfish Path to Romance. That is interesting.

For the first time in their marriage, he took a deep breath, and he looked at her, and he said, "You know, when I reach out for you and you’re not there for me, all I can tell you is that it makes me think that you don’t love me in the way that you used to when we got together. It makes me feel unattractive, and I feel like I’m not a man because I can’t really please you. And then when you go to sleep and I hear your breathing, and I’m lying there staring up at the ceiling, there is no lonelier feeling in the world than just lying there in bed next to you. I feel so lonely in this marriage." And to this woman’s credit—I give her so much credit—as he spoke, her eyes filled with tears, and she reached out and grabbed his hand. And what she said to him was pretty amazing. She said, "You know, during all these years, whenever you touch me, what I do is I think to myself, 'Am I in the mood? Am I not in the mood?' I never—not once—have thought about what it’s like to be you and be in your shoes." And she said, "I am so, so sorry." So she cried, and he cried. And although I’ve been at this for more years than I can count, I have to tell you that I cried as well. It was like a Kleenex fest. And you know, the truth is, I would be out of a job—and so would you—if more couples could have the kind of empathy that this woman exhibited in terms of really trying to understand their spouse’s point of view, their spouse’s feelings. That often doesn’t happen in a sex-starved marriage because both people are intent on blaming the other person for being wrong, instead of finding solutions where they can meet in the middle.

So it’s awful when you talk about the grossest error, the grossest misunderstanding: a woman thinking that it’s just a biological itch, that this guy is just nagging me like he’s scratching his shoulder all the time, and the man really wanting the tenderness and the closeness that the woman wants too.

You bet. By the way, it’s kind of tricky here because, although we’re talking here about a man and a woman, in terms of the man wanting more sexuality, so often in my practice these days, it’s just the opposite, where the woman is the one yearning for more touch and more physical closeness, and the guy has shut down. And not just because of physical problems or sexual performance problems, but because the guy has emotional issues, just like women do. The point, though, is whether it’s a man or a woman, to assume that your spouse wants sex just so that they can have an orgasm is a gross misunderstanding. Every person has a different love language, so to speak. For some people, you feel close to another because you have conversations—deep, meaningful conversations. For others, it’s about spending time together. For yet others, it’s through touch. And unless you are going to be close physically, you’re not going to feel connected. And the key to making marriages work isn’t trying to get your spouse to see your way of doing things, but it’s truly trying to understand your spouse’s love language and express love in a language that’s familiar to your spouse. And the good news about that is that in good marriages, it’s really based on mutual caretaking. When you stretch yourself outside your comfort zone to reach inside your spouse’s world, almost always it’s reciprocal.

And that’s wonderful. So there is hope for people who feel that they’ve gone for years, or maybe months or years, or even a decade or so, that if they could open up and break the ice, if they could melt the ice and find some new ways to communicate, that they could rebuild their relationship again.

I see it happen all the time.

Okay, well, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. This is Michele Weiner-Davis, and she’s the author of The Sex-Starved Marriage: Boosting Your Marriage Libido, A Couple’s Guide.

It is a fabulous book. It’s a must-read for both men and women. Thank you so much for joining us today, Michele.

Thanks for having me.

And there are wonderful tips that she’ll give you in this book. And I’ll give you just some teasers: the Nike solution—just do it; embers versus fireworks—you don’t expect fireworks all the time in romance. Expect some joy, some embers, some subtle urges. Act as if. The seesaw effect. And I won’t tell you what those are. You can get the book and read it.

For more Dr. Kenner podcasts, go to DrKenner.com and please listen to this ad.

Here’s an excerpt from The Selfish Path to Romance, the serious romance guidebook by clinical psychologist Dr. Ellen Kenner and co-author Dr. Edwin Locke:

When you fall in love, you fall in love with the whole person—body and soul—which means body and mind together. So it’s legitimate to care how your partner looks and how you look to your partner. If you have an overweight partner, carefully encourage a change to a healthy diet and exercise without bullying, belittling, or threatening. Show gentle and supportive appreciation when your partner takes any step in the direction of better health. Know that overeating can have psychological implications. It’s often used to relieve feelings of anxiety and stress and sometimes to avoid intimacy. Resolving such problems may require the help of professionals.

You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at Amazon.com.