Our Sex Life is a Disaster

What It Covers

Two women in a six-year relationship seek help for their sexual impasse eight months into pregnancy. Their pattern involves one partner approaching while the other tries too hard to get it right, leading to three-hour emotional conversations that restore closeness but kill erotic connection. Esther Perel addresses how excessive emotional caretaking stifles desire.

Key Questions Answered

• •Marital formality versus differentiation: When partners experience different life events like IVF and pregnancy, they often become overly polite and careful with each other, creating distance while trying to be kind. The challenge involves maintaining separate experiences without translating difference into loneliness or isolation, staying connected to the partner while remaining connected to oneself.
• •Caretaking blocks erotic energy: When emotional responsibility and caretaking enter sexual encounters, they prevent the playfulness and surrender required for desire. Partners cannot simultaneously dig psychologically and maintain erotic connection. All heavy conversations must happen before, after, or separate from intimate moments, never during them, even if stopping requires putting on music or doing breathing exercises.
• •The trying problem: When one partner tries to get sex right, their touch becomes hesitant and disconnected from their own pleasure. The other partner senses this lack of genuine desire, creating a cycle where increased effort produces decreased connection. Authentic presence matters more than technical correctness, requiring the trying partner to stop monitoring and reconnect with their own sensations.
• •Seven sexual verbs framework: Relationships require balance across asking, giving, receiving, taking, sharing, playing, and refusing. Each person should identify which verbs come easily and which need practice. Receiving proves hardest for many people sexually, especially those with negative body image, who personalize any imperfect touch as confirmation of unworthiness rather than simple miscommunication.
• •Power dynamics through resistance: The physical exercise of leading while the partner collaborates, resists, or goes passive reveals relationship patterns. Resistance creates playful tension and energy, requiring both people to show up with strength. Passivity kills engagement because pulling dead weight offers no fun. Sexual surrender requires experiencing the partner's sturdiness, making mutual strength essential for mutual letting go.