How to Stop Taking Sexual Rejection Personally
If you’re the higher-desire partner, this one’s for you. When your partner says no to sex and you immediately spiral into “they don’t love me,” “I’m undesirable,” or “our relationship is doomed”—you’re making their experience all about you. And while I understand why (sexual rejection hurts), this response creates a massive problem. When you catastrophize […]
Why Obligation Sex Is Harming Your Relationship (And What to Do Instead)
Let me be direct about this: If you’re having obligation sex, you are harming yourself and your relationship. I know that sounds harsh. And I say it with compassion, because I understand why you’re doing it. I’ve been there. You don’t want to disappoint your partner. You don’t want to deal with their hurt feelings […]
100: The 10 biggest mistakes people make with desire discrepancies
Send us Fan Mail This is THE episode to share. After 100 episodes and years of working with couples on mismatched desire, I'm breaking down the 10 mistakes that keep you stuck—from obligation sex and taking rejection personally, to making every touch sexual and believing someone is broken. These patterns make total sense, but they […]
How to Stop Trying to Fix Your Partner and Start Fixing the Dynamic
This is the foundational mistake that underlies almost everything else when it comes to desire discrepancies. When there’s a desire gap in your relationship, it’s incredibly tempting to locate the problem in one person. Usually, it’s the partner who wants less sex who gets labeled as “the problem.” The logic seems obvious: If only […]
Top 10 Mistakes People Make with a Desire Discrepancy . . . (and What to Do Instead)
After years of working with couples on mismatched desire—and recording 100 episodes of my podcast on this exact topic—I’ve noticed something: the same patterns show up over and over again. These aren’t random mistakes. They’re strategies that make perfect sense in the moment. You’re scared. You’re desperate to fix things. You’re using the only tools […]
99: What to do when depression & antidepressants kill your libido: real talk & my story
Send us Fan Mail Depression tanks your libido. Then you finally get help with antidepressants—and your sex drive tanks even more. If this is you, you're not broken. You're dealing with a real, common side effect that nobody wants to talk about. In this episode, I break down the double whammy of depression and SSRIs […]
98: When holiday stress kills desire (your sex life doesn’t need to be a Hallmark movie)
Send us Fan Mail If you're not tearing each other's matching pajamas off for holiday romance, you're not broken – you're normal. The holidays come with dreamy visions of mistletoe magic, but the reality is stress, family drama, overbooked schedules, and exhaustion. In this episode, we tackle: Why holiday pressure kills intimacy The common patterns […]
97: What you’re really working toward with mismatched libidos
Send us Fan Mail Most people think the goal with mismatched libidos is making the lower-desire partner want more of the sex you've been having—or making the higher-desire partner want less. But that's not it. And it wouldn't work anyway. I walk through the actual goals when you're healing a desire gap. They boil down […]
96: You DO have options: what higher-desire partners can actually do
Send us Fan Mail Feeling stuck, powerless, and like your needs don't matter? This episode is for you. A listener wrote: “I feel like you only talk about what the low-libido partner needs. What about me?” He's right—I needed to address this more directly. In this episode, I break down the “power imbalance” myth, clarify […]
95: Why obligation sex destroys desire (and what works better)
Send us Fan Mail You think having sex when you don't really want to will keep your partner happy. But obligation sex actually destroys desire—and doesn't help either of you in the long run. Research shows that when you cross your own boundaries repeatedly this way, your desire drops even further. Resentment builds. And your […]