WHERE DOES DESIRE GO WHEN LIFE GETS HEAVY?

Where Does Desire Go When Life Gets Heavy?

Reflections on sex, libido and the pressures couples carry, inspired by a conversation on Between Two Beers

A note before you read: this post talks openly about sex and intimacy and draws on an adults-only (18+) podcast episode. It is written for adult readers.

In a nutshell: Stress, exhaustion and money worries are among the biggest drivers of lost desire. Differences in libido are normal, and there is no “right” amount of sex. Everyday affection, honest check-ins and a pause on pressure can bring couples back to each other.

In my work with couples, one sentence arrives more often than almost any other. It usually comes after a long pause, with eyes on the floor: “We just don’t seem to have sex anymore.”

The issue a couple is arguing about is rarely the real issue. Underneath it sits exhaustion, a mortgage, a job that feels uncertain, a baby who won’t sleep, a teenager in crisis, a parent who needs care. Sex is often the first thing to quietly leave the house when life gets heavy.

Melissa Vranjes, a certified holistic sex and relationship coach, joined the Between Two Beers podcast to talk about exactly this, and one of her images has stayed with me. Men, she suggests, are often like a gas hob: turn the knob and it is alight almost at once. Women are often more like an oven: it takes time to heat up.

It’s a generalisation, and plenty of couples are the other way around. These patterns show up in every kind of couple, whatever their gender, and the roles vary. In some relationships it is the woman who wants sex more often, and in others the partners swap over time. What matters is understanding your own pattern together, not whose “type” it is.

Melissa is also clear that there is no such thing as normal. How often a couple has sex is up to them. Some are perfectly happy with once a week, others with once a month. What matters is not matching a number, but whether both people feel connected and satisfied with what they have.

Desire is not a switch

We tend to talk about libido as though it were a fixed trait: you have a high drive or a low one. Sexual health researchers describe something more fluid. Think of desire as having accelerators and brakes. The accelerators are the things that turn us on: touch, novelty, feeling wanted. The brakes are everything that says not now: fatigue, worry, resentment, feeling unsafe or unseen.

Stress is one of the strongest brakes there is. A nervous system that is scanning for threat has little room for pleasure. This is not a character flaw or a sign that the relationship is failing. It is a body doing what bodies do when they are overloaded.

Melissa makes the same point about the early parenting years. Exhaustion is one of desire’s biggest enemies, and it is easy to read a lack of libido as a lack of love when it is often just a lack of sleep.

When money is tight

Money is never just money. In couples’ sessions it turns out to mean security, respect, fairness, freedom and worth. When a couple is under financial strain, one partner may withdraw into worry while the other feels shut out. One may carry the weight of providing and feel like a bank rather than a lover. The other may feel like a burden, or quietly resentful about who spends what.

Those feelings do not stay in the kitchen. Gottman’s research over decades has pointed to the same pattern: couples who feel emotionally safe and connected with each other tend to be more satisfied sexually too. When money conflict goes unspoken or unresolved, the distance spreads to the bedroom.

It’s a discrepancy, not a mismatch

Melissa goes further and questions the word itself. It is not a mismatch, she says, it is a discrepancy: simply a difference, like one of you loving mushrooms and the other hating them. Neither person is broken. You just need to work out how to meet.

Most couples are not perfectly matched. Often one partner experiences spontaneous desire, where wanting arrives first and action follows. The other experiences responsive desire, where the wanting grows after closeness and touch begin. Neither is wrong, but if you don’t know about the difference, it is easy to misread it.

The partner who initiates can feel rejected. The partner who declines can feel pressured and guilty. Before long, each is protecting themselves, and a pursuer-withdrawer cycle sets in. Esther Perel reminds us that desire also needs a little space and mystery. We ask our partner to be our safe harbour and our adventure, and that is a lot to ask of one person on a Tuesday night.

Taking sex off the table

Melissa’s approach for couples caught in that cycle is strikingly simple: take sex off the table for a month. With the pressure gone, the partner who initiates no longer has to risk another rejection, and the partner who declines no longer has to brace for the question. The energy that went into that tug-of-war can go into communication instead, and into what she calls sexual currency.

Sexual currency, as she describes it, is everyday affection that keeps intimacy alive without any expectation of sex: telling your partner they look gorgeous, holding hands, a foot massage or a back rub. It is closeness without intercourse, the chemistry and fun that keeps a couple feeling like lovers as well as housemates and co-parents. When life gets heavy, it is often the first thing we stop spending time on, and a month without the pressure of sex is a chance to build it back up.

As a counsellor, I find this makes good sense. A pause with a purpose removes performance pressure and gives both people room to talk honestly about what they want, what they miss and what is getting in the way. It works best when it is agreed together and framed as a shared experiment, not a punishment or a silent withdrawal.

A pause like this works best in a relationship where both of you feel safe and respected. If sex has become painful, if either of you feels pressured or afraid, or if there is coercion or control, this is not the right tool. Please seek support from a counsellor or your GP. Pain during sex is common and often treatable, and it is worth raising with a doctor.

Lean in and ask

Melissa encourages a weekly relationship check-in. The heart of it is simply to lean in and ask, “I just wanted to check in.” Questions like these open the door:

How do you feel about our sex life? What are some things you’d like to change? Where are you at?

The tone matters as much as the words. Choose a calm moment away from the bedroom, ask out of curiosity rather than defence, and then listen to the answer without fixing or arguing. Many couples find that the question they have been avoiding is the one that brings them closest.

She also talks about choreplay: the idea that sharing the mental load is itself a form of foreplay. When one partner carries most of the invisible work of running a home, it is hard to feel playful. When the load is shared, there is more room for desire.

What tends to help

Talk about the stress before the sex. Gottman’s stress-reducing conversation (about twenty minutes where one person is simply listened to, without advice or fixing) lets you turn toward each other rather than away.

Bring money to the table on purpose. A regular, calm money conversation, not one that happens in the middle of an argument, helps both of you feel like a team facing the problem rather than opponents.

Widen what counts as intimacy. A long hug, a six-second kiss, a hand on the back while you wash up. Affection with no agenda keeps the connection alive and takes the pressure off.

Make sex an invitation, not an obligation. When saying no is safe, saying yes becomes much more likely.

Look after the body. Poor sleep, some medications, hormonal changes, low mood and health conditions all affect libido. If low desire is new or persistent, a visit to your GP is worth it.

Ask for help early. A counsellor can help you talk about things that have become too loaded to raise at home.

A thought on mauri

In te ao Māori, mauri is the life force that animates people and things. When mauri is depleted by worry, overwork and unspoken tension, intimacy suffers along with everything else. Restoring a healthy sex life is rarely about performance or technique. It is about restoring a sense of safety, ease and connection, so that desire has somewhere to land.

If this sounds familiar

If you and your partner have drifted apart and you’re not sure how to find your way back, you don’t have to work it out alone. I offer couples counselling and coaching using the Gottman Method, and I’d love to hear what’s going on for you. Book a free 15-minute chat and we’ll talk through where you’re at and whether working together feels right.

Inspired by Melissa Vranjes, certified holistic sex and relationship coach, on the Between Two Beers podcast: “How Much Sex Should You Actually Be Having? Sex Coach Melissa Vranjes” (an adults-only 18+ episode, published 18 October 2026).