I hear you. And I want you to know that sentence carries an enormous amount of pain in it. So let’s sit with that for a second before we go anywhere.
What you’re describing lands right in the center of the two most fundamental questions every human being carries in a relationship: Am I enough for you? Are you there for me? Those aren’t just nice questions. Those are the questions our whole attachment system is organized around. Millions of years of biology. And right now, something is telling you the answer to one of those questions might be no.
That’s an incredibly painful place to be.
Here’s what happens next, and I see this pattern constantly. When someone feels undesired by their partner, the almost universal instinct is to make it about a verdict. She has decided something about me. She has looked at me and found me lacking. And once you’re in that story, you’re going to behave in ways that actually make connection harder, not easier.
You’ll either pursue more desperately or you’ll withdraw to protect yourself. Neither works. She feels the desperation as pressure, or she feels the withdrawal as rejection. And she has her own cycle running alongside yours that you probably can’t see yet.
Here’s what I’d want to explore with you if you were sitting across from me: What does her video look like? Because your video started at the moment you noticed the desire dropping away. But her video? I promise you it started somewhere else entirely.
Maybe her video started when she felt invisible during conversations. Or when intimacy became another item on the to-do list instead of genuine connection. Or when she stopped feeling safe to be vulnerable because conflict got too heated too fast.
Women’s desire often works differently than men’s. It’s more like a garden than a light switch. And if the soil conditions aren’t right, nothing grows. That’s not a judgment on you. It’s just information.
The real work isn’t in the verdict about desire. It’s in that shared, painful present moment where you’re both hurting and you’re both looking at each other like the other person is withholding something.
You came here because you love her. Start there. Not with “How do I get her to want me again?” but with “How do we find our way back to each other?” That’s a conversation you can have together, instead of a problem you have to solve alone.
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: Feeling Disconnected from Spouse? What It Means and What to Do
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