When intimacy becomes the problem

If s*x is struggling in your relationship, “work on your intimacy” might be the wrong advice.

You know the relationship that starts off hot.

Chemistry feels effortless.

You can’t keep your hands off each other.

S*x feels playful, curious, electric.

And then slowly, often without anyone noticing exactly when it changed, the s*x life fades.

The relationship might still be loving. Supportive. Deeply connected. But desire feels harder to access. S*x becomes less frequent, more pressured, or quietly avoided.

Most couples are told that when this happens, they need to work on intimacy. More communication. More emotional vulnerability. More reassurance.

But intimacy and erotic desire don’t grow from the same conditions.

Intimacy creates safety, familiarity, and emotional closeness. Desire often feeds on space, difference, tension, and a sense of discovery.

In the beginning of relationships, there is usually more mystery, more polarity, and more room to imagine and project onto each other. Over time, couples often become experts in caring for each other emotionally, regulating each other, and prioritizing harmony. The bond deepens, but the erotic can quietly lose oxygen.

Not because love is gone.

Because desire needs room to want.

Many couples aren’t s-xually disconnected. They’re over-connected in ways that leave little space for erotic charge.

If this feels familiar, you’re not broken. Most people were never taught how to hold closeness and desire at the same time. So they unconsciously choose safety over aliveness and harmony over truth, and then wonder why s*x begins to feel flat or effortful.

What I often see in my work is not a lack of desire, but a loss of permission. Permission to want what you want, especially when those desires don’t fit the image of what a secure relationship is supposed to look like.

Core erotic desires like wanting to surrender, wanting to be taken, wanting to please, wanting to feel deeply wanted or chosen often get edited out in the name of intimacy. And when those desires go underground, so does erotic energy.

The work I do helps people reconnect with desire without losing emotional connection. We explore core desires somatically, in the body, not just through conversation, and learn how to create closeness without collapsing the tension that keeps desire alive.

You don’t need less intimacy.

You might need a different relationship to it.

And more permission to want.