What is “Sexually Mismatched”? Why is it a terrifying thought? What if the root of the emotional disconnection from your partner is that you are sexually mismatched? You just don’t like the same things, making you desperately unfulfilled, and unable to speak of why? Can that be fixed?
A little background: Working in a sex shop, we frequently hear from people who come in seeking a way to ‘spice things up’, and through further discussion, we discover that the person in the store is really seeking to bridge a gap in sexual preferences with their partner, not libido.
What is the difference? Breaking it down is important, because frequently, that partner is not really there to find a way to have sex more often, but instead to have sex which is more satisfying to them, and having that type of sex more often.
Frequently, but not always, a lack of libido can be caused by a disconnect in sexual preference, and so one partner may avoid the act which the other partner craves. After this type of behavior happens over years, it can feel easier to address the perceived lack of libido, when in fact, there is really a deeper problem which the couple is having problems with: SEXUAL PREFERENCE, and that can be really uncomfortable to address.
Having sex more often will frequently fail to address the issue of two people not liking the same thing.
Many times, couple’s therapy focuses more on how to be respectful of each other’s needs and using love to clear a space to allow the other partner to ‘be themselves’, while not necessarily sharing the joy of that experience with your partner, because you are not really into what they are into. This can be painful to recognize.
Let’s think of it as a sports metaphor: Your man LOVES watching hockey. You simply can’t understand it, but he LOVES it. So, you learn the rules, go with him to the games, and make room for him to love this sport from which you take no pleasure, and you accompany him so that you are supporting your partner and you are ‘doing this together’.
But you really don’t love it.
And he knows you don’t, so you both spend time forcing it and the feelings. Eventually you burn out on trying, buy him a season ticket to go with a friend who likes it as much as he does. Now, even though you are giving and respectful, you are literally not sharing the experience. You never really were: instead, you were simply allowing him the space to enjoy it himself.
That might work for sports, but it has the potential to not work for sexual preferences. If your partner really loves something which might be considered slightly taboo (and many of us do), such as bisexual porn, and you find it hard to even watch, you will not find it titillating to join your partner in enjoying it in a meaningful and connected way if you both know you don’t really like it. If he knows you are faking it just to make him happy, that behavior frequently takes the most important thing he needs from it, away from him: the authentic shared joy of the act. The shared intimacy of an important desire.
So, let’s break it down:
To begin to figure out what is going on in your relationship, it can be helpful to start to see by seeing some of the differences between Libido and Sexual Preferences:
- **Making time for sex as a priority, is Libido.
- **Frequency is Libido.
- **Desire to receive sexual pleasure is Libido.
BUT…
- **The type of porn you like to watch is Sexual Preference.
- **The positions you like are Sexual Preference.
- **The need to be penetrated or touched in certain ways are a Sexual Preference.
- **The desire for taboo interaction is a Sexual Preference.
Natural factors which are in neither category, but which impact sexual satisfaction:
- **How long it takes for you to achieve orgasm.
- **Physical limitations of strength or flexibility.
- **How long of a refractory period you need.
- **Sexual disfunction of a physical nature.
Why is all of this so important to parse through? Because sometimes we are simply and irrevocably mismatched with a partner whom we love but can’t connect with. Often, a partner in relationship distress will use the words “can’t connect with my spouse anymore – they don’t understand me” to describe the situation, but the real question is: did you ever completely connect in the first place?
Did you hide that part of you?
Did your partner know your deepest wishes, sexual proclivities and tastes before you were fully a couple, and down the road towards matrimony, and life-building? Or did you hide that part of yourself, making a choice to give that part of you up, in order to have the other 80% of your relationship work?
Or did you discover something special about yourself during your relationship which you didn’t know was buried in you, and you couldn’t bring yourself to talk about it with your partner?
If you did, there may come a moment decades later, in your disintegrating relationship, in which you ask yourself if this is part of the core problem: your partner doesn’t like the type of intimacy and sexuality that you like.
This is a terrifying question for people to ask themselves. Knowing that your partner might not/does not like those parts of you, can lead to shame, hidden behavior, disconnection because of fear of disapproval, retribution, and other feelings which will make it very difficult for partners to genuinely reconnect and find each other able to meet each other’s intimacy needs.
And now, in a world in which private connections online are readily available, where the ability to explore your desires in earnest is at your fingertips, and the vision of a different life has become a possibility because divorce is no longer such a stigma; the partner who has left important parts of themselves behind, unaddressed and unloved, can finally choose to live their lives in authenticity.
This set of circumstances can be extremely traumatizing, hard to share with your spouse because of the subject matter, and can feel so unfair, especially in a world where there is so much respect blossoming regarding so many shades of sexuality across the spectrum.
Does it feel good? NO! For many people it feels awful! To discover that your daily conflicts with your partner are driven by an underlying unsatisfaction with the (type, not frequency of) intimacy that you are trying to share with them.
You see no path to finding commonality in these desires because your partner simply won’t enjoy or endorse them: that can create a feeling of despondency- a desperation to not live that life anymore, combined with an extreme sense of guilt at having to be the one to decide and speak out loud that the end has come.
Realizing that you are sexually mismatched can be both devastating and liberating. It might feel like a wasted lifetime, but it can also bring relief to understand why couple’s counseling has not worked.
Online articles discuss that many couples don’t make it deeply enough into couple’s therapy to really discuss this level of problem: professionals report that a lot more time up front is spent on trying to figure out how to be more kind and considerate of each other, and work through daily conflict, yet many times people still find it hard to go beyond “my partner doesn’t understand me”, when they are really having a deeper thought inside which they do not feel they can comfortably share.
This can be because issues like sexual preferences are often wrapped up in fear, shame, and judgement which has made one partner feel that they must hide who they really are. So as a result, couples can get caught in a cycle of treating the symptoms, not the root problem: they don’t like the same things sexually.
“Mismatched” means that you are not fully to blame for the inability to save the marriage; the problem was there from the beginning, even if you yourself were unaware of your own needs, and it was never able to be addressed.
You are still responsible for your behavior within the marriage, but your guilt probably should probably not be centered around finally realizing it is not savable, and being brave enough to say so, and ask for a divorce.
Maybe when deciding to partner-up, you were too young to realize that this connection was going to be so important, maybe too hemmed in by societal or religious expectations, or just hopeful that your partner would eventually come around; but these differences might mean that you never had a chance to be fully satisfied with each other.
So why is all this important?
Because going through a divorce is traumatizing, and healing from one as described above can be a daunting task, wrapped up in guilt, shame and pain. But part of it is taking yourself off the hook for the parts of it that you could not have changed, even though you didn’t realize it during the relationship. Part of it is loving who you are now, and making space for your partner to love themselves now too, and giving them the opportunity to find someone who is truly matched with them, so they can be loved fully as well.
These are hard thoughts to have in the middle of a divorce: a life process which has typically been expected to be combative, and with no hope of ever being civil again.
Perhaps under these circumstances, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Perhaps both parties in the couple owe each other compassion as they close the door on the relationship, because being mismatched is a terrible thing for each of them. While they may not have handled it all correctly in the relationship when they didn’t understand it; they both deserve to live their most authentic lives now, filled with love and true intimate connection.
Question: How do I get started exploring with my partner, and discussing things we have not done before?
Answer: There are several ways, but the most important thing is for both partners to feel that they are in a no-judgement zone, accepted for who they are, and open to trying things which may not be part of the standard menu. Even finding new ways to enjoy old acts may be a challenge, and coming up with new approaches can be fun.
Other easy starters include games! Board games like Monogamy are great ways for a long-term couple to begin to revisit some of the topic which they have not talked about for years (if ever!). Additionally, grab some wine and each make a list: things you have never done. Then go over each other’s lists and talk about why you haven’t done them, and maybe open up the discussion to exploring some of them, just to see if they are appealing. Another way is to watch porn together if both partners are willing. Each takes the other on a tour of the clips which get them off the fastest. All of these are ways of communicating, which is the most essential component of authentic discovery between partners.
