Therapists See Couples Make The Same Four Mistakes With Mismatched Libido, Over And Over

If you want to find the most miserable couples in any given year, Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz, medicine professor at the University of Ottawa and intimacy therapist with decades of clinical experience, knows exactly where to look. Valentine’s Day. “It’s the day where I see the most miserable couples, the most distressed couples,” she says. The red roses. The reservation. The prix fixe menu. Two people performing romance while something between them has gone very, very quiet.

The most common reason those couples are sitting in her office? Mismatched libido. The conventional wisdom around it goes something like this: one partner wants more time between the sheets, one partner wants less, and the gap between them is a fundamental incompatibility that can only be managed, never truly fixed. It is a story told so often and with such weary authority that most couples accept it as gospel.

But a growing body of research, and the therapists on the front lines of this particular crisis, are telling a different story. One that is simultaneously more complicated and considerably more hopeful. Because it turns out that what looks like a libido problem might not be a libido problem at all. And what you’ve been told about desire is probably wrong in ways that have been doing damage for years.

Nine leading intimacy therapists and relationship experts agreed to weigh in on what actually goes wrong, what couples keep getting backwards, and what genuinely fulfilling intimacy looks like when you stop trying to negotiate it like a quarterly performance review.