Intimacy & Desire: Awaken the Passion in Your Relationship Read Online Free PDF

you’re the high desire partner, it’s bewildering to think that the low desire partner always controls sex. You
feel
controlled, so it’s hard to get beyond the picture that your partner is controlling you—and wants to. It’s easy to attribute this to personality traits and motivations you think your mate possesses.
    “But it’s no picnic for the low desire partner. You wonder how you can end up with so much control and responsibility, when you don’t want it.You feel terribly burdened, and you want to be rid of it. How can you be so powerful and destructive
and
so defective or inadequate at the same time? How can you do such terrible things to your partner?!”
    Connie started crying. “That’s right. That’s how I feel. I feel so mean and withholding, when sometimes all I want is to feel like I belong to
me
!”
•
Cutting through psychobabble
     
    Contrary to stereotypes that low desire partners are “controlling bitches”—or “controlling bastards”—who love every minute of it, many LDPs are bewildered and beleaguered by their inevitable control. After all, you control sex. You must be getting something out of it, since you’re doing it. Right?
    Wrong. The misguided psychobabble—“If it’s happening you must secretly want it or be getting something out of it”—will drive you nuts. Get it straight: The LDP controls sex,
whether he or she likes it or not
! The fact that many LDPs eventually
want
to withhold and punish is not necessarily why it starts in the first place. Sometimes it’s the end result rather than the cause of the situation.
    Brett challenged me: “Are you telling me I should see things from Connie’s perspective?”
    “No. See things from your own perspective; just get your perspective straight. Seeing things from your partner’s perspective is no magic solution. If you look at yourself through Connie’s eyes, what do you see?”
    “I’m oversexed.”
    “Are you?”
    “No.”
    “So much for the virtue of seeing things from your partner’s perspective.”
    Brett laughed, breaking the tension in the room.
    “There’s also no virtue in approaching your feelings like infallible truths. You may feel controlled, but that doesn’t mean Connie wants or tries to control you.”
    Brett laughed again, his temper now in check. “Well, if I’m not the sex addict she thinks I am, then maybe Connie isn’t the controlling bitch I keep telling her she is.”
    This was a turning point in our session. Brett and Connie became less defensive and looked at their predicament in a new light: The low desire partner controls sex whether she or he knows it—or wants it—or not.
HOW THE LOW DESIRE PARTNER CONTROLS SEX
     
    But why does the low desire partner inevitably control sex? How could this happen if neither partner wants it? Why can’t you stop this, even if you read this book? How come this happens all around the world?
    Here’s how this works:
1. The high desire partner makes most of, if not all of, the initiations for sex.
2. The low desire partner decides which sexual overtures she or he will respond to.
3. This determines when sex happens. This gives the LDP de facto control of sex, whether she or he wants this or not.
    It’s shockingly simple and blatantly obvious once you see it, but completely invisible until you do. It operates in every single relationship. Its effects are progressive: The LDP’s control extends to where, how, and why sex occurs as well, whether she or he likes it or not. If the HDP proposes changing the frequency, timing, or style of sex, usually all the LDP has to do is hesitate. The HDP backs off, fearing he or she won’t get sex at all.
    This fact of life drives couples wild. When Connie got defensive or anxious—which was often—she adopted a “my way or the highway” attitude. This gave her insecurities and anxieties a stranglehold on their sex life. Connie had tremendous control and at the same time she felt Brett was trying to control