Avoiding Sex With Your Partner Is A Way Of Avoiding Something More Painful.

Famous sayings aside, sex is a crucial element in our emotional relationships, and we generally do everything possible to maintain it at a healthy level. We don’t always succeed, and we often end up in so-called ” white ” marriages, in which, however, there is a psychological aspect that is often underestimated and has little to do with the body.

What are “white” marriages?

For our purposes, when we talk about so-called ” white ” marriages, this color refers to a lack of sexual intimacy or absence of sex within the couple. Many factors can affect the sexual well-being of a couple, including the stress we experience in our busy lives, the passage of time, hormonal changes in both men and women, and those that affect the relationships themselves, which sometimes risk slipping into—albeit powerful and profound—forms of friendship.

And let’s be clear, the survival, in some cases, the serenity, of a couple does not necessarily depend on sex: some relationships last for decades without having sexual relations.

As you can read in the book Il piacere mancato, white marriages “are not necessarily the mirror of a pathology or a sexual or relationship disorder; however, to get everything back on track and before it’s too late, it is necessary to restore desire, either physiologically and naturally if the apparent lack of interest is temporary and driven by other problems that lead to seeing sex as the last thing [on one’s mind], or with the help of therapy in the case of a structured problem.”

When avoiding sex with your partner becomes a problem

In many other cases, a lack of sex in a couple creates friction between the two partners, such as in those where the sexual appetites of the partners are not similar, a situation that can lead to rejection and lead to long-term problems.

In some couples, the lack of sex is determined by a pathological fear, a sexual phobia that affects several aspects, including penetration when it is associated with physical pain. A situation that, according to the authors of the aforementioned book, leads to a paradox: sometimes, the more we try to relax, the more we stiffen, which leads to a sexual act that is even more painful than the previous ones.

What prevents a couple from having sex, from a psychological point of view?

Among the methods couples therapists use to rekindle sexual desire, one consists of (re)creating intimacy through simple contact with the other. For some, this technique is useful as a gradual introduction to a body that is not one’s own.

However, as psychotherapist Diane Gleim explains, some couples give up after a couple of attempts, citing a variety of excuses, from being too busy to feeling excessively tired.

The reality is that, simply by touching your partner’s skin, feelings and emotions surface that one would rather avoid, such as shame, anger, and fear. Of these, one is particularly important, according to Gleim: the regret of not having addressed the problem earlier in the relationship, of not having known how to do it, or even of not having been aware of it. This generates a kind of sadness for the time lost with the person to whom we feel connected.

This reaction surprises most couples “because many don’t associate grief and loss with sexuality,” Gleim explains. “These moments between couples are tender; how they handle and support each other during these tender moments has a huge impact on subsequent contact.”

This awakening reminds us how much sexuality has to do with our most emotional and human side, beyond the harmful conditioning that pornography has produced over the years, especially in men. This is also very effectively demonstrated in the film Follemente, where the erotic side, portrayed by Claudio Santamaría, is linked to and conditioned by the other elements of the protagonist’s inner life.

Therefore, the question we should ask ourselves when we live in a “ white ” marriage with which we are not satisfied is whether the “simple” absence of sex is not an excuse to avoid addressing an issue that has become too painful to face and see head-on.