Blog Post
Desire Discrepancy
30 January 2026
Desire discrepancy — where one partner wants sex more than the other — is one of the most common issues couples bring to therapy. It's often framed as a problem of mismatched libidos, as if one person has too much appetite and the other too little. But this framing may itself be part of the problem.
High and low libido couples, where there is an apparent disparity of sexual appetite, might be offered a question with a telling parallel. If I asked each of them "what is your taste in music?" I would expect them to give different answers, possibly with a degree of overlap. But if I then asked them "and who likes music more?" they might look at me puzzled, and tell me that's a strange question.
The apparent disparity in appetite probably expresses that the high libido partner has found a way of enjoying sex in the context of their relationship more easily than the low libido partner. One way of thinking about this was expressed beautifully by my first clinical supervisor Richard Newbury (sadly now passed). He remarked: "we have to ask ourselves, what is the sex like that the client with low desire has no interest in?"
Sex is always a negotiation between two erotic sensibilities, and we set couples up to fail if we suggest that there is a natural, best, or most ethically correct way to have sex. If we can live with the discomfort of awkward questions — "how do we fit a sexual vision alongside all the other roles we have for each other, such as co-parent, best friend, business partner?" or even more fundamentally, "what do you actually want from sex?" — then we may find ourselves on more honest, and more enjoyable, ground.
These are subversive questions, because they upset the orthodoxy that they don't — or shouldn't — need to be asked if two people love each other. But desire discrepancy is rarely a story of one person wanting too much and another too little. It is more often a story of two people who haven't yet found a way to want together.
It is also worth noting that desire discrepancy often shifts over time, and not always in the direction couples expect. What looks like a fixed incompatibility is frequently a reflection of circumstances — stress, resentment, routine, unspoken disappointment — rather than a fundamental mismatch. When couples begin to talk honestly about what sex means to each of them, and what they would actually like it to be, the gap often turns out to be narrower than it appeared. That is something therapy can help with.