I'm going to talk to you about sex.
To be more precise, the sex-starved marriage.
When I'm done, you'll know three things that you can do
to prevent it from happening in your life.
So first I'd like to tell you a story.
For the last three decades,
I've been specializing in work with 911 couples,
couples who are truly teetering on the brink of divorce.
I resuscitate flat-line relationships.
I try to teach couples what they need to know
to resolve their differences and fall back in love,
and put their kids in bed at night together.
It's not an easy job, but I didn't choose my career,
my career chose me.
You see, I grew up in an incredible family.
Two loving parents who never fought, two great brothers,
a large extended family with whom we spent every weekend
and all of our holidays.
Until one fateful day, I was 16 years old and a senior in high school
and my mom called us all in for a family meeting,
and she proceeded to tell us
that she'd been miserable for 23 years in her marriage
and she was getting a divorce from my father.
No one saw it coming.
I told you, my parents never fought.
I remember the feeling of blood rushing from my body,
thinking, "How can this be happening?
I'm leaving home, and my nest is falling apart."
And that's precisely what happened.
Divorce not only ends a marriage, it dissolves a family.
The sadness about the break up of my family still lingers today.
That's because divorce is forever.
Now, my parents' divorce affected me in a number of ways.
First, it made me incredibly impassioned
about learning everything I possibly could
about how to have a healthy, loving, lasting relationship,
so I could apply it in my own life with my own family,
and my own marriage.
And I'm very proud to say that one of my biggest accomplishments
is my nearly 40-year marriage to my husband, Jim.
And if you knew him, you'd know what an accomplishment this really is.
(Laughter)
The other thing the divorce made me do, is be incredibly impassioned
about teaching what I know to anyone who crosses my path.
Now when I say that, I really mean that.
I'm not just talking about the couples in my practice.
I do some of my best work on airplanes,
or online at Whole Foods,
or as a matter of fact, that's why I'm here right now.
I want to warn you about the inevitable pitfalls
of a sex-starved marriage.
But what is that?
A sex-starved marriage is one where one spouse is desperately longing
for more touch, more physical closeness, more sex, more physical affection,
and the other spouse is thinking, "What is the big deal?
Would you just get a life, it's just sex."
But to the spouse yearning for more sex and more touch, it's a huge deal,
because it really is about feeling wanted, about feeling loved, feeling connected,
about feeling masculine, or feminine and attractive.
When this major disconnect happens, what also happens
is that intimacy on all levels goes right out the door.
They stop sitting next to each other on the couch.
They quit laughing at each others' jokes.
They don't spend time together.
They stop being friends.
And it places the marriage at risk of infidelity and divorce.
Some of the reasons that people have low desire
or an insatiable appetite for sex, are very complicated and deep-seated.
But I'm happy to tell you
that the primary cause for a sex-starved marriage
is also the simplest to solve.
And before I explain that solution, I really want to go on record for saying
that if you're sitting here, thinking low sexual desire is a women's issue,
I want you to think again.
Women do not have a corner on the low libido market.
I'm convinced that low desire in men is one of our very best-kept secrets.
Having said that, I want to also tell you about a little talked about fact,
that in a sex-starved marriage,
the person with the lower sex drive controls the sexual relationship.
When I say that, I don't mean that this person
is intentionally mean-spirited, or unkind, or manipulative.
I just mean, if that person isn't interested in sex,
the partner may as well go take a cold shower,
because it's not going to happen.
I find this really curious on a couple of counts,
because when we think
about how decisions are made in marriage,
we generally think about mutuality:
two people decide when to get married,
whether to have kids, have to raise those kids,
what to do about finances, the in-laws, who is going to do what around the house,
but conspicuously missing from that mix is anything having to do with sex.
What's it like, the nature, the quality, the quantity.
I find this incredible.
I know couples who have been married for 20 to 30 years
who have never spoken about sex.
The other thing that really amazes me, about this unilateral decision making,
is one person decides "no sex", and expects the partner to accept it,
not complain about it, and oh yes, you have to be monogamous.
This is an unworkable arrangement.
Let me tell you about a couple in my practice.
Meet John and Mary. They've been married for 15 years.
John's a real laid back kind of guy, he doesn't like to complain about much,
except in the last 15 minutes of my session with him,
he finally gets up the courage to tell me about something
that had been bothering him for a long, long time:
that there really is only a two-hour window of opportunity,
on Friday nights between 10 and 12, where Mary might be interested in sex,
and he knows not to bother her at any other time.
Like you laughing, I glanced over at Mary, and Mary was chuckling,
because she recognized herself in that description.
John wasn't laughing. He wasn't smiling.
So I said to him, "John, what's this been like for you?"
And he said to me, "I want to talk to Mary."
He turned to her, took a deep breath.
He said, "When I reach out to you in bed, and you're not there for me,
the only thing I ever think about is:
Are you attracted to me anymore? Do you love me like I love you?
Do you want to be with me?
And then when you go to sleep,
and I'm lying next to you and staring up at the ceiling,
all I can think about is: this is the loneliest feeling in the world
lying next to you in bed."
To Mary's credit, her eyes filled up with tears,
and she reached out and grabbed John's hands.
She said, "John, I have to tell you, in all the years we've been married,
I never, not once, thought about what it's like to be you.
I only think about, am I in the mood? Am I not in the mood?'
I'm so, so sorry. I'll do better."
John began to cry.
I began to cry.
For me, it was a magical moment.
Because it was the first time in the history of their marriage
that Mary was stretching outside her comfort zone
to try to understand John's pain, his loneliness, his alienation,
his need to connect with her.
And she promised she would do better.
It was the beginning of a breakthrough for them.
Unfortunately, for so many couples, it doesn't work that way.
In fact, very often, the very thing that couples do
to deal with a sex-starved marriage actually makes things worse.
Let me give you an example.
So he says: "Honey, do you want to put the kids to bed early,
have a glass of wine and fool around?"
And she says: "I have so much on my mind, I'm not relaxed, and I have a headache."
"You were the one to tell me last week that women are great multi taskers.
Can't you have a headache and sex at the same time?"
(Laughter)
"I don't think you're funny. Furthermore, what part of 'no' don't you get?"
"I'm not trying to be funny. I'm furious. We haven't had sex in six weeks.
I hate this relationship. It's just not working."
"You raise your voice, and you talk to me like that,
and then you expect me to want to touch you?
Plus, do you realize for the last two or three weeks
you haven't been home at all?
And when you are home, you don't talk to me,
we don't do things together, you're angry, and you're withdrawn.
I am not going to have sex with you like that."
"I don't want to talk to you anymore. I'm out of here."
What's going on here? I'll tell you what's going on.
In the early stages of dealing with a sex-starved marriage,
the person with higher desire
usually approaches his or her spouse with open-heartedness and vulnerability,
saying things like, "I miss you. I want to have sex with you,"
but when the pleas for connection are met with unresponsiveness, as they often are,
that vulnerability quickly turns into anger and contempt.
Anger is not an aphrodisiac.
Anger leads to sexual withdrawal.
Sexual withdrawal leads to heightened anger.
Heightened anger leads to sexual anorexia.
And on and on.
And then both people wait for the other person to change.
That's how marriages go down the drain.
So what are they supposed to do? Well, here's what they're supposed to do.
He needs to get a grip on his anger,
regardless of whether he feels short-changed or not.
And he needs to spend time with her, and talk to her, be present in her life.
He needs to recognize that those things will turn her on.
And what does she need to do?
Well, despite her feelings,
she needs to adopt the Nike philosophy and just do it.
(Laughter)
Why? For two reasons.
The first is obvious, he'll be happy.
He'll be nicer, he'll be more present.
Mostly, he'll be more grateful.
But there's another reason.
It has nothing to do with him, and it's all about her.
I wish I had a dollar for each time someone in my practice said to me,
"Michelle, I wasn't in the mood for sex when my partner approached me,
but once we got into it, I had a really good time.
I had a great orgasm.
We enjoyed each other.
And then afterwards, we had the best talk that we've had in months."
And when I described that scenario to a couple in my practice,
the husband said, "Yikes, that's my wife.
I wish she would just write it on her hand, 'I like sex',
so she remembers it for the next time.
(Laughter)
There's actually some science to this.
I saw this so often in my practice that I started scouring the research,
and I bumped into the work of Dr. Rosemary Basson.
She took the mystery out of my observations.
The human sexual response cycle is considered to have four stages.
The first is desire.
This means that you can be doing just about anything,
taking a walk, studying for a test, preparing a meal, talking to a friend,
and all of a sudden, you have this random lusty thought
and you start fantasizing about sex.
Second stage is arousal.
You get with your partner, you get physically aroused,
and you feel that sensation inside.
The third stage: orgasm.
Do you need an explanation?
(Laughter)
Fourth stage: resolution, your body goes back to its normal resting state.
Well, apparently, according to Dr. Basson's research,
for millions of people,
stages one, desire and two, arousal are actually reversed.
Their bodies have to be physically stimulated and aroused
in order for their brains to register there is desire.
The desire is there, but it's not the compelling force to initiate sex.
If this sounds like you, or a friend of a friend,
it behooves you to be receptive to your partner's advances,
even from a neutral starting place, because once you get into it,
you're bound to remember: "I like sex."
So, here's the deal.
As human beings, we are hard-wired for connection.
We are learning through groundbreaking research in social neuroscience
that our need to connect with people we love
is more fundamental and more basic than our need for food and shelter.
The opposite is also true: that disconnection hurts.
I mean, get this.
When scientists look into the functional MRIs
of the brains of people who have just experienced a recent divorce
or that are brokenhearted because of a breakup,
the exact same regions of their brains light up
as in the brains of people who are experiencing physical pain.
And the same is not true for other negative emotions,
like sadness, anxiety, and fear.
Just for rejection, rejection is unique.
Rejection hurts.
So when your partner comes over to you and says,
"I'm looking at this amazing sunset, and I want to share it with you,"
or "I just read this incredible article, and I want you to read it,"
or "Can we just turn off our cell phones on Friday nights
so we can spend some time together uninterrupted?"
or "We haven't made love for a while,
I'd love to snuggle in bed and make love to you,"
if we're not interested, if we're not in the mood,
rejection hurts.
So what are we supposed to do?
Well, here are those three lessons I promised in the beginning of my talk.
Number one.
We all have different ways of feeling connected to one another.
We need to know our way, but we have to become experts
in our partner's way of feeling connected to us.
Number two.
If you're with someone who's yearning for more touch,
more physical closeness, and more sex, don't delude yourself into thinking,
"it's just sex, like scratching an itch."
Sex is a powerful way of connecting and bonding with somebody you love.
And number three, when you get your partner's way of connecting to you,
you don't have to fully understand it, you don't have to fully agree with it,
you just have to do it.
And you want to know why?
Two reasons.
From everything I've learned about relationships,
healthy relationships are based on mutual caretaking.
Plus, it's an act of love.
I know that what I'm asking you to do is really challenging
because I'm asking you to put some one else's needs above your own.
But I truly believe that if more of us took to heart the very crucial idea
that we have to take better care of each other,
and that we don't have to be slaves to our own emotions,
then we can make this world a more loving place,
one marriage, one relationship at a time.
People tell me I'm a psychotic optimist.
But I tell them, "That's OK. It's a communicable disease."
Thank you.
(Applause)