Why Sex Feels So Complicated for Her

"I think I'm just realizing my wife maybe never enjoyed naked fun."

A client said this to me during a drop-in session. And I want to talk about it.

Why that might be. What is not on you to own. What might be on you to explore. And how you can move through it together.

The sandbox

In a lot of my heterosexual couples, I see the same tension.

One partner has easy, unfraught access to this part of them. To them, sex is a sandbox. "Let's go play in the sandbox. The sandbox is fun. It's simple, it's uncomplicated. Why can't we do more of this?"

For the other partner, the reality is quite the opposite. The sandbox feels like a deep, dark hole. One she does not want to walk into. Even if she loves the person inviting her to come play. Even if sometimes it's fun.

I have been there, my friends.

A quick caveat. This is filtered through my own experience. I've struggled with intimacy since my 20s. Not every woman has this experience. Many women have super high libidos and a really great connection with their sexuality. And many women do not, for many, many reasons.

Let's start with the big three.

1. She never really had a relationship with her vagina

Most of what she's heard about her vagina since she was little is tied to pain, negativity, inconvenience and frustration.

We're told our periods are going to hurt. That they suck. That they're something to push through and get over with.

We're told the first time is going to hurt. Expect it. Normalize it.

We're told childbirth is going to hurt. Expect that too.

And this part of our body is hard to access. It's inside. It's dark. It's not like a penis.

So as a baseline, most women in Western society are disconnected from their box. It's something to wrap up, throw in the closet, and just live without or deal with.

When you start having intimacy from there, from not knowing that part of your body, from resenting it for monthly frustration, you're already not at a good starting point.

2. Fertility, birth and postpartum

This one hits especially hard if you have kiddos.

Some of you have gone through infertility. Testing. Poking. Prodding. Injections on the regular. Feeling like there's something wrong with you. Treating intimacy like a highly managed schedule that takes the flirt out of it.

Infertility impacts all partners. Men too. But as the person being poked, prodded, injected and given hormones, it's a particularly challenging journey.

If you already have a negative association with that part of your body, this adds another layer. This part of my body has betrayed me. This part of my body has let me down.

Then there's birth. It can be flawless and chill. It can be highly traumatic.

Then postpartum recovery. And all the worries and stories about loose vaginas and bouncing back.

We haven't even gotten to intimacy yet. And already she may be carrying insecurity, disconnection, even grief and resentment toward this part of her body.

Why I started The Happy Vagina Project

This is why my company started out as The Happy Vagina Project.

I spent my 20s mad at my vagina. At war with her. Hating her. I was constantly at the doctor's with UTIs and bacterial vaginosis. My body was screaming at me, "Pay attention to me!"

Instead of hearing her, I was yelling at her.

When I learned to actually listen to her, things finally started to change.

A big turning point was learning to embrace my cycle. Understanding that I work on a roughly monthly cycle. That I'm almost literally a different person every week of the month. I could fight that. Or I could embrace it and give myself what I need.

"But she used to like sex"

If your partner is on the Merry-Go-Round of Avoidance with you, you might be thinking, "Well, she used to like sex. What's the deal now?"

The honeymoon phase often overrides a lot of the angst we carry about our bodies.

For me, and for a lot of the women I work with, I'd coast through the first six months. Then I'd hit a crash.

Then you add hormones. Babies. Sleeplessness. Stress. Aging bodies. All piled on top of: I already don't have a connection to my sexual self. I don't even know who that is.

It becomes a mountain.

A lot of women also struggle to orgasm because of this. For me, it felt like Sisyphus, doomed to push a rock up a hill forever. I'd get right to the top and could not push it over. The rock would just roll back down.

At a body-based level, that was my nervous system having a meltdown. Too much pleasure. Shut her down.

3. Her history in the bedroom

Some of you are each other's onlys. Together since you were 16 or 20.

For many of you, there was a sexual life, or even just a dating life, before you.

At some point in her life, she's received sexual attention she didn't want. Attention that didn't feel comfortable. She was likely coerced, manipulated, forced or guilted into sex she didn't want. Whether she did that to herself because of the expectation, or it was done to her.

So even if you're the safest, most consensual guy on the planet, her body still has memories. Naked fun? Not safe. Not fun. Not relaxing. Not easy.

Even if that's not what's happening in the moment, it's what comes up in her nervous system.

What's yours to own

You don't have to own her relationship with her body through fertility and pregnancy. You don't even have to own what happened with previous partners.

What you do need to own is two things.

One. If you're a dude in Western society, you have definitely, at least once, pushed, guilted or pressured your partner into intimacy. Or you got into the bedroom, felt she was disconnected, felt she wasn't into it, and kept going because you didn't know what to do.

I'm not saying this to shame you. You did that because you didn't know different. Because that's what was modelled for you. That was the expectation of how to show up as a man.

So your job now is to look back at some of those moments. Think through where you were showing up from. Get some perspective. And learn, so you can act differently from now on.

Two. Become a place where she can heal.

You can keep having sex in a way that perpetuates the cycle. That keeps telling her nervous system naked fun is not safe, not fun, not relaxing, not easy.

Or you can interrupt the pattern. Make intimacy a place where she can release and let go of those negative experiences.

I call this the positive feedback loop. Small experiences where her nervous system builds new evidence and new proof that intimacy can be fun, easy to access and enjoyable.

That's the choice. Keep banging on the door, begging for more, wondering why it's not happening. Or say, "Hey, let's do this differently."

Is it always the easy choice? Not necessarily. Is she going to be hella confused? Yeah.

When he checked in too much

When I met my partner, I was knee-deep in my sex coaching certification.

The first few times we got intimate, he checked in with me a lot. My brain was like, "Dude, we're naked. It's okay. You don't have to keep asking me if I want to do this."

When he behaved in ways I didn't expect, I was confused. Maybe even a little turned off.

It took me a minute to rewire. As someone literally in the middle of consent education.

Then it clicked. It's actually sexy that he's not assuming. Not assuming that because my clothes are off, I'm comfortable. Not assuming my body and my brain are aligned. Not assuming that because I'm participating, my brain is in the same place.

Guys are wired, told and taught to push the envelope.

Girls are taught to hold the gate, and to expect our men to push.

So when there's new behaviour, even the behaviour we both want to get to, it can feel confusing. Jarring. Like, "Oh, you're playing by a new rule book. What is this rule book?"

A night in the Maybe Zone

One night, my body was having a tantrum.

Old me would have powered through. Faked it. Pretended I was okay, just to get it over with and say we did it.

Instead, I told him I was in the Maybe Zone. Maybe I could, maybe I couldn't. Let's start this way.

We started with him going down on me and playing around. Then I got playful and asked him to try a move we hadn't done in a while. It felt kind of weird. So we paused and went slow.

It got a little scientific. Almost anatomical. "Go to the left a little. Try here a little." Then I'm giggling because something made me think of porn. We're talking the whole time.

Far from sexy. But vulnerable. Connected. And we were finding the pleasure.

In the end, my vagina just didn't want to show up that day. Nothing was getting me there. So we called it.

It didn't feel like a failure. No big drama. We started in the Maybe Zone and didn't get past it. We still had fun. We still giggled. We learned a couple of new things to try next time.

That was still a win.

Because he showed up ready to accept the maybe. Open to hearing a no whenever it came. Ending when I asked. Listening to my feedback. Staying open-hearted, giggling with me, staying attuned to me and my body. So my nervous system banked another positive experience.

Intimacy can be fun. Intimacy can be light. Intimacy can be easy. Even with no penetration. Even if we didn't "finish."

Intimacy is a team sport

For a lot of the guys I talk to, it's easy to access that part of you. Easy to know when your ding-dong's ready to go and when it's not.

It can be really hard to wrap your head around the idea that your partner's experience is the exact opposite.

"But it's fun and it feels good. Why wouldn't we do it more often?"

Your partner loves you deeply. But for her, it's not often fun. It's not often easy. It's a mountain her brain has to climb.

I'm not saying she doesn't have work to do. She does. I used to do this work with women alone. "I need to fix me. So my partner can get off my back. So we can stop fighting about this." And I hated that. I'm just going to be honest.

At the end of the day, I can teach her to build a new relationship with her vagina. I can teach her to befriend her body. I can teach her to even let go of some of that old trauma. But if she comes back to the bedroom with you, and you haven't changed, and you're still perpetuating new harms, and you haven't become that safe space where she can heal, it doesn't matter.

Intimacy is a team sport. You both gotta level up. You both have different things to work on. But as a team, we want to create a space where intimacy feels safe, relaxing, calm and fun for everybody.

Hear the whole episode

This post comes from an episode on the Sex After Kids Podcast. Listen to the full episode here.

Want more practical strategies to get off the Merry-Go-Round of Avoidance? Book a Spark Session. In 30 minutes, we'll look at the root causes behind the merry-go-round in your marriage and map your exact steps back to playful and easy connection and sex.