You know there's a gap between you and your wife when it comes to desire. But have you ever stopped to ask why it's there?

This is Day 2 of the Dealing with Differences in Desires workshop.

I dig into the real dynamics beneath the surface, on both sides. For the lower-desire spouse, we look at things like emotional disconnection, life stress, not actually enjoying sex (more common than most husbands realize), toxic beliefs picked up from purity culture, and the lasting effects of past trauma. For the higher-desire spouse, I get honest about how sex can become a coping mechanism, a substitute for emotional connection, or something shaped by content we've been consuming. None of this is about blame. It's about curiosity.

I also share two frameworks that I think are genuinely game-changing: spontaneous vs. responsive desire, and brakes and accelerators. Understanding these gave me a completely different lens on my own marriage, and I've watched them do the same for the men I work with.

Grab a cup of coffee and let's talk about it.

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Hello.

I am currently in the middle of a four day challenge on helping Catholic husbands deal with differences in desire in their marriages.

I am posting the recordings of my presentations of this challenge on my podcast.

So without further ado, this is day two of the Differences in desires challenge for Catholic husbands.

I hope you enjoy.

So let me give a quick recap of yesterday before we launch into the content and what we're going to talk about in dates from here.

Yesterday we talked about three things, really, like three big things.

And those were first.

First of all, you're not alone in dealing with differences in desire.

This discrepancy is one of the most common struggles in marriage.

So you know, you're not broken, you're not alone.

It's very, very usual and normal negotiating about the frequency, about frequency of baking love.

It's great.

It can get the conversation started, but it won't get you where you really want to be.

It can help manage the tension, but it doesn't really resolve it.

It's still there.

So it's a great first step, but we're going to go deeper today.

And finally, really important, the quality of your sex life reflects the quality of your marriage overall.

And that's really, really critical.

And that's why we, you know, are looking for ways to serve our wives and help them and be, you know, just men of love and service to them.

So today we are going to go a lot deeper.

We're going to ask why, why does the gap exist in your marriage, in our marriages, what actually is going on underneath the surface?

And I think a lot of this will be eye opening for a lot of you.

Before we dig in, I do want to say one thing about how we approach this.

When you start looking at and learning some of the reasons behind the desired differences, it might be tempting to turn it into a finger pointing or blame game.

You might think or see, you know, you might learn one of these dynamics and think, see, that's her problem.

Or perhaps feel defensive if something hits pretty close to home in your own heart.

We're not going to do that.

It's all about curiosity.

It's not about blame.

Both you and your wife, we all, all, all of us, right, we all have understandable reasons for where we are in our relationship, where we are in our level of desire.

I'm going to uncover a lot of common dynamics that affect many people, men and women, but this is by no means a comprehensive list and it's really meant to get you starting to think about these levels of desires in new ways.

And to get curious and start.

Start digging under the surface on your own.

So, again, why are we doing this?

For two main reasons.

First, when we more deeply and more fully understand the reasons for both higher and lower desire, we can stop taking things quite so personally.

Remember, no blame here.

It helps you to know, for example, that your wife is not rejecting you when she declines sex.

Maybe she's dealing with a lot of things.

Our response as husbands should be empathy and compassion and love.

And it can elicit a deeper connection, actually, when we have a deeper understanding of these.

Of these dynamics.

So it helps us to understand some of the dynamics that really are going on.

And rather than filling in a bunch of blanks with assumptions that might not be right.

Right.

She's rejecting me.

Probably she's not.

Second, knowing these dynamics is a key to understanding what we can do about these dynamics.

Right.

So we're going to get into that tomorrow.

But like a doctor, we need to diagnose the issue before we can come up with a cure.

So we're in a diagnosing stage right now.

We can't heal an issue if we can't properly diagnose it.

All right, so I'm going to start off with the lower desire spouse.

And again, this could be both husband or wife.

Let's look at the lower desire side.

For most of you, this is probably where your wife is right now.

But for some of you as well, this might be you.

And remember, I. I've been on both sides of this.

Absolutely.

I've definitely been the lower desire spouse for seasons in my own marriage.

And I say that to sort of help normalize it a little bit.

It is not uncommon.

And you are not less of a man if that is you, despite what our culture might imply.

All right, so what are some common issues that.

That a lower desire spouse faces?

What are common issues that decrease sexual desire?

Uh, we've got several.

Lack of emotional connection.

This is a really big one, and especially for a lot of wives.

Remember what we said yesterday, that sex reflects the relationship.

Right.

The quality of our sex life is a reflection of the quality of our marriage.

And men tend to compartmentalize and women tend to see things more holistically.

For many women and men, if the emotional connection is weak, desire simply doesn't show up.

She's not withholding or punishing you.

Her desire genuinely is tied very closely to how safe, how seen, how connected she feels with her husband.

If the relationship outside the bedroom isn't strong, the relationship inside the bedroom is going to reflect that.

So that's, that's one possibility.

And these aren't exclusive.

Many of these could be operative all at all at the same time, by the way.

Okay, another huge one.

Life stress and busyness.

This is obvious when you say it, but let's say it.

Sometimes the answer really is that she's just really exhausted.

Or maybe if you're the lower desire spouse, you're really exhausted.

That's what happened to me when I was lower desire.

I had a super stressful job, was working a lot of hours, terrible commute.

I was just like fried.

I was toast.

That's real.

She's carrying a lot of mental load.

Many, many wives with the household, managing kids, working, all the things.

Right.

This is especially prevalent with, in marriages with young kids, maybe several young kids.

And yeah, by the time she falls into bed, she's got nothing left.

She's.

She's toast.

So desire and sex requires a certain amount of mental and emotional space.

And even if, and if every square inch of, you know, capacity in her mind or your mind is occupied by stress and to do lists and everything else desired just has nowhere to land.

Okay, so that's another real one.

The next one might be hard to hear, but it's more common than a lot of men realize.

Maybe your wife just doesn't enjoy sex.

Some women have never experienced real pleasure during sex.

Some experience even discomfort or pain.

If sex has mostly been something that she endures rather than enjoys, why would she want more of it?

I mean, just think about it from her perspective.

If every time you did something, it was.

It was unsatisfying at best or uncomfortable or painful at worst, you wouldn't want to do it either.

Right?

So that is a real, a very real dynamic that more women suffer from than is commonly known.

And often their husbands may or may not know it.

So again, getting curious about this, that can be a real eye opener.

Okay, here's another one.

Toxic beliefs about sex.

A lot of.

I think this affects Catholic women particularly, but men as well.

A lot of us have grown up absorbing messages about sex that were rooted more in fear than in truth.

Things like, sex is dirty, good girls don't have sex.

Your body is a source of temptation to men.

Right?

A lot of women can hear those types of messages.

Holy.

My wife Sarah was actually just talking with, with a woman that she was coaching and she said, holy, women just don't desire sex or don't desire pleasure in sex.

The catechism itself says that pleasure in sex is a good thing and spouses do nothing wrong.

When they pursue that pleasure.

Right.

It's totally morally licit.

So these messages get really internalized very deeply.

And they don't just disappear on the wedding night.

Right.

They create shame, guilt, anxiety, an inability to fully receive the gift of sexual intimacy.

It's real, it runs deep.

And it's.

It's really hard to flip a switch from sex is bad and dirty to sex is okay and even good, you know, before marriage and after marriage.

So that's a real.

A real one.

Another one that can be difficult to acknowledge past experiences or even trauma or abuse.

I want to tread very carefully on this one, but I'd be doing everyone a disservice if I didn't name it.

Many women, and men too, carry wounds from past sexual experiences.

Whether that's abuse, assault, or simply a negative experience that left a mark.

These issues can profoundly affect our relationship with sex.

No amount of patience or technique can heal that on its own.

Right.

You need to go a lot deeper.

We're going to talk more about addressing these things tomorrow.

But I do want to say right here that if this describes you or your wife, the past experiences and needing to heal from trauma or abuse or assault or anything of that nature, you or your wife absolutely deserve healing.

And you need to reach out to find competent professionals who can facilitate that healing and help you through it.

Reach out to me individually if you want some guidance.

I or my wife, Sarah, can point people in the right direction.

Okay.

So all of those things are examples of dynamics under the surface that might be affecting a spouse with lower desire, be it a wife or a husband.

Let's move on right now to discuss a higher desire spouse.

So for a lot of you, this is where you are going to live.

I got a couple of comments here about the healing.

Yes, absolutely.

We'll take some additional discussion at the Q and A about that.

It is a very real dynamic and tragic one.

Let's talk about the higher desire spouse.

So for a lot of you, this is going to be where you are, right?

As a man, as a husband, but not always.

When you're the one who wants more, more physical intimacy, it's easy to think.

The issue is simple.

I have a normal, healthy desire for my wife, and the problem is that she's not interested.

We just saw that there can be a lot of issues affecting the lower desire spouse.

Right.

It's probably not that she's not interested in you.

You know, she might have all of these things or any number of those things or other things that I didn't mention.

Going on behind the scenes and beneath the surface.

That's why we're getting curious here today.

But guess what?

There can be issues affecting a higher desire spouse too.

So let's look at some of those.

First one, using sex as a coping mechanism.

This is a big one.

When you've had a stressful day or when you're anxious, when you're feeling disconnected from life, when you're feeling disconnected from your wife, where do.

Where do you go?

For a lot of men, the answer might be sex.

Sex might be one of those few places where you feel relief, comfort, closeness.

Or it might just be a way to, like, literally to blow off some steam, right?

So using sex in that way, can you connected your sexual desire to stress then?

That can absolutely cause a high level of desire.

And it can also start putting pressure on your wife, feeling like she needs to, like, be available in order to help you manage stress.

Right?

All right.

Another one is using sex as a substitute for emotional connection.

This is very somewhat related to what we just talked about.

Many of us men weren't necessarily taught how to connect emotionally well.

We don't necessarily have a good vocabulary for it.

We don't necessarily have a good practice of it.

So sex becomes the way that we know how to feel close to our wives.

But remember what we said yesterday?

Sex is a reflection of our love and our unity.

If we reverse that priority and try to make sex the bridge or the road toward unity, things fall apart when our spouse declines sex.

It feels like a personal rejection because sex was the way that we get close to her.

But sex can't be the glue for our relationship, right?

It's not strong enough to be that glue.

There are so many reasons why sex might not be possible in any given season.

There could be illness.

You could be apart, you could have visitors.

There's nfp.

There's like tons of reasons, right, why we might need to abstain from sex in our marriage for a short period of time or even a longer period of time.

But our marriage still needs to stay strong.

Our emotional connection and our love, our unity, all of that still needs to stay strong, even if sex isn't available to us.

So sex is that reflection.

It can be a deepening, It's a beautiful blessing.

It's a source of grace.

It's all of those things that's all very, very, very good.

But it can't be the source of all of the love and connection and unity.

It has to be a reflection of it.

All, right?

And then finally, another one is unrealistic.

Expectations.

And I'll be direct here.

Our culture, whether it's Hollywood romance novels, even perfume ads or car ads, right.

It's created a completely distorted picture of what sex looks like.

If your expectations for healthy sex were formed by cultural influences, and really it's almost impossible not to be formed in that way to some degree, there's a really good chance that they're, they're a little bit off.

So beyond the general cultural influences, I want to get even more specific.

Pornography specifically is a massively evil force in our world in so many ways.

Priests anecdotally have heard from many, and you probably have too.

They anecdotally report all the time that porn related sins are among the most commonly confessed sins that they hear from men.

This is a huge topic, but suffice it to say for now that the neurological pathways activated by pornography in the brain are uniquely addictive.

And that the consumption of pornography absolutely rewires our expectations for sex and what sex looks like and how frequently and often it happens.

So here's what I want you to see from.

Well, let me back up a little bit.

If porn is an issue for you, you need to take this seriously and you need to break free from it.

Reach out to me for more guidance or resources on this.

I actually have a specific series specifically on pornography and how it rewires the brain and how to rewire it back to normal with the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in a Catholic context.

So if you are interested in that, reach out to me.

So here's, here's like, let me back up here.

Here's what I want you to see.

Overall, we just spent some time understanding the lower desire side.

And you look now we looked at the higher desire side.

And what I hope that you're starting to realize is that this isn't a one sided issue.

Both of you are bringing something to this dynamic.

Whether higher desire or lower desire.

The gap between you isn't because one of you is right and the other one is wrong.

It isn't because you.

It is because in addition to just the natural variance between individual and that does exist.

In addition to that, we all have real stuff going on underneath the surface that's affecting our sexual desire and our desire for unity with each other.

And you know, that's actually really good news because it means there's something there that we can work on, that there is something that we can like grab hold of and we can do something about it.

That's what we're going to get to tomorrow.

What I Want to finish with today is giving you two frameworks that might change the way you think about all of this.

This is one of the most impactful concepts that I teach, and I actually saw someone mention it in the comments.

And that is the difference between spontaneous desire and responsive desire.

So this is.

At least one or.

One or two of you have heard of this before, which is great.

Most of us think that desire is kind of like a light switch.

It's either on or off.

Either want sex or you don't.

And if she doesn't want it, maybe something's wrong, right?

That's not really how desire works for most people, and especially for most women.

There are two types of desire.

One is spontaneous desire.

And this is kind of the form of desire that we're probably most familiar with or what we think about.

It just sort of shows up without any particular decision or mental choice on your part.

Of course, it might be triggered in something.

You might see your wife, maybe she's changing, maybe you think about her, and the desire just sort of flares up naturally almost out of nowhere, or maybe sometimes legitimately out of nowhere, and that's a spontaneous desire.

The other type is responsive desire, and this is different.

It doesn't show up on its own.

It emerges in response to something.

It merges much more slowly.

So it emerges in response to touch, to closeness, to feeling safe, being in the right context.

Someone with responsive desire doesn't walk around thinking about sex all day.

But given the right conditions, desire absolutely does show up.

And it's every bit as real and genuine as spontaneous desire.

So think of it this way.

Spontaneous desire is like the desire shows up and then I choose or not to have sex, right?

Like, I have this desire, and I'm like, oh, yeah, sex sounds good.

Let's go around sex.

Responsive desire.

The choice actually kind of comes first.

Like in responsive desire, I choose to engage in intimacy, to have sex with my spouse, and then I might not actually even feel that much desire or any desire at the start of it.

But as things progress, the desire emerges and comes.

That is a response of desire.

So one of the.

One of the challenges that.

Or the fallacies, I guess, that we think of sometimes is that we have to have desire in order to have sex.

And that's not true.

Like the choice.

And that desire can come in either order.

We can choose to have sex and trust that the desire will follow and it will.

Most of the time, that's a responsive desire.

Or we can have the desire and then choose to have sex based on that desire.

And that's okay too.

That's spontaneous.

So this is really, really huge.

If your wife, gentlemen, has a more responsive desire, which many women do, and many men too, it's not like purely a man woman thing.

It doesn't mean that she doesn't want you.

It means that her desire works differently from.

From a spontaneous one.

And when you understand that and you can work with it instead of against it, that opens up a lot more understanding, empathy, and frankly, a lot more opportunity for uniting physically in sex.

Okay, so that's the first spontaneous versus responsive.

The second idea, which is really complimentary to this, is the idea of brakes and accelerators.

Brakes and accelerators.

So think of desire a bit like a car.

There are certain things that press on the gas, make it go faster, Things that turn her on, turn you on, and things that.

That create the condition for desire.

And then there are things that press the brake, things that shut her down or shut you down.

For most men, when they want sex, they focus mostly on pressing on the gas, right?

The accelerators.

More romance, more compliments, more initiation.

And those things aren't bad.

Those are good.

Those are good things.

But if her brakes are fully engaged, the parking brake is all the way on.

Hate to use that analogy.

Stress, exhaustion, feeling disconnected, unresolved conflicts.

Like some of those things that we talked about earlier.

It doesn't matter how hard you press the gas, the car isn't going anywhere or something isn't going anywhere anytime fast, right?

So sometimes it's just as effective to release the brakes than to step on the gas, right?

There's two levers here that we can use.

Releasing the brakes and stepping on the gas.

And guess what?

If we are really high desire and we know that our spouse.

Let's say it's enough pee, right?

I'm taking a for instance example, right?

Let's say that it's a fertile time for your wife.

And you have both discerned together that now is not the time to welcome a new child into your family.

So you're going to abstain for, you know, however long that is.

A week or two or three.

Well, you can help control.

If you know this about yourself, you can use this knowledge to actively step on the brakes and avoid the accelerators for yourself, right?

And help manage your own desire by really leaning into the brakes and avoiding the accelerators in yourself.

And then when it's.

When it's not fertile time and your wife doesn't necessarily have the same help from the natural hormones, right.

That.

That tend to Help her get in the mood and get ready for sex.

We had this question yesterday after the discussion.

Well, what are her brakes?

What are her accelerators?

Right at this time?

You both, if you're both aware of these things, you can together help press on the accelerators and help remove the brakes.

And even though she's not bad, those hormones kind of helping her, you can, you can intentionally do the things that will help her be more receptive to sexual unity.

All right, so I've just, I've thrown quite a bit at you today.

We talked about higher desire dynamics, lower desire dynamics, responsive desire versus spontaneous desire, brakes and accelerators.

It was a lot.

Maybe you're feeling a little overwhelmed.

Maybe this is all great for you.

Wherever you're at, it's okay.

Here's what I want you to understand.

Each one of these areas goes so much deeper than what I was able to cover here in the last 30 minutes or so.

Toxic beliefs about sex, for example.

That is not a one conversation fix.

That requires a lot of time to understand where those beliefs come from, to uproot them, replace them with something true and life giving.

Same thing with learning to be emotionally present or understanding responsive desire well enough to really shift the dynamic in your marriage.

In Holy Desires, we spend eight weeks going through each one of these dynamics and more.

This week, I'm giving you sort of like the overall map as you, you know, if you will.

In Holy Desires, it's the guided tour with a brotherhood of men walking through it alongside with you.

So.

And if your wife is carrying her own, you know, mental baggage or past experiences, toxic beliefs, whatever it is, right, whatever she's dealing with, whether it's shame, anxiety, past hurt, she's never learned to enjoy it.

My wife Sarah has a program for women, for wives called My Delight that exists in exactly for that.

So I do want you to know that this is like, I tried to make this as valuable as possible, but it's just impossible to say everything that there is to say in four short days.

So there are further resources available for husbands and wives that my wife and I offer.

So let me wrap this all up and bring it all together.

Today was about getting curious about looking underneath the surface and asking what's really going on in my marriage, especially in the area of, you know, sexual desire and differences in those desires.

And here's what we, we discussed.

The higher desire side has its own dynamics.

Coping, emotional substitution expectations.

Your desire for your wife is good.

Her desire for you is good.

But it's worth examining what, what might Be mixed with it and where is it coming from?

The lower desire side has real and understandable reasons as well.

We talked about emotional disconnection, not enjoying sex, toxic beliefs, past wounds, life stress, all of these things.

They're not excuses, they're just the realities that people live with every day, day in and day out.

And they deserve to be acknowledged and in many cases they deserve to be healed.

And then we talked about how desire isn't just a light switch, right?

Responsive desire is real and legitimate just as much as spontaneous desire.

And then understanding the brakes and accelerators gives you the actual leverage, literally like levers to pull to help you shift the dynamics so that you can start to align your levels of desire together.

So the big takeaway here, once you understand that there are real drivers beneath the surface and start to identify them and name them, you can actually do something about them.

This is what enables you to, to get unstuck.

You're not stuck, you're not powerless, nor is your wife, right?

You need, you need this map and you need some guidance perhaps to go through a lot of these things.

So tomorrow we're going to get really practical.

I'm going to give you a few quick wins that directly relate to a lot of these dynamics that we just talked about that you should be able to use more or less right away.

Things that will actually make a difference in the bedroom and outside of it.

That's day three.

And I think that day might be your favorite and it's going to be so much more effective having this as the foundation for it.

But for tonight, I want to give you another very easy quick homework.

So first, reflect something to reflect on.

Which of these dynamics that we talked about today do you most recognize in your marriage, both on your side and on your wife's side?

Again, no judgment, just open, honest curiosity.

What do you think would be the most hits closest to home?

And then also something.

So that's to reflect on and then to do something to do before tomorrow's session to get more practice being curious and empathetic and getting beneath the surface a little bit.

Ask your wife one open ended question about her day and just listen.

If she shares a problem, don't try to fix it.

Don't offer any suggestions, just give her empathy, like don't redirect.

Let me give you an example.

I had a really hard day.

Somebody did something, don't say oh well, you should say oh, that must have been hard.

Tell me about it.

Don't offer any suggestions, just reflect what she might be feeling that must have been difficult or.

Gosh, I'm really proud of you for.

For how you handled that.

That's it.

Just be empathetic and.

And present to her.

So that's it.

One question.

Real listening, and that's all.

So those.

Those are the homework.