Sex Drive

Remember when you first started dating your partner? Remember the emotional and physical excitement you felt? And when you finally went to bed together...well, does the experience still make you blush? Were those your golden days of sex - when lovemaking was energizing, intense and something you couldn`t wait to do?

But now, after five years, a kid, perhaps, and a mortgage, have things changed? Maybe you`ve changed. Maybe your partner is still happy to have sex as often as he shaves, but for you sex has possibly become just one more thing on your to-do list.

If you have sex once a week, heck, even once every two weeks, you`re happy. Well, maybe not so happy. Maybe you`re wondering what is wrong with you that you don`t want to have sex as often as your partner. After all, it`s possible some of your girlfriends complain about just the opposite: that they want to have sex more often than their partners! The ironic thing is that you still like making love. You usually have an orgasm, you always feel more relaxed afterward, and the two of you are definitely closer in the days following.

So what`s going on?

It`s possible you are changing and you and he have some differences. One way to put this into perspective is to think about how you and your partner differ in other ways. He likes to play golf every weekend; you`d rather curl up with a book. You could eat ice cream every night; he`s happy with it once a month. Get the picture? As in many things, you are different when it comes to your individual sex drives.

The question is whether something else might be going on. After all, drive is only part of what comprises desire.

Motivation is the other just-as-important part. Motivation reflects the psychological and interpersonal factors that create a willingness or interest to be sexual with your partner. For instance, some research suggests that when one partner in a relationship has a low sex drive, it could be a way of gaining control in the relationship by unconsciously "withholding" sex. This represents a motive, albeit one against sex. Or it could be a way of demonstrating your unhappiness with the relationship.

In other words, if you are unhappy with your relationship, you have no interest in having sex with someone you are not happy with outside of the bedroom. But say you`re happy in the relationship. Say you really do love your partner, and you really wish that your sex drive were just as...driven. You just don`t have the motivation right now to get it there.