Aside from general stress and finding alone time, this sexual conundrum is even more complex.
“While we want security and attachment, these traits will not breed that dopamine- producing arousal we’re looking for,” said Alexandra Katehakis, MFT, the founder and clinical director of the Center for Healthy Sex in Los Angeles.
World renowned psychotherapist and relationship expert Esther Perel, in her bestselling 2009 book Mating in Captivity, writes that this paradox can be enough to spell disaster for erotic desire, especially, she says, because neediness is a powerful anti-aphrodisiac.
“For some of us, love and desire are inseparable. But for many others, emotional intimacy inhibits erotic expression,” she writes. “The caring, protective elements that foster love often block the unselfconsciousness that fuels erotic pleasure.”
Other seemingly innocuous habits, like addressing your partner as “mama” because of the kids, can also have you unknowingly zapping desire.
Fostering Imagination
The sigh-of-relief in all this is that there is PLENTY you can do to cultivate desire in your relationship, and, as Perel said in her TED talk “The secret to desire in long-term relationships,” couples who understand desire in their relationship can easily resurrect it when they need to.
The key to maintaining desire, she writes, is to find a way to juggle our conflicting needs by “introducing risk to safety, mystery to the familiar, and novelty to the enduring.”
Experts agree that a crucial ingredient is imagination. One of the best ways to re-engage the imagination may seem a little counterintuitive in our romance-obsessed culture and that way is through separateness. Stemming from Perel’s work, Herzog said she uses this concept with her clients all the time.
“It’s the idea of creating erotic space,” Herzog said. “If you’re with someone all the time and you do everything together, it doesn’t create the chance of missing someone, and I think that it’s so important.”