When sexuality stalls: the inner conflicts behind it and how to resolve them

There is hardly a topic couples keep as quiet about as their sexuality. Yet it is often the most sensitive mirror of a relationship. When desire fades, when one partner pushes and the other backs away, when closeness feels like a duty or the mind won’t switch off, it is rarely only about the moment in the bedroom. Often an inner pattern shows up there that you also know from other areas. This article explains what research knows about sexual difficulties in relationships, which inner conflicts can lie behind them from a psychodynamic point of view, and what helps to resolve them.

More common than you think

The first representative German study on health and sexuality (GeSiD), led by the Hamburg sexual medicine expert Peer Briken, surveyed almost 5,000 people. 45.7% of women and 33.4% of men reported at least one sexual problem in the past year, most often low desire, in women also difficulties with arousal and orgasm, in men with erections. It was really distressing for 17.5% of sexually active women and 13.3% of men¹. So having difficulties is more normal than exceptional. What matters is whether they weigh on you, or on both of you.

Accelerator and brake

A helpful picture comes from the Kinsey Institute in the USA. The sex researchers John Bancroft and Erick Janssen describe the dual control model: sexual response arises from the interplay of two systems, one excitatory and one inhibitory, like an accelerator and a brake. People differ in how easily each responds. A certain amount of brake is healthy and protects us. But when it responds very strongly, for example to stress, worry or shame, their studies link it to sexual difficulties³.

This leads to a surprising thought: if you want more desire, you usually think of the accelerator, of new stimuli, ideas, variety. Often it is more worthwhile to release the brake first. This fits the model of the Canadian physician Rosemary Basson. She described how in long relationships desire is often not spontaneously “there” but only arises once you engage in closeness. So it responds to touch and connection rather than preceding them⁴. Knowing this means you don’t have to wait for the perfect moment, nor feel ashamed of “too little desire”.

What can lie behind it: six inner patterns

In sexuality, very basic wishes meet: being really close and still staying yourself, letting go and staying in control, giving and taking, showing yourself and protecting yourself. These are exactly the tensions described by Operationalised Psychodynamic Diagnosis (OPD), a conflict model developed by German psychotherapy researchers. MindMotion translates these conflicts into everyday patterns. How they arise is explained in Inner conflicts: what they are and how they develop.

The diagram below shows how six of these patterns can show up in sexuality, from the experience earlier on, via the inner sentence, to what you notice today. This is a psychodynamic reading, not a diagnosis. And usually two patterns work together.

Being Enough: when the mind is watching. The American sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson already observed that people with sexual difficulties often watch themselves instead of experiencing. The American psychologist David Barlow studied this experimentally: if you ask yourself during sex whether everything is working, your attention moves away from what arouses you towards the worry. Arousal drops, that confirms the worry, and next time the cycle starts earlier⁵. Shame about your own body works in a similar way: a review of 57 studies by the Dutch psychologists Liesbeth Woertman and Femke van den Brink shows that a negative body image can affect every area of sexuality, mainly through distracting thoughts and self-monitoring⁶. Where this feeling of only being enough through achievement comes from is described in Self-worth: where it comes from and how it shapes our relationships.

Fit In & Take Charge: sex out of duty. The American psychologists Emily Impett, Letitia Anne Peplau and Shelly Gable (University of California) asked young people in steady relationships to note every evening for two weeks why they had sex. When it was about sharing closeness and joy, they were more satisfied on those days. When it was about avoiding conflict or disappointment, they were less satisfied and argued more. Those who more often went along to avoid something were less satisfied with the relationship a month later, and the relationship was more likely to break up⁷. From a conflict perspective, the sentence behind it is often “If I say no, there will be trouble.” The paradoxical result: if you can’t say no, over time you lose your yes too. More on this in Learning to say no.

Taking & Giving: only there for the other person. Some people look after their partner’s desire so naturally that their own hardly features any more. The Heidelberg sex therapist Ulrich Clement describes sexual difficulties as closely linked to giving and taking in a relationship. An imbalance can go in both directions, when one person only gives or only takes¹⁴. Letting yourself be spoiled without immediately giving something back is often real practice for people with this pattern.

Responsibility: when desire feels wrong. Many people learned early on that sexuality is not talked about, or that it is something improper. Such messages live on as guilt. In a Canadian study by the psychologist Jane Woo with Lori Brotto and Boris Gorzalka, stronger sexual guilt in women went along with less desire⁸. It helps to tell the old voice apart from your own values today.

Shine & Step Back: love here, desire there. In 1912, Sigmund Freud described men who cannot desire where they love, and cannot love where they desire. This became the idea of the “Madonna-whore dichotomy”, an oedipal theme in the psychoanalytic tradition. For a long time it was just a theory. In 2018 a team around the Israeli psychologist Orly Bareket and the American social psychologist Peter Glick studied it: men who split women into these two camps were less satisfied in their relationship⁹. The study was small, but it shows that if you separate tenderness and desire inside yourself, it is hard to find both in one person.

Closeness & Space: too close for desire. Many couples wonder: the more familiar we become, the less desire. The American couples and sex therapist David Schnarch made the term differentiation known for this: the ability to stay yourself in closeness. A Portuguese study of 428 people supports the link: those with stronger differentiation reported more sexual desire, more intimacy and more satisfaction in their relationship¹⁰. Desire apparently needs two independent people. On the other side of the pattern is the fear of being left. The Israeli psychologist Gurit Birnbaum showed that people with anxious attachment experience sexuality as more ambivalent, and that every single experience strongly colours the whole relationship. Sex then easily becomes a test of whether you are still loved¹¹.

What happens between two people

Sexual difficulties rarely belong to one person alone. They arise between two. A common pattern: one partner wishes for more, asks more often, feels rejected. The other feels pressure, backs away and feels crowded. Both protect themselves, and in doing so both confirm the other’s fear. This creates a loop for which neither is solely responsible.

Then there is daily life. In a study by the Zurich couples researcher Guy Bodenmann, more everyday stress went along with less sex and lower sexual satisfaction¹². And it helps to take the pressure out of the question “How often is normal?”: in three studies with more than 30,000 people from the USA, more frequent sex went along with more well-being, but only up to about once a week. Beyond that it did not get better, so the number matters less than the quality¹³.

Ulrich Clement offers a relieving thought here: different levels of desire are not a fault that has to be fixed. The question is rather how two different ways of desiring can come into contact with each other. If you don’t try to make the differences disappear, you can talk about them more openly and experience yourself as someone who decides about their own sexuality¹⁴.

How it can be resolved psychologically

The good news first: psychological approaches work. A meta-analysis by Swiss researchers around Simone Frühauf and Jürgen Barth combined 20 randomised studies. Compared with waiting lists, psychological treatments reduced sexual difficulties and increased sexual satisfaction with medium-sized effects. The evidence was strongest for low desire and orgasm difficulties in women¹⁸. Five paths you can also start in everyday life:

1. Take the pressure off. Masters and Johnson developed sensate focus for this: couples touch each other in set steps, at first without a goal and without any expectation of arousal or sex. That way pressure to perform has no chance. The method is still used and developed further in sex therapy today¹⁶.
2. Attention instead of observation. Lori Brotto and Rosemary Basson tested a group programme with mindfulness for women with low desire. After four sessions, desire, arousal and satisfaction had clearly increased compared with a waiting group. The more mindfulness grew, the more desire rose¹⁷. Mindfulness here simply means staying with your attention on what you feel, rather than on judging.
3. Talk about it. A meta-analysis by the team around Allen Mallory at the University of Texas of 48 studies with more than 12,000 people found that couples who talk more about sexuality report better sexuality, especially regarding orgasm and overall. In women it was also linked to more desire. The effects were often small but consistent¹⁵. A good start is not criticism but a wish: “I like it when …”
4. Understand the pattern. This is where the conflict level comes in. Instead of working only on the symptom, you take a closer look at one concrete scene: what did I wish for, what did I fear, how did I protect myself, and where do I know this from? It often turns out that the brake in bed is an old protection that once made sense. How to resolve such conflicts is described in Resolving inner conflicts.
5. Show something of your own and make new experiences. Name a boundary and experience that the closeness stays. Voice a wish and experience that it is welcome. Experiences like these often loosen the old inner sentence more than any insight. Why that is so is explained in New relationship experiences.

When professionals help

If difficulties last, pain is involved or you are stuck as a couple, professional support makes sense and is not a defeat. The first step is your GP, a gynaecologist or a urologist. For the psychological side there is sex therapy and couples therapy. Professional bodies such as the German Society for Sex Research (DGfS) describe qualifications and training in this field. If sexuality is connected with violence, pressure or earlier crossed boundaries, specialised services are the right place. In Germany, the helpline for women affected by violence is available free and anonymously around the clock on 116 016²⁰. Outside Germany, your local health service can point you to similar support.

How MindMotion picks this up

MindMotion starts where this article stops: with your own scene. You choose an area, for example your relationship, and describe a concrete situation in your own words. Then you go inwards step by step, as in the example above: wish, fear, protection and where you know this from. You confirm or discard each link yourself. At the end there is an aha about which pattern might lie behind it, and an if-then plan for the next similar situation. In the weekly check you look at what has changed.

It often turns out that the pattern doesn’t only work in bed, but also at work or in friendships. That is an opportunity: if you change something in one place, you often notice it in others too. How the areas are linked is described in Inner blocks in everyday life. You can try it directly in the app, without signing up.

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