Too much harmony: when never fighting kills desire

Italian or Thai? “Whatever you like.” Her mother is coming for three weeks? “Sure, fine by me.” Ben and his girlfriend never fight. Friends call them two peas in a pod. Only in bed, it has been quiet for months. Many couples know this and don’t understand it: everything is fine, isn’t it? That is exactly where the problem can lie. Too much harmony protects you from arguments, but it can also wear away what desire needs: two different people.

The paradox: closeness is not the same as desire

The Belgian-American couples therapist Esther Perel described this paradox in her book Mating in Captivity: love wants closeness, security and reliability. Desire, by contrast, lives on curiosity, novelty and a bit of distance. The very things we look for in a committed relationship, comfort and constancy, can make desire fade over time¹. Perel puts it in one image: fire needs air.

Research supports this observation. The psychologists Karen Sims and Marta Meana (University of Nevada) interviewed women whose desire had clearly declined in their marriage. Three reasons came up again and again: a relationship that had become an institution, over-familiarity, and roles with no room left for eroticism. In the women’s explanations, relationship problems played a smaller part than these dynamics⁴. People who feel “more like siblings” are often describing exactly this.

Differentiation: being close and staying two

The American psychologist and sex therapist David Schnarch brought the concept of differentiation from Murray Bowen’s family therapy into couples and sex therapy. It means the ability to be very close to your partner and still remain your own person: with your own opinions, your own wishes and an inner footing that doesn’t depend on the other always agreeing. For Schnarch, desire in long-term relationships is less a question of technique than of this maturity².

A research team led by Luana Cunha Ferreira (University of Lisbon) and Peter Fraenkel (City University of New York) interviewed 33 couples in depth. High desire was linked to change and autonomy, meaning interests and space of one’s own. Conflict and the strain of children, by contrast, went with less desire. Couples who kept their desire alive deliberately kept something of their own, invested in a positive connection and stayed true to themselves³. Importantly, then, more fighting is not the answer. It is about remaining a counterpart.

What sits underneath, unconsciously

Why do some couples give up so much of themselves? The Swiss psychiatrist and couples therapist Jürg Willi coined the term collusion for this: an unconscious interplay in which both partners share the same deep fear and help each other not to feel it. One of the forms he describes is love as complete oneness. The harmony promises both of them security and at the same time keeps the fear in check⁷.

The partners themselves are not aware of this fear. Nobody thinks: “I adapt because I’m afraid of losing you.” You simply feel good when everything fits and uneasy when it grates. Read psychodynamically, the hidden equation often sounds like this: if we’re different, we’ll lose each other. Sometimes it comes from childhood, for example when a child experienced arguments between their parents as threatening and learned: if you want nothing, there is peace.

The price is high. Every swallowed no lands somewhere, often as a quiet resentment you don’t even notice. And someone who never shows their own wishes can’t show desire either. The Heidelberg sex therapist Ulrich Clement therefore sees a lack of desire not as a defect but as an expression of the relationship dynamic. In his systemic sex therapy, he invites couples to find out what each of them really wants instead of just functioning⁸. How hidden benefits keep such patterns stable is explained in Hidden benefits.

Four inner patterns behind too much harmony

The German OPD conflict model describes basic inner conflicts that show up again and again in relationships⁹. In our psychodynamic reading, couples who merge too much usually involve four of them. In MindMotion they are called patterns:

• Closeness & Space (OPD: individuation versus dependence): every path of your own feels like a step away from the other.
• Fit In & Take Charge (submission versus control): friction feels dangerous, so wishes and anger get swallowed. More in Learning to say no.
• Being Enough (self-worth conflict): only those who fit are loved. Your own wishes, especially sexual ones, quickly feel like too much. See Self-worth.
• Who Am I Here? (identity conflict): your own outline blurs into the “we” until you hardly know what you want yourself.

Such patterns often start in the family you grew up in. People who never really separated from their parents sometimes look for the same tight bond in a partner, see Enmeshed with your parents.

So is never fighting bad?

Not necessarily. After decades of research, the American couples researcher John Gottman distinguishes three kinds of stable couples: validating, volatile and conflict-avoiding. Couples who mostly sidestep arguments and stress what they share can be content and stable too⁶. Harmony in itself is not the problem.

It becomes one when it is only a façade, because one or both partners no longer show themselves. The social psychologists Gurit Birnbaum (Reichman University) and Harry Reis (University of Rochester) showed that closeness can indeed spark desire: when people feel their partner responds to them and sees them as special, their desire rises⁵. Closeness that perceives the other as a person in their own right feeds desire. Closeness that flattens everything individual starves it.

One especially common façade has its own sentence: “I’m fine.” In her classic The Dance of Anger, the American psychologist Harriet Lerner describes anger as a signal: it shows that something important has been hurt or that a wish of your own is being neglected. If you learned early on that anger endangers the relationship, you swallow this signal. That does not make it go away. It shows up indirectly, in slammed cupboard doors, in silence, in withdrawal¹⁰. John Gottman calls shutting down during conflict “stonewalling”: you withdraw, close off and stop responding. He counts it among the four patterns that strain relationships the most¹¹. Read psychodynamically, there is often an unconscious equation from childhood behind it: anger means I’ll lose you. If you are not allowed to show your anger, you shut down inside, and that is often felt first in bed.

Bringing more “me” into the “we”

Distance can be practised without losing closeness. A few small steps many couples find helpful:

• Say what you want, even small things: the restaurant, the film, the Saturday. Saying “I want” in small things makes it easier in bed.
• Keep something of your own: friends, hobbies, evenings just for you. And tell your partner about them afterwards, because that makes them curious.
• See the other anew: watch them doing something they are good at, at work, in sport, among friends. Desire often arises when you look from a little distance.
• Voice annoyance early and kindly, before it settles as resentment: “That bothered me, I just want you to know.”
• Talk about desire without blame. How that works and which patterns put the brakes on desire is described in Sexuality in relationships.

How MindMotion picks this up

MindMotion is not therapy and doesn’t offer it. The app is a tool for psychological self-reflection, closer to coaching. In the Mind-Check you start from a concrete scene, such as the last evening you said “fine by me” although you wanted something else. Step by step you look at what you wished for, what you feared and where you know it from. At the end there is a small plan for showing a bit more “me” next time. Start the Mind-Check, it works without signing up. More mini stories about relationships are waiting in the video blog, for example on jealousy or on always falling for the same type.

Frequently asked questions