Dear Dr. Queen,

My partner of eleven years and I are having serious sex problems. We have gone to counseling many times (we are currently in Round 8). Our basic problem is disparate sexual needs, wants, and expectations. Partner sex and all that goes with it has always been important to my mental health and happiness. For him that is not so. He is very content with our busy life of two children, home, and full-time jobs. Left to his natural impulses, sex would be an occasional enjoyment (maybe two to three times a month). He mostly says he is too tired when I try to initiate something. He lives an unexamined life, I hyperexamine. His typical response to my many queries on sex and desire is an exasperated "I don’t know." "Intimacy" has become a sad and sore word for both of us.

Our sex life has gone slowly downhill (with occasional bright spots) for ten years. The latest downturn is that he jacks off regularly, but is unable to have sex with me (he goes limp). So now it is three months with no sex and I am totally strung out (can’t sleep, hostile, pathetic, obsessed, insecure, and sad). I think he is really burnt out on me and sex hassles, and has withdrawn to the peace of solo sex with silent, demand-free, pretty Playmates. I feel hurt and rejected. He says he loves me, wants to be together, wants things to get better for me and us. I need someone to help draw out what’s up with him, get us intimate again, figure out what is a reasonable expectation for our sex life, and let’s get to it!

I feel that time is an enemy. Our current state is unnatural and breeds hostility, alienation, hardened hearts, and complacency and makes our platonic, roommate, coparent roles the norm. The passage of time makes our destructive behaviors habitual.

I know masturbation is part of a persons’s sex life. It has always had a place in mine. But playing with myself does not fill the void in our relationship and my well-being. In fact, I think the efficiency and self-sufficiency of solo sex is another foe to our coupling. When couples are in a bad place, masturbation is counter-productive because it reinforces separateness. It is easy and doesn’t have the distractions and glitches of a real partner! I think it makes both of us more impatient, disappointed, nervous, and frustrated with the give and take of partner sex. Playing with yourself takes care of the drive and hunger. I think this is even truer for males (him) than females (me). We need incentive; solo sex is a disincentive. We need connection, touching, intimacy, not just orgasm.

The counselors do help by providing a mediated arena for communication, but what we really need is a sex coach/guide/teacher/ coaxer. Someone hands-on, working with us, giving homework. I have heard of sex surrogates, but that’s not quite what we need. Do you do what I am describing? I cannot find a "sex therapist" (the Web had one licensed practitioner in Monterey!) and I don’t need a bunch of degrees behind the name. Where are smart, knowledgeable, creative people to give less clinical, more real-life help with sex?

I constantly contemplate finding a lover, but that isn’t solving the problem! I want this relationship to work. I love him, I live with him, he is attractive to me, and he’s my husband, for God’s sake! I’m not obsessed with sex (though currently I am obsessing on the lack of it!). I don’t want to divorce. Our life is big and full and busy and good. To destroy all of it because of a bad part of it is selfish, shortsighted, stupid, and immature to me. Help me please! –Twisting in the Wind

Dear Twisting,

First: I’m afraid I don’t do the kind of coaching you describe. However, some Bay Area surrogates do sometimes work with couples. Call San Francisco Sex Information and ask them to provide you with their list of surrogates’ numbers; call around and see whether any of them will work with you (and make sure you feel good about them, based on your phone consultation). You and your partner may have to see a new therapist in order to access the surrogates’ services–the good news is that the therapist will be someone who regularly works with sexual issues. There are many more sex therapists in the area than the one in Monterey–SFSI will also be able to provide you with a listing of some of them. If you have been seeing garden-variety counselors, I urge you to give a sex therapist and/or surrogate a try–desire discrepancy is one of the most common issues brought to sex therapists, and you will likely have better luck with a person who is trained specifically to work with such issues.

Second, just a few impressions. I am guessing you are on target when you say your partner is tired of the emotional stress of dealing with you over this issue, and has withdrawn into masturbation for some peace. It’s my sense that he is overwhelmed and doesn’t know how not to be. It is also my sense that you have so much need tied up in this situation that it is hard for you to give him space to come toward you–and, as you quite rightly note, time tends to turn behaviors into habits.

Instead of turning away from masturbation, see whether you can get him to agree to share it with you, at least part of the time. Hold each other, snuggle, get connected, but do it while one of you masturbates–this may take away the onus of performance and yet give you a lot of what you need from an intimate connection. A sex therapist will likely have other strategies that allow you to find common ground. Best of luck.