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You know what one of the most common patterns I see is? A spouse trying so hard to fix their sexual relationship that they actually make it worse. They’re reading books, listening to podcasts, bringing up conversations, suggesting date nights – all with this underlying energy of “please change so I can feel better.” And their partner can feel that pressure from a mile away.

I had a client – let’s call him Victor – who came to me completely exhausted. He’d been the higher desire spouse for years, and he’d tried everything. He initiated regularly, planned romantic evenings, sent his wife articles about the benefits of sex, even scheduled a weekend getaway hoping it would “reset” things. But nothing changed. If anything, she seemed to retreat more. He told me, “I feel like I’m doing all this work and she’s just…not showing up.”

When I asked him what happened when he initiated, he said she’d often go along with it, but he could tell her heart wasn’t in it. And that felt worse than rejection. He was starting to resent her, and she was starting to avoid him. The more he pursued, the more she withdrew. Classic pursuer-distancer dynamic.

When I dug deeper with Victor, asking him what he was really hoping would happen if Rachel changed, he was honest: “I want her to want me so I can stop feeling rejected. So I can stop lying awake wondering if she even finds me attractive anymore. So I can feel secure in our marriage again.”

And that’s the truth for most of us, isn’t it? We want our spouse to change so WE can feel better. So we can stop feeling anxious, rejected, unwanted, lonely. We want them to desire us so we don’t have to sit with these uncomfortable feelings anymore.

That’s completely normal. Completely human. And completely counterproductive.

Because when you’re trying to get your spouse to change so you can feel better, you’re essentially asking them to manage your emotional state. You’re making their sexuality about your anxiety. And your spouse can feel that. They can feel that every time you initiate, you’re not just wanting to connect with them – you’re wanting them to fix how you feel about yourself.

Victor realized this when I asked him, “When you initiate sex with Rachel, are you doing it because you want to be close to her, or because you need her to prove something to you?” He sat with that for a minute and then said, “Both, I guess. But honestly? Lately it’s been more about needing proof that she still loves me.”

That’s the pressure. That’s what Rachel was feeling every time Victor approached her. It wasn’t just “does he want to have sex?” It was “he needs me to make him feel better about himself, about us, about everything. And if I say no or if I’m not enthusiastic enough, I’m going to hurt him.”

No wonder she withdrew.

And there’s another layer to this that’s uncomfortable but important: when your partner is coming to you needing validation, needing you to prove their worth, needing you to manage their anxiety – that’s not attractive. It just isn’t.

Desire doesn’t grow in the presence of neediness. It grows in the presence of confidence, security, and someone who’s whole on their own. When Victor approached Rachel with all that unspoken need underneath the surface – “please want me so I can feel okay about myself” – she wasn’t feeling drawn to him. She was feeling the weight of his emotional dependency.

Rachel told me, “I love my husband, but when he’d initiate sex, I could feel this desperate energy coming off him. Like he needed me to respond a certain way to prove something. And that made me want to pull away, not lean in.”

This is one of those hard truths about relationships: the more you need your spouse to change so you can feel secure, the less attractive you become to them. Not because you’re a bad person, but because attraction requires a certain amount of independence and emotional self-sufficiency. We’re drawn to people who want us but don’t need us to complete them.

The irony is that the more we need our spouse to change so we can feel better, the more pressure we create. And the more pressure we create, the more they resist. It’s like trying to force someone to relax – the harder you push, the more tense they become.

This isn’t just my observation. Research on human psychology shows that we’re hardwired to resist when we feel our autonomy is threatened. When someone tries to control our behavior – even with good intentions – our brains perceive it as a threat to our agency. And we push back, sometimes even doing the opposite of what’s being asked, just to prove we’re still in control of our own choices.

So when Victor kept initiating, kept bringing up articles about the benefits of sex, kept suggesting romantic getaways – all while needing Rachel to respond in a certain way so he could feel better – her brain was registering threat. Not threat to her safety, but threat to her autonomy. And she dug in her heels without even fully realizing why.

Rachel told me later, “I felt like nothing I did was good enough. If I said yes to sex, I had to be enthusiastic enough or Victor would still be disappointed. If I said no, I was the bad guy. Either way, I lost. So I just started avoiding situations where he might initiate.”

This is what happens when we make our spouse responsible for our emotional well-being. They can’t win. And neither can you, because even when they do change their behavior, it doesn’t actually fix the underlying issue – which is that you’re using their desire as evidence of your worth.

So what’s the alternative? How do you create change in your sexual relationship without creating more pressure and resistance?

That’s where I introduced Victor to something I’d recently learned from Mel Robbins’ book “Let Them” – specifically the ABC Loop from Chapter 15. It’s a method for influencing change without creating resistance. And while Robbins applies it to all kinds of relationships, I immediately saw how powerful it could be for sexual relationships.

Before we dive in, I want to give you some context about this book. “Let Them” has received rave reviews – it’s been a bestseller, and it seems revolutionary to a lot of people. And that’s great. I’m genuinely glad it’s helping people.

But I need to be honest with you: I didn’t love it. Most of what Robbins teaches in that book is the same thing I’ve been teaching my clients in coaching for the last eight years. That wasn’t the issue though. The real reason I didn’t connect with it is that it wasn’t relational.

The whole premise is “let them” do whatever they want and “let me” do what I think is best. And sure, that works fine when you’re dealing with strangers or acquaintances or even difficult family members you see occasionally. But how does that work in a marriage? It doesn’t. At least not on its own.

Marriage isn’t about two people living parallel lives where we just “let” each other do whatever and then make our own choices in response. Marriage is about connection, about being in relationship with each other, about actually working through things together. You can’t just “let them” your way out of every marital conflict and call it healthy.

That said, I did find one particular concept helpful – the ABC Loop. Because unlike the broader “Let Them” theory, the ABC Loop is actually designed for relationships. It’s about how you influence someone you’re in ongoing connection with, how you create change without creating resistance. So that’s why I’m passing it on to you today.

The ABC Loop stands for: Apologize and Ask, Back off and observe, Celebrate and model. It’s designed to be repeated – that’s why it’s called a loop. It typically takes at least six months of consistent application to see real change. Which I know sounds like a long time when you’re struggling, but the alternative – continuing to pressure someone – can go on for years without any positive movement.

Let’s break down each step and what it looks like in a marriage.

Apologize and Ask Open-Ended Questions

The first step requires you to take responsibility for any pressure you’ve created. This is hard because when you’re the spouse who wants more physical connection, you probably don’t see yourself as the problem. You’re just trying to save your marriage, right? You have good intentions. You’re reading books, working on yourself, trying to create connection. You’re not trying to hurt your spouse.

But pressure is pressure, even when it comes with good intentions. Even when it comes from a place of hurt or longing. Even when you’re genuinely trying to make things better. Your spouse doesn’t experience your intentions – they experience the pressure.

So Victor sat down with his wife Rachel one evening and said something like: “I want to apologize. I realize I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on you around sex. I’ve been keeping track of how often we’re intimate, making comments about our frequency, and I can see now that I’ve been trying to manage your feelings and your desire instead of respecting that those belong to you. I’m sorry.”

Notice he didn’t say “I’m sorry BUT we really do need to work on this.” He didn’t add “I’m sorry BUT you also need to try harder.” Just a clean apology for his part in creating pressure.

Then comes the asking part. This is where curiosity becomes more important than certainty. Most of us think we know exactly what the problem is. We’ve analyzed it, diagnosed it, and come up with solutions. But asking open-ended questions means genuinely being open to answers that might surprise you.

Victor asked Rachel: “What does sexual intimacy mean to you?” And “When do you feel most connected to me?” And “What would help you feel more comfortable with physical closeness?”

He told me her answers surprised him. She said she felt most connected when they were laughing together or working on a project side by side. That sex often felt like one more thing on her to-do list where she was being evaluated on her performance. That she missed just being able to hold him without it turning into an expectation for more.

Those answers gave Victor information he wouldn’t have gotten if he’d kept pushing his own agenda.

Now let me give you an example from the other side. I worked with a woman named Lauren whose husband Bryce was the lower desire spouse. Lauren had been the one pushing for years – initiating, planning, trying to create the “perfect” scenario for intimacy. When she finally asked him what made intimacy difficult, he shared that he felt like she was disappointed in him every time they had sex. That he could see her mentally checking off a box rather than actually being present with him.

That revelation changed everything for Lauren because she hadn’t realized her own frustration was creating the very disconnection she was trying to fix. She thought she was hiding it well, but Bryce could feel every bit of her disappointment radiating off of her.

The apologize and ask step strips away the pretense that you have this all figured out. It creates space for your spouse to be honest without fear of being fixed or changed.

So we’ve covered the first step – apologizing for the pressure you’ve created and asking genuine questions to understand your spouse’s experience. That step begins to shift the dynamic from control to curiosity. But the next step is where most people really struggle.

Back Off and Observe Behavior

This is the hardest step for most people. Backing off feels like giving up. It feels like accepting a sexless marriage. But backing off isn’t giving up – it’s removing the conditions that make authentic connection impossible.

For Victor, this meant no more initiating for a set period of time. No more hints about sex. No more checking the calendar to see how long it had been. No more sending Rachel articles or bringing up conversations about their intimate life. He had to completely release his grip on managing this part of their relationship.

I told him, “You’re going to observe what happens when Rachel has complete freedom – when there’s zero pressure and zero expectation. You’re going to learn something important.”

Now, I need to be honest with you – this step feels terrible at first for the higher desire spouse. Victor emailed me three weeks in and said, “Nothing is happening. She hasn’t initiated once. I feel invisible.” And I wrote back, “Of course nothing’s happening yet. She’s spent years learning that physical affection leads to pressure for sex. She needs time to trust that you’ve actually changed the dynamic.”

But backing off is also hard for the lower desire partner in a different way. When Rachel realized Victor had genuinely stopped pursuing her, she told me she felt relief at first – but then confusion. She said, “I thought I’d feel free, but instead I feel like I don’t know what he wants from me anymore. Like maybe he’s given up on us.”

That’s important to recognize. When someone is used to being pursued – even if they don’t like it, even if they’ve been complaining about the pressure – when they’re suddenly no longer being pursued, it throws them off kilter. It creates its own kind of anxiety.

Rachel had lost something she didn’t even realize she had: a certain power and control in the dynamic. She’d been the one saying no, the one with the upper hand, the one who got to decide when and if sex happened. That gave her control, even if she didn’t consciously want it or enjoy wielding it. When Victor stopped pursuing, she lost that position. She couldn’t say no to something he wasn’t asking for. She couldn’t be the gatekeeper anymore.

And that was disorienting for her. The whole system had to recalibrate.

The back off stage is where you’re essentially creating a controlled experiment. What does your spouse’s natural desire look like when it’s not responding to your anxiety or pressure? What emerges when they feel genuinely safe to want or not want sex without consequences?

Sometimes what emerges is difficult to see. For Victor and Rachel, weeks turned into a couple months with no sexual contact. Victor was devastated. But what he observed during that time was valuable – Rachel seemed lighter, more affectionate, more willing to be physically close in non-sexual ways. She’d cuddle on the couch, hold his hand, kiss him goodbye.

That told him something: she wanted connection, but she’d been avoiding him because she feared those gestures would be interpreted as an invitation for sex. By backing off, he’d created safety for other forms of intimacy to emerge.

The observation part also requires you to look at yourself. What happens to you when you’re not managing your spouse’s sexuality? Where does your anxiety show up?

Victor noticed he’d been using sex as a barometer for the entire health of his marriage. When they weren’t having sex, he catastrophized about their relationship. When they did have sex, he felt relieved for a few days until the anxiety crept back in.

Backing off forced him to find other ways to manage his own emotional state rather than using Rachel’s desire as evidence that everything was okay. He started running again – something he’d let slip over the years. He reconnected with a couple of close friends he’d been neglecting. And we refocused our coaching work together – instead of strategizing about how to improve his sex life, we dug into his insecurity and his need for external validation to feel okay about himself.

He told me, “I realized I’d put all my emotional eggs in one basket – Rachel’s sexual desire for me. When I had to stop checking that basket constantly, I had to figure out who I was and how to feel grounded without that reassurance. It was hard work, but it made me a better husband. And honestly, a more attractive one.”

And for the lower desire spouse, the backing off phase is an opportunity to ask yourself: What do I actually want? Not what does my spouse want from me, but what do I desire when there’s no pressure?

Rachel realized during this phase that she’d been so busy defending against Victor’s expectations that she’d completely lost touch with her own sexuality. When the pressure disappeared, she had to figure out who she was as a sexual person separate from obligation. She told me, “I’d spent so long saying no to him that I didn’t even know what I was saying yes to for myself.”

So you’ve apologized, you’ve asked questions, and you’ve backed off to observe what happens when the pressure is removed. Now comes the part where you actually start showing up differently.

Celebrate Progress While Modeling Change

The third step is where you become the change you want to see. You stop waiting for your spouse to fix things and you start showing up as the partner you want to be.

For Victor, this meant celebrating any movement toward connection, even if it wasn’t explicitly sexual. When Rachel initiated a hug in the kitchen, he received it fully without trying to turn it into more. When she suggested they go for a walk together, he recognized that as her reaching toward him. He thanked her for small gestures of affection.

The celebrating part isn’t manipulative – it’s not “positive reinforcement” like you’d train a dog. It’s genuine appreciation for your spouse when they’re showing up. So many people in struggling sexual relationships have stopped noticing the good because they’re hyper-focused on what’s missing.

The modeling part is crucial too. You can’t expect your spouse to be vulnerable about sex if you’re not vulnerable about other things. You can’t expect them to manage disappointment well if you fall apart every time you don’t get what you want. You can’t expect them to prioritize the relationship if you’re not.

This applies to both spouses. Lauren, the higher desire wife I mentioned earlier, had to model what it looked like to be emotionally regulated when Bryce said no to sex. She had to show him that his “no” wouldn’t destroy her or the relationship. That was hard work for her, but it created safety for Bryce.

And Bryce had to model something too – he had to show up honestly about what he was feeling instead of just going along with sex to keep the peace. When he started saying, “I’m not feeling it tonight, but I’d love to just hold you,” it actually brought them closer than duty sex ever had. Lauren told me, “I finally felt like I was getting the real him instead of someone going through the motions.”

After about four months of consistently practicing the ABC Loop, Victor told me something shifted. Rachel started initiating non-sexual touch more often. She’d reach for his hand while they were watching TV. She’d kiss him longer when he left for work. Then one evening, she initiated sex.

Victor said it felt completely different than before – she was present, engaged, actually wanting to be there. Not performing out of obligation. He told me, “I could tell she wanted to be with me. Not that she felt like she should be with me. There’s a huge difference.”

I asked him what he thought made the difference. He said, “I think she finally believed that I wasn’t going to punish her if she didn’t want sex. That she could say no and I’d be okay. And once she felt that freedom, she actually started wanting to say yes.”

Rachel confirmed this when I talked to her separately. She said, “When Victor stopped pressuring me, I stopped feeling like sex was something I owed him. And when I stopped feeling that obligation, I started to actually feel desire again. It was like this thing that had been buried under all the pressure could finally breathe.”

Now, I need to be clear about something – the ABC Loop isn’t a manipulation technique to get your spouse to want sex. If you’re using it that way, your spouse will sense it. The loop only works when you’re genuinely releasing control and respecting your spouse’s agency.

And sometimes what you discover through this process is that there are deeper issues that need professional help. Some couples find that backing off reveals unprocessed trauma, medical concerns, or relationship wounds that require intervention. But you never would have gotten to that truth if one person had kept pushing and the other had kept withdrawing.

The ABC Loop also helps you answer an important question: What am I willing to live with? When you stop trying to change your spouse and you observe who they actually are, you get to make clear-eyed decisions about your marriage.

Sometimes the loop reveals that your spouse does want sexual connection, they just needed the pressure removed – like with Victor and Rachel. Sometimes it reveals there are solvable problems underneath – communication issues, past hurts, medical concerns. And sometimes it reveals incompatibilities that need honest conversation about what the future looks like.

But what it always does is restore each person’s dignity and agency. Sexual desire cannot exist in an environment of obligation. It cannot survive when one person is managing the other person’s emotions. The ABC Loop creates the conditions for authentic desire to emerge – if it’s going to emerge.

I want to speak specifically to those of you who are the higher desire spouse, because I know this is hard to hear. You’ve probably spent years feeling rejected and lonely. You’ve wondered if your spouse even loves you. You’ve tried everything and nothing has worked. And now I’m telling you to back off completely?

What I’m actually telling you is that your approach hasn’t been working, and continuing it won’t produce different results. The ABC Loop isn’t about giving up – it’s about trying something radically different. It’s about recognizing that your spouse’s sexuality belongs to them, not to you. And that the only way to create genuine intimate connection is to release your grip on trying to control it.

And for those of you who are the lower desire spouse – the one who’s been feeling pressured – the ABC Loop requires something from you too. When your spouse backs off and removes pressure, that’s not permission to check out completely from the relationship. It’s an invitation to explore what you actually want, separate from obligation or duty. What would you desire if you weren’t constantly defending against someone else’s expectations?

Both people have to be willing to show up authentically for this to work.

The beauty of the ABC Loop is that it puts the focus back where it belongs – on what you can control, which is yourself. You can apologize for your part. You can ask genuine questions. You can back off and observe. You can celebrate and model.

And as you do those things consistently over time, you create space for something different to emerge. Not guaranteed, but possible. Which is more than most people have when they’re stuck in the pursue-withdraw cycle.

Alright my friends, that’s all I have for you today. Remember, love is a journey, not a destination. Stay committed, stay passionate, and stay connected. I’ll see you next week…ba-bye.