Blog

Today we’re diving into a topic that I get asked about constantly in my coaching practice – and it’s one that affects so many marriages, especially in our faith community.

We’re talking about why women often say no to sex, why they turn it down, reject advances, or just seem completely uninterested. And here’s the thing – I want to challenge something right from the start. The common narrative is often “she just has a low libido” or “she’s just not interested in sex.” But what I’ve discovered through working with hundreds of women is this: it’s usually not that they don’t want sex. It’s that they don’t like the sex they’re having.

Let me say that again because it’s so important: Women aren’t rejecting sex because they don’t want connection and intimacy. They’re rejecting sex because the sexual experiences they’re having aren’t worth saying yes to.

The Real Issue: Sex Isn’t Fun, Free, or Pleasurable

Think about it this way – if every time someone offered you your favorite dessert, but it was stale, flavorless, and left you feeling sick afterward, how eager would you be the next time they offered it? You might start saying, “No thanks, I’m not really a dessert person.” But the truth is, you love dessert – you just don’t love that dessert.

This is what’s happening for so many women in their marriages. Sex has become something they endure rather than enjoy. And when that’s the case, of course they’re going to start avoiding it.

So today, we’re going to explore the real reasons behind sexual rejection, and more importantly, we’re going to help you figure out which of these might be affecting you so we can start making changes.

Reason #1: Sex Has Become an Obligation

Let’s start with one of the biggest culprits – when sex feels like a duty or obligation rather than a choice.

Maybe you’ve heard messages growing up that made sex feel like something you owe your husband. Or perhaps well-meaning advice that positioned sex as your “wifely duty.” When sex becomes about obligation, it loses all its joy and connection.

I had a client – let’s call her Jessica – who told me, “I feel like I have a quota to meet. Like there’s this invisible scoreboard, and if I don’t have sex with my husband X number of times per week, I’m failing as a wife.” Can you imagine trying to enjoy anything under that kind of pressure?

When sex is driven by obligation, there’s no room for desire to show up. You’re not asking yourself, “Do I want this?” You’re asking yourself, “Do I have to do this?” And that completely changes the entire experience.

Reason #2: Lack of Fun and Playfulness

Here’s something that might surprise you – many women have never learned how to be playful in the bedroom. And I don’t mean they don’t know techniques or positions. I mean they’ve never given themselves permission to be silly, to laugh, to explore, to be curious.

Sex, especially in religious communities, can sometimes get so serious and solemn that we forget it’s supposed to be enjoyable. It’s supposed to be one of the most fun things you do with your spouse!

I worked with a couple recently that the wife told me, “I feel like I have to perform perfectly. I can’t make noise, I can’t ask for what I want, I can’t even move too much because what if I look ridiculous?” She had turned sex into this very serious, very controlled experience where there was no room for authentic expression or joy.

Let me pause here because that phrase – “what if I look ridiculous” – is so telling. This fear of looking silly or awkward during sex is absolutely paralyzing for so many women. They’re so worried about how they appear that they can’t relax into the experience.

Where does this come from? Often it’s from what they think their husband expects – maybe based on what he’s learned from pornography. Women worry they need to look and sound like performers – always in control, always making the “right” noises, always moving in ways that look good rather than feel good. They think they need to be constantly “on” and performing rather than just experiencing.

But here’s what I want you to understand – authentic sexual expression is never ridiculous. When you’re genuinely feeling pleasure, when you’re truly present in your body, when you’re expressing what feels good – that’s beautiful. That’s exactly what intimacy is supposed to look like.

The tragedy is that when you’re monitoring how you look, you’re not experiencing how you feel. You’re watching yourself from the outside instead of feeling yourself from the inside. And that kills pleasure faster than almost anything else.

I had another client tell me, “I realized I was having sex with my eyes open the whole time, not because I wanted to connect with my husband, but because I was making sure I didn’t look weird. I was literally policing my own facial expressions during the most intimate moments with my spouse.” Can you imagine how exhausting that would be?

When there’s no playfulness, when there’s no freedom to be imperfect or silly or completely absorbed in pleasure, sex becomes mechanical. And mechanical sex is rarely satisfying sex.

Reason #3: Feelings of Inadequacy and Inferiority

This one breaks my heart because it’s so common. So many women believe they’re “bad at sex” or that they’re disappointing their husband. They’ve internalized messages that they’re not sexy enough, not adventurous enough, not responsive enough.

And let’s be honest – a huge part of this is body image. Women are convinced they need to have the perfect body – the 18-year-old body, one without stretch marks or signs of age or childbirth. They think their husband is looking at them and wishing they looked different, younger, firmer, smaller, bigger – whatever it is they think they’re not.

I remember working with a woman who told me, “I know my husband is just putting up with me. I know he wishes I was different, more like the women in movies or magazines.” But then she added, “I turn the lights off because I don’t want him to see my stretch marks. I hide under the covers. I only let him see me from certain angles.” She had convinced herself that she was the problem, that she was broken somehow, and her body was the evidence.

Another client told me, “I spend the whole time sucking in my stomach and trying to position myself so he can’t see the parts of me I don’t like. How am I supposed to enjoy anything when I’m that focused on hiding myself?”

When you believe you’re inadequate – whether it’s your body, your experience level, or your responses – sex becomes anxiety-provoking rather than pleasure-inducing. You’re so focused on your perceived shortcomings that you can’t relax into the experience. And when you can’t relax, you can’t enjoy it.

You’re not thinking about what feels good. You’re thinking about what looks good, or what you think he wants to see, or how to hide the parts of yourself you’re ashamed of. That’s not intimacy – that’s performance anxiety.

Reason #4: Complete Lack of Freedom

This might be the most important one, and it often underlies all the others. Many women have never experienced sexual freedom – the freedom to express their desires, to say no when they don’t want something, to ask for what they do want, to take up space in their own sexual experience.

Sexual freedom means you get to be an active participant, not just a passive recipient. It means your pleasure matters just as much as your husband’s. It means you can communicate openly about what feels good and what doesn’t.

I worked with a couple where the wife had never, in 15 years of marriage, told her husband what she actually enjoyed. She had convinced herself that sex was about his desires, not hers. When I asked her what she liked, she literally didn’t know because she had never given herself permission to pay attention to her own experience.

Let me explain what I mean by this, because it’s such a common pattern. This woman would have sex, but she was never actually present in her own body during the experience. She was monitoring his reactions, making sure he was satisfied, worrying about whether she was doing things right. She was so focused outward that she never turned her attention inward to notice what felt good to her.

When I asked her specific questions like, “Do you prefer gentle touch or firmer pressure?” or “What kind of movement feels best to you?” she would look at me with genuine confusion. Not because she was shy or embarrassed, but because she had never paid attention to these things. She had trained herself to ignore her own physical responses.

She told me, “I thought being a good wife meant making sure he enjoyed it, and that my job was to respond in ways that made him feel good about himself. I never thought about what I actually wanted or what actually felt good to me.”

This is what happens when we’re taught that selflessness during sex is a virtue. These women have disconnected from their own bodies, their own desires, their own pleasure responses. They’ve become experts at performing enjoyment but strangers to actually experiencing it.

And here’s the thing – when you’re not connected to your own experience, when you don’t know what you like, sex becomes this mysterious thing that either happens to you or doesn’t. You have no agency in it. You can’t communicate about it because you don’t have the information. You can’t ask for what you want because you don’t know what you want.

This ties directly back to that lack of freedom we talked about earlier. How can you have sexual freedom if you don’t even know what your preferences are? How can you make choices about your sexual experience if you’ve never allowed yourself to notice what those choices might be? True sexual freedom requires self-awareness, and self-awareness requires paying attention to your own experience.

No wonder these women start avoiding sex. They’re being asked to participate in something where they’re not actually participants – they’re just supporting actors in their husband’s experience. And nobody wants to keep showing up for a performance where they’re not allowed to have their own experience.

The Problem With How Men Approach Women’s Pleasure

Before we talk about the next reason why women aren’t wanting sex, I need to address something I see a lot that affects this, which is the way men often approach women’s pleasure, which can make everything worse, even when they have good intentions.

First, you have the selfish men who genuinely don’t worry about their wives’ satisfaction. These are the husbands who are focused entirely on their own experience. They might finish and then roll over, or they assume that if they enjoyed it, she must have too. These women learn quickly that sex is about him, not her, so of course they start avoiding it.

But then you have the opposite extreme, and this one surprises people – men who focus so intensely on their wives’ pleasure that it becomes another kind of pressure. These husbands have read all the articles about how important it is to satisfy your wife, and now they’re laser-focused on making her climax or making sure she enjoys every minute.

I had a client tell me, “My husband acts like my orgasm is a reflection of his performance. He gets upset if I don’t climax, and he keeps asking me if it felt good, if he’s doing it right. Now I feel like I have to perform enjoyment to make him feel successful.” That’s not love – that’s ego.

Both of these approaches have the same result – the woman’s authentic experience gets lost. In the first case, it doesn’t matter at all. In the second case, it becomes a performance she has to deliver.

Here’s what makes it even worse – women often feel this enormous pressure to meet their husband’s sexual desires. They’ve been told that men have “needs” that must be met, that it’s their wifely duty to satisfy him. So they show up for sex focused entirely on his experience, his satisfaction, his desires.

When you’re constantly focused on meeting someone else’s desires, you never explore your own. You never discover what feels good to you. You never learn what you like or what you want. And when you don’t know what brings you pleasure, sex becomes something that happens to you rather than something you actively participate in and enjoy.

This creates a cycle where the sex gets worse and worse for her. She doesn’t know what she likes, so she can’t communicate it. He doesn’t know what she likes because she doesn’t know. The sex remains focused on him because that’s the only experience either of them understands. And she starts avoiding it because why would you want more of something that doesn’t feel good?

Reason #5: Fear of Losing Yourself

This one is really important, and it builds on something the renowned sex therapist David Schnarch talked about. He said that we want to belong to ourselves more than we want to belong to someone else. And when you look at all the things we’ve been talking about, you can see how they all lead to the same place – women abandoning themselves during sex.

Think about it. When sex becomes about obligation, you abandon your own desires to fulfill a duty. When you’re worried about looking ridiculous, you abandon your authentic responses to monitor your performance. When you feel inadequate about your body, you abandon being present in your body to hide from it. When you don’t have freedom to express what you want, you abandon your own experience to focus entirely on his.

All of these patterns have one thing in common – they require you to disappear from your own sexual experience. And here’s the thing: we fundamentally don’t want to lose ourselves. It goes against our basic need for autonomy and self-preservation.

I had a client tell me, “I spend the whole time wondering if I’m doing it right, if he’s enjoying it, if I’m taking too long. I’m like a spectator at my own sexual experience.” That’s exactly what I’m talking about – she had learned to completely abandon herself.

When you consistently abandon yourself during sex – whether it’s to perform, to hide, to fulfill obligation, or to please – your brain starts to see sex as a threat to your sense of self. And that’s terrifying. Of course you’re going to start avoiding it. Your psyche is trying to protect your identity, your autonomy, your sense of who you are.

Sex becomes a place where you literally cease to exist as yourself. And nobody wants to go to a place where they have to disappear.

Reason #6: Physical Discomfort or Pain

We can’t talk about this topic without addressing the fact that for many women, sex simply doesn’t feel good physically. Maybe it’s painful, maybe it’s uncomfortable, maybe it just doesn’t create any pleasurable sensations.

Let me be absolutely clear about this: sex is not supposed to be painful or uncomfortable. It is supposed to be pleasurable. If you are experiencing pain or discomfort during sex, that is not normal, and it’s not something you should just accept or push through.

But here’s what’s tragic – many women think this is just how sex is supposed to be for them. They think they’re supposed to grit their teeth and bear it. They don’t realize that sex is supposed to feel good for both partners.

If you’re experiencing these things, you need additional support. You need to talk to a healthcare provider, maybe a pelvic floor therapist, maybe a sex coach or therapist. And you need to stop having sex that is bad. I know that sounds simple, but it’s not always easy when there’s pressure from your spouse or expectations in your marriage.

Here’s the thing – when you continue to have sex that is painful and you push through that pain, it’s another way of abandoning yourself. You’re ignoring your body’s signals, you’re overriding your own needs, you’re sacrificing your wellbeing for someone else’s desires.

Don’t push through the pain, no matter how much your husband wants it. Your body is trying to tell you something important, and you deserve to listen to it. You deserve pleasure, not pain. You deserve comfort, not discomfort.

If sex hurts or doesn’t feel good, of course you’re going to start avoiding it. No one willingly signs up for pain or discomfort on a regular basis. And you shouldn’t have to.

The Feeling of Being “Broken”

All of these issues can lead to women feeling like there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. They look around and think everyone else is having amazing sex, and they’re the only ones struggling. They start to believe they’re broken, that they’ll never enjoy sex, that this is just their lot in life.

But here’s what I want you to know – you are not broken. If you’re not enjoying sex, there are reasons for it, and those reasons can be addressed.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Let me paint you a picture of what this cycle often looks like, because I see it play out in my coaching practice all the time:

A woman isn’t enjoying sex for one or more of the reasons we’ve discussed. So she starts avoiding it, making excuses, or just going through the motions when it does happen. Maybe she starts going to bed earlier or later than her husband. Maybe she stays busy with projects or the kids until late at night. Maybe she develops mysterious headaches or claims she’s too tired.

Her husband notices the rejection and either gets frustrated or starts pressuring her more. He might start dropping hints throughout the day, or making comments about how long it’s been, or getting visibly disappointed when she turns him down. This makes sex feel even more obligatory and less appealing to her. Now it’s not just that sex doesn’t feel good – it’s that she feels hunted, pursued, pressured.

The cycle continues and gets worse over time. She starts avoiding not just sex, but any physical affection that might lead to sex. No more lingering hugs, no more cuddling on the couch, no more playful touches, because she’s afraid he’ll interpret them as an invitation. Meanwhile, he’s pulling away emotionally because he feels rejected and unwanted.

She’s feeling guilty for not wanting sex, wondering what’s wrong with her, beating herself up for being a “bad wife.” She might start researching online, reading articles about low libido, wondering if she needs hormone therapy or if she’s broken somehow. The guilt eats at her because she knows he’s hurt, but she can’t bring herself to want something that doesn’t feel good.

He’s feeling rejected and unwanted, wondering if she’s no longer attracted to him, questioning whether she ever really enjoyed sex with him, or worse – whether she’s getting her needs met somewhere else. He might start wondering if this is just what marriage becomes, if he’s destined to feel unwanted for the rest of his life.

Both of them are wondering what’s wrong with their marriage. They’re looking around at other couples and assuming everyone else has it figured out. They’re both feeling like failures – she thinks she’s failing as a wife, he thinks he’s failing as a husband. Neither one of them realizes that the problem isn’t their marriage or their love for each other. The problem is that the sexual experience itself has become unsatisfying and disconnected from pleasure, intimacy, and joy.

And here’s the tragic part – they stop talking about it. It becomes this huge elephant in the room that they both know is there but no one wants to address. They develop this careful dance of avoidance, and what started as a sexual problem becomes a communication problem, an intimacy problem, and sometimes even a relationship problem.

The Path Forward

The beautiful thing is that once we identify what’s making sex unappealing, we can start to change it. But the first step is always awareness. You have to be honest about what your sexual experience is really like.

Ask yourself these questions:

• When I think about having sex, what emotions come up? Excitement? Dread? Anxiety? Indifference?
• Do I feel free to express myself sexually, or do I feel constrained?
• Do I enjoy the physical sensations of sex, or do I just endure them?
• Do I feel like an equal participant, or more like I’m performing a service?
• Do I feel pressure to be a certain way or do certain things?

Be honest in your answers. There’s no judgment here – only information that can help you create change.

Moving Beyond Rejection

Here’s what I want you to understand – sexual rejection often isn’t really about rejecting your spouse. It’s about protecting yourself from an experience that doesn’t feel good, safe, or enjoyable.

And that’s actually healthy! You should reject experiences that don’t serve you. The goal isn’t to force yourself to want bad sex. The goal is to figure out how to make sex an experience you actually want to say yes to.

Working Together

If you’re listening to this with your spouse, I want to talk to both of you for a minute. Husbands, if your wife has been rejecting sex, please don’t take it personally. It’s likely not about you – it’s about the experience. And wives, please don’t feel guilty for not wanting something that doesn’t feel good to you. Your feelings are valid and important.

The solution is to work together to understand what’s been missing and to create something better. This isn’t about blame – it’s about teamwork.

Conclusion

I know this topic can bring up a lot of emotions and maybe even some difficult realizations. But I want to end with hope. Every single issue we’ve discussed today can be addressed. Every woman deserves to have a sexual relationship that brings her joy, connection, and pleasure.

If you’re recognizing yourself in any of these patterns, please know that you’re not alone, and you’re definitely not broken. You just need the right tools and support to create change.

This is exactly the kind of work I do with couples in my coaching practice. We identify which of these patterns are showing up in your relationship, we work together to understand what’s been missing, and we create a plan to transform your sexual connection from something you endure into something you genuinely desire. It’s not about forcing yourself to want bad sex – it’s about creating the kind of sexual experience that you actually want to say yes to.

Until then, be gentle with yourself and remember – you deserve a sex life that brings you joy.

Remember, love is a journey, not a destination. Stay committed, stay passionate, and stay connected. I’ll see you next week…ba-bye.