Intimacy and Desire

Passion in Long-Term Relationships

David Schnarch Ph.D.

Happy Father's Day to Respectable Fathers

The greatest gift a father can give his children is being someone they can respect.

Normal Marital Sadism

The May 2012 edition of Psychology Today has an article featuring my work, describing how I deal with partners’ unacknowledged anger, hostility, and hatred. So I want to start off by telling you I’m actually a pretty nice guy. You can even ask my wife, daughter and parents. They are all honest, kind, decent people—arguably even more so than me—so they know the difference.

Do You Want Your Partner To Stroke Your Ego Or Your Genitals?

Want your partner to accept, validate and emotionally support you? Want hot sex too? In long-term committed relationships you're not likely to keep getting both. So what will it be? Have your partner inflate your ego, soothe your childhood wounds, or rub your erogenous zones? It's human nature to lose sexual desire for someone you have to constantly prop up.

Developing a Self Greatly Shapes Your Sexual Desire

Couples with sexual desire problems are often battling out the wars of autonomy, attachment and selfhood. You think you're just having sex problems. It doesn't help that your partner may be saying, "It's not about you, I'm just not into sex." Or, "All you want is sex!" Your partner is saying it too: it's about sex. That's what you probably want to believe too.

Decoding The Logic of Sexual Relationships

Sex is part of the "people growing machinery" of emotionally committed relationships. Sexual boredom and squabbles about sexual repertoire are normal, inevitable and potentially healthy developments that push us to grow into mature adults capable of durable love and hot sex.

Sex and Self-Development Between The Sheets

The only way to cure sexual boredom is to expand your sexual repertoire. But don't expect your partner to applaud when you propose something new. Expect to hear, "That's a disgusting and perverted thing to do!"

People Have Sex Within The Limits of Their Development

People have sex up to the limits of their sexual development. The solution to sexual boredom involves stepping outside your familiar repertoire and creating novelty. This raises your anxiety, challenges your identity, and shakes up your relationship.

Sexual Relationships Always Consist of 'Leftovers'

The most profound truths about relationships are often stunningly simple to articulate and incredibly difficult to live with. We're too ready to think we have "irreconcilable differences" or "sexual incompatibility" or we've "lost the chemistry." If you don't understand how sex really works, you're more likely to needlessly get divorced.

People Who Can't Control Themselves Control The People Around Them Part 2

Interdependence as a concept has been around for years, but it is badly misunderstood. This is why people talking the most about it are usually unable to do it. The problem isn't that they have difficulty putting their ideals into practice (but which is often true). The problem is their idea of interdependence is systematically wrong.

People Who Can't Control Themselves Try to Control Others

Do your feelings and insecurities dominate your relationships? Do you always have to be right? These are signs of difficulty regulating and modulating your inner emotional world.

When Experts Who Want To Be Rich and Famous Stray

A brief review of my and Dr. Goulston’s posts reveals some interesting similarities. But my real and overriding concern lies in portions of Dr. Goulston’s article that are unquestionably his own authorship: creating an imaginary “secondary Asperger’s syndrome” and promoting it to the public as if it really exists.

Why Rich and Powerful People Cheat: Part 3

The interplay of unique circumstances, common personal shortcomings, and normal relationship dynamics make affairs a particular problem for celebrity and wealthy couples. This is easiest to see if you consider the position of the wife of a powerful man.

Why Rich and Powerful People Cheat: Part 2

Rich and powerful people cheat because they are just like everyone else, with flaws, blind spots, and lapses in judgment. One major factor is common dependence on getting a positive reflected sense of self from the people around us, the clothes we wear, the house we live in, and the car we drive. We light up when someone finds us attractive.

Why Rich and Powerful People Cheat: Part 1

Many people think sex with lots of women is a side benefit that comes with being powerful, whether that power is political, economic, or social.

Normal Healthy Couples Have Sexual Desire Problems

If you are having sexual desire problems, and there's a very good chance you are, do you feel inadequate, ashamed or embarrassed, in addition to feeling deprived, frustrated, or royally pissed-off? Even if you don't have sexual desire problems now, you can imagine how people feel. You know how you would feel, and you're normal, aren't you?

Happy Mother's Day to Mothers Of Basic Decency

Every mother "loses it" sometimes. Even the best mothers do things they really regret. But some mothers do untoward things repeatedly, and some don't regret it at all. I've stopped taking the basic decency I grew up with for granted, and now appreciate how many people haven't had this

Hey Mom! I Love You!

When you’re an author, you write with an audience in mind. I’ve written for couples, singles, gays, straights, therapists, physicians, nurses, students, teachers, and parents. But not once, in any conscious and deliberate fashion, have I written for my mother.

Charles Manson, Please Save Marriage & Family Therapy

Watching The Best in Tiger Stand Up

A Valentine to the Mae West in Every Woman