Desire Mismatch in Relationships: Why One Partner Wants Sex More (and How Couples Fix It)

Overcoming Desire Mismatch and Mismatched Libido in Long-Term Relationships

Welcome Back to the Libido Lounge with Guest Susan Morgan Taylor

Dr. Diane: Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Libido Lounge. It is our final release, our final interview of 2025. And just like we did last year, what we do at the end of every year is we invite back whoever you have downloaded the most, liked the most, shared the most. Basically, whoever you have loved the most, we bring back for a deep dive for your pleasure to wrap up the year and to welcome you into the new year. So, I’m absolutely pleased that my friend Susan Morgan Taylor was the one that you guys shared the content with the most. And we’re going to go even deeper onto some of the topics we talked about last time.

We talked about desire mismatch last time. It’s one of Susan’s specialties, one of my favorite reasons for talking to her. And we’re going to go deep into that as well as many other things. So, thanks so much Susan for being here. It’s really a pleasure as always with you.

Susan Morgan Taylor: Yes, Diane. Thanks for having me and thanks for the copy of the book. Fabulous work, by the way. Congratulations on that. That’s a really big accomplishment.

Dr. Diane: Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, we’re very excited about that. And 2026 is going to bring more things, more books. You have a big new course you’re offering at the beginning of the year. So, it’s going to be an exciting year for both of us. So, can’t wait for all the pleasure and fun. Yeah. Well, let’s jump in.

Root Causes of Low Libido and Sexual Blueprints in Couples

Dr. Diane: So, I know one of the things that you just spent a lot of time educating people on and supporting them to recover around is the root causes—some of these top root causes of low libido. So, really curious both for myself and my audience: with your research and what you’ve studied and explored both in a clinical setting as well as in a book education setting, what have you found? What are the top reasons that really are driving this libido, this desire down?

Susan Morgan Taylor: Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s as you know, there’s a lot of factors that can play into that. It’s not really just one thing. And I would say, you know, well, I’ll just go with the first one is if we look at how our arousal styles are wired. We are wired, we’re all wired a little bit differently. And one of the models, there’s a couple models that I really love and I think they work very well hand in hand together. There are the sexual blueprints, which a lot of people have heard about. And I think that’s a really beautiful way to really understand why there’s this difference and what’s actually going on.

So that can be an aspect of it, like just not understanding your erotic landscape. What is your gateway into your turn on? And I think the blueprints are a really lovely way to conceptualize that. I also really like the dual control model of sexual arousal, which really sort of conceptualizes our sexuality, our turn on as a sexual nervous system, so to speak. We’ve got a brake, an accelerator, and brakes just like we do in our regular nervous system, right? Like we’ve got the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.

And some of it is just understanding how you’re wired on that scale. Do you have a really sensitive brake? So there are a lot of things that put the brakes on to the extent that your arousal shuts down. In order for our arousal to come online, you know, we have to be in our parasympathetic nervous system. That’s really where pleasure and orgasm and enjoyment and our ability to, you know, the rest and relax response. It’s not the fight or flight where we’re getting ready to do something or accomplish something or thinking about planning something. It’s a different part of our brain and different part of our nervous system.

So, when you have a really sensitive brake system that can just really kill the libido very quickly. It can cause you to just not be as present as you’d like to be, to be doing the to-do list, be stuck up in your head. You may also have a slow accelerator. That can be another aspect of that dual control model of just like it’s just hard to get the engine going. Maybe the brakes are average or kind of not too high, but that engine just doesn’t get revving.

So, that is one of the main causes of the low libido is really being able to look at that and to identify where do you fall on that scale, where does your partner fall on that scale, and then really a lot of times what we’re looking at—I’m a specialist in women’s sexuality, so primarily the low libido in women is really my jam. So really what we’re looking at a lot of times is how do we get the brakes off so she can start to identify some things that help her relax? What helps her feel, maybe you know sometimes it’s as simple as I need the dishes done. You know we got to make sure everything in the house is just kind of done then I can relax or make sure that the kids aren’t going to hear us. Make sure the temperature in the room is just right.

Also, if you’re wired as the sensual or energetic blueprint, those are different pathways in than going straight for genitals, breasts, and explicit overtly sexual acts. It’s actually a very roundabout way, right? We need more spaciousness. We need a slower lead in. We need to feel no pressure that it’s going to lead anywhere. All so that’s a piece that really can help the turn on to come back online. And it’s one of the things to look at when you’re struggling with the low libido aspect in the relationship. One, that’s one of them.

Dr. Diane: Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate what you said around like it’s not one thing because I think it is so common like the example I give people all the time is like it’s so common to get put on testosterone and initially for a lot of people be like, “Woo, my libido was great.” And then like three weeks later be like, “Oh, there it goes.” So many people when that happens they like jump to the assumption of like well that means I don’t need testosterone and it’s like well no that’s usually not what it means. I mean work with your doctor, look at your labs etc but usually it’s just a sign that like well that’s one thing and one problem and what you’re going to find is that you need to address all the problems. Right exactly yeah it’s not the only problem.

The Role of Emotional Trust and Safety in Resolving Sex Drive Mismatch

Susan Morgan Taylor: So the second cause I would speak to is that we tend to—and this tends to be it’s true for both you know man or woman or whatever—like this is really true. It’s not only for women, but there is sort of an aspect of this piece that does tend to be more predominant for women. There’s an aspect of really needing to have the emotional trust and safety in the relational space and also not just with her partner but also within her own body. Her ability to trust the sensations that her body is feeling, to trust the emotions that are arising.

We have such a program in our culture of like don’t feel, don’t be angry, don’t be sad, don’t be mad, you know, just feel good, feel happy all the time. To the extent that we sort of siphon off our life force energy from these more quote unquote negative emotions. But the thing is is that our emotions, all of them, they’re just energy, number one, and number two, they are part of our life force. And really, as you probably know, Diane, libido really just refers to life force. It’s our lust for life. It’s our drive for life. It doesn’t necessarily only mean the sexual energy, but the sexual energy is the fundamental creative life force energy.

So, what’s happening is when we can’t allow ourselves to trust our own bodies and our own emotions, maybe it doesn’t feel safe in the relational space. We’ve been shamed or maybe our partner is always like, “Don’t cry. Don’t feel bad. Let me fix it for you, honey. Like, I don’t want you.” You know, our man never wants us to feel sad. And it’s that’s a beautiful thing. You know, they want us to be happy, but also we need to be able to have access to the full range of our feelings, of our emotions, and to trust that.

When we can’t allow ourselves to trust our own bodies and our own emotions, our pussy’s going to shut down.

Dr. Diane: Hey, you’re bringing up so many good points and I really think there is this societal like pendulum, right, that happens.

Managing Sexual Brakes, Accelerators, and Communication About Sex

Susan Morgan Taylor: It’s not so much the emotions themselves that put the brakes on. It’s our relationship with them. It’s what our mind says in response to, oh, I’m feeling sad. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. Oh, I’m feeling angry. Don’t feel angry. Don’t feel angry. Right? So how we actually relate to that or the fear I don’t want to feel the anxiety, I’m afraid to feel the fear. So now we have the fear of feeling the fear.

So so that’s the level sometimes that I have to work with clients on is really how do we come into the body to just be present with the pure energy of the emotion when we get the mind actually out of the way and we can just fully meet and greet just what’s right there through breath. We do it through breathing into the body, deepening the breath, through starting to notice sensations in the body, just physical sensations. That’s the most obvious thing that we all have access to. Not even talking about emotions yet or energy. That’s much subtler level.

So if we just come into physical sensation first and foremost, it brings our us into a place of presence where we’re now we’re in the present moment and we’re no longer having the interference of the prefrontal cortex kind of coming in and hijacking the whole experience. And then what can happen is it can be very intense. But when we learn how to just say yes and invite and even I say turn the volume up, say yes to that sensation, say yes to that emotion, invite more, ask for more of it because that releases the resistance that we have to it. And then it’s just it just can move through us. We can feel it. Our bodies can digest that emotion and then something new comes to pass. Something new will come to take its place. It might be more feeling or a different feeling. It might be pleasure. It might be more pain. Like we don’t know. But it’s like learning how to surf. It’s like riding a wave.

Dr. Diane: So, I’m wondering too in this concept and this conversation around brakes and accelerators like are you working with people in a way where you’re teaching them how to kind of like recognize their brakes and recognize their accelerators and if so like do you have any idea like initial starting steps for people?

Susan Morgan Taylor: Well, let me just offer right now the Sexual Speedometer Test. I mean, everyone should go grab a copy of that. Yeah, sexualspeedometertest.com.

And that’s a really simple assessment that I put together for you to have a little bit of background on the sexual brakes accelerator, but you don’t need to know all the jargon and clinical terminology. Very easy. It takes maybe three minutes to complete. You and your partner can both take the test and then you’ll see actually where you first because we have to know where we land on that scale, right? Like do I have really high brakes and also a high accelerator? That could be the case. In that case, that’s great. Just get the brakes off. But maybe your accelerator is also slow.

So once we kind of know where you land and where your partner lands, then in that assessment, I also give you some ideas for what to do. How do you find what questions you need to ask to get the brakes off? What are some things that you can do to start to increase the accelerator? What do you do if you are the so called high libido partner and you’re really frustrated because you’ve got all this energy? I give you some tips for that as well because we don’t want to ignore that is a very real and frustrating place to be when you’ve got a really high accelerator and really low brakes, but your partner is the opposite.

Addressing Intimacy Issues in Couples Through Presence and Sensation

Susan Morgan Taylor: Pleasure always begins with the ability to notice sensation in the body. It’s just where we begin. It might not even be that we notice pleasure. We might not even notice a whole lot. There might just be numb. All I notice is nothing or numbness. But our ability to notice is the very very first step.

And where a lot of people go sideways with this is they’re trying to feel something. I think that’s kind of what you’re speaking to why presence is necessary because if we’re trying to feel something, I’m feeling nothing. So I need to make myself feel now. We’re not we’re not actually available for what is.

So that’s the first piece is that getting into sensation and starting to notice that’s the gateway into everything we’re talking about right now, Diane. Whether it’s feeling pleasure or feeling emotions, it’s simply being in the here now and showing up and beginning to notice even in some cases I notice I’m afraid to feel right now or I notice I’m trying to feel more than what’s actually here right now. That’s an aspect of noticing. It’s all information.

The Third Root Cause: Physical Differences and the Need for More Time in Arousal Mismatch

Susan Morgan Taylor: The third one is we could look more at the physical aspect. You know, we’ve talked about hormones, but like you said, what’s so interesting with that is people will get put on hormones and it doesn’t really solve the thing.

So, what I’ll offer to that, because we all already know about hormones. Some people might already know about this piece, too. But it’s also a lack of education around the differences between the male and female body. We have the same exact erectile tissue in our bodies as a man has in his penis. It’s just spread out over a larger area. And however, a lot of men and women don’t know this. We don’t understand the difference.

And for the majority of women, most I mean, it’s I don’t ever like I do generalize a lot because we need to to talk about this. Not everyone’s the same. I get that. We all have different days, different hormones, different moods, different things happening contextually in our life. So, this can change. But women’s bodies tend to need more stimulation and more time before there’s really going to be that full engorgement of the tissues. And often times too before she can really get out of that left thinking brain and into her non-thinking right brain into the parasympathetic. That takes time.

Women are wired. We’re wired to be plugged into our environment. It’s an evolutionary thing that’s not been changed just since women’s lib happened back in the 70s or 60s, whenever it happened. That hasn’t gone away like literally and it’s a beautiful skill that we have to sense and feel our environment. However, the downside of that is it can sometimes take us a little bit of time to turn that part of our brain off so that we can just show up and again we have to be fully relaxed really in order for that pleasure to come online.

Rebuilding Trust to Heal Desire Mismatch and Intimacy Issues

Dr. Diane: Well, let’s go back to number two here on this component with trust, too, because I do think this is it’s just such a key thing that I don’t think gets talked about enough in the intimacy space.

Susan Morgan Taylor: Trust is a it’s really a moment by moment experience. Love and so is love really. But let’s talk about trust for a minute. And the feminine heart needs trust is like the thing that it needs the most in order to blossom and to grow. It’s also the thing that it’s learning the most, right? Trust is actually the more important factor.

In a long-term relationship, trust can be broken in a million little ways. It can be broken by saying you’re going to do something that you don’t follow through on. It sounds stupid, guys. I know. But if you’re going to change that light bulb and it takes you three weeks to get around to it, her trust is gradually getting whittled away. And then the same thing happens again with other little things that you say you’re going to do and you don’t do it. So that over time, absolutely, she starts to lose trust in your capacity, in your consciousness, in your presence. She can’t lean into that.

These kind of things can embed in our bodies and she might not even know that they’re there. And there can be a lot of hurt that’s carried over time that builds up into what I call like the wall of resentment. Like brick by brick, it just slowly gets built until there’s just numbness and she doesn’t want to fuck you anymore.

Navigating Sex Drive Mismatch and Communication About Sex in Relationships

Dr. Diane: I want to talk a little bit too about desire mismatch since that’s like such a specialty of yours.

Susan Morgan Taylor: Well, I mean I think we’ve touched on a little already is that ability to not and just really starting there because if we can’t notice what we want, what we or what we need, right? Those are sort of the two aspects of noticing or feel. What do I want? What do I need? What do I feel? And be able to name it. So, I work a lot with my clients on giving voice to it. Actually naming it out loud because there’s really something I believe we need to have good access to that before we start playing in realms where maybe we’re reading body language more or intuiting like that’s a much more subtle realm and so I believe we have to have good access to our voice first.

So the ability to notice a name and then how we get on the same page. And I mean that is certainly an aspect of it like what is what do we really mean by sex and what does it mean for both of us and how does it what do we each get out of it and why that’s a part of it but there’s also the understanding that to get back on the same page we don’t have to both want the same things at the same time and that’s the beauty of the negotiating and the negotiation triad and the pleasure keys process is really about how you create clarity in those exact situations.

Closing Thoughts on Arousal Mismatch and Reclaiming Intimacy

Dr. Diane: Perfect. Well, we’re going to put your Sexual Speedometer Test in the link for that in the show notes. We’ll also put, you know, other areas or other links as far as podcast and other things where people can get a hold of you and follow your work and all of that. So, make sure everybody you look in the show notes for that. And happy new year everybody.

I wish you the best in your holiday seasons and new year’s. Look out for information in the new year both from Susan and myself on fun new offerings from 2026 coming down the pipeline to support you and your sexual wellness and your partnerships and more. And we’ll see you all in the new year. Take good care.

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