So this gentleman turns up in a session and, for ten minutes, lists all the awful qualities about his wife; here is a sample of this conversation.
- She spends too much money.
- She is always so negative about him.
- She rarely wants sex.
- She is never happy.
- Everything he does is wrong.
- I just feel like a cash machine.
- She expects me to do my job, but she doesn’t do hers.
- She’s always tired.
- She’s miserable until her friends call, and it’s like a magic happiness button has been pressed.
- She takes no responsibility ever, and everything is my fault.
- And she constantly complains that I judge her.
- To top it all, she calls me controlling.
He says I have had enough and am thinking that I may need to leave her.
There is no question that anyone living in this situation would be unhappy.
But the question he is missing is why is she this way?
He has assumed that this is who she is, but I doubt that is true because she would have been like this at the start and if she was, he wouldn’t have married her.
So to evolve into being this way, she would have a reason, so what is going on for her?
As I explored this with him, I noticed the way he described how he showed up with her would have jarred her emotionally and would have a profound effect on her emotions.
He rejected her emotions as trivial, he expected her to let go of what was important to her.
He spent little time connecting with her and then wanted sex and then became upset when it didn’t happen.
When she made a comment he quickly made her wrong and judged her for being different to him.
I noticed that he was treating her as if she was a badly behaved man and this perspective would guarantee to kill her ability to ever see him as attractive.
This man was missing the formula to help her have a reason to want to be intimate with him in fact he gave her the reason to not!
This dynamic meant she could never be herself when she was with him, and so she had to spend time with family and friends to reconnect with herself.
To her, she was a feminine energy who had to become masculine to survive the demands of being married to him.
So with no connection to herself that made sense when she was with him, she had little to no desire to connect emotionally, let alone intimately.
This shift in her would make her naturally tired, and she would naturally struggle to find him attractive; she would resent him and be biased toward only seeing what’s wrong in him.
Why would she care about how he feels, when she was never free to be who she is when she is with him?
He was not helping her, and he had no idea this disaster was happening based on his own actions.
His big complaint to me was a lack of sexual intimacy.
But without knowing, his actions ensured her sexual desire for him would always die.
The loss of sexual connection upset her too, but how could she even think about sex when there were so many disconnects and judgements?
How could she connect sexually to him with no emotional connection or emotional security?
He could leave her, but he would probably repeat this all over again until he saw the real problem was his lack of understanding of how to help her desire him again!
Desire in women is a process and is easily killed with the wrong approach.
Harley Street Expert | Founder & High Performance Coach
With two decades of experience helping couples out of crisis, Stephen the founder of The Marriage Breakthrough Program, uses his proven system for rescuing and rebuilding relationships on the edge of divorce. A trusted advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders globally, his work blends emotional intelligence with strategic clarity. Known for navigating highly complex relationship challenges, Stephen helps individuals and couples find clarity and direction when everything is at stake.
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