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complex and difficult?” Her tone sounded like she was saying,
Adam is making this difficult! He’s the problem
.
    Adam scowled, clearly feeling criticized. Doreen barked,
“Can’t I even ask a question!”
Adam’s head snapped back as though he’d just been slapped.
    “Things shouldn’t be this difficult,” Doreen repeated. “Sex and desireare natural functions. They’re built in. If we love each other, we should have sexual desire for each other.” She turned to Adam. “Maybe you don’t love me at all!” The tension in the room rose.
    To head off the looming disaster, I steered our attention in a different direction. I said to Doreen. “I’ve learned that the exact opposite of what you believe is true. If you love each other and stay together, you can count on sexual desire problems.”
    “Why do you say that?” she challenged. “Are you saying there’s a flaw built into long-term relationships?”
    “No, I mean the exact opposite. You can count on sexual desire problems if you love each other and stay together, because long-term emotionally committed relationships are that
perfect
.”
    “
Perfect?”
Doreen said. “How could relationships be perfect if they have sexual desire problems! Adam and I don’t have sex. Our relationship is falling apart. We’re talking about splitting up. He doesn’t love me anymore. He says I pressure him for sex all the time. I feel unattractive. I have a hard time accepting what you’re saying, Doctor. You make it sound like it’s okay to have sexual desire problems, like it’s normal.”
    “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
    “How could that be true? If every couple has sexual desire problems, we’d all be divorced.”
    “You mean people wouldn’t go through the kinds of problems you’re having?”
    “Right! It would be easier to just find a new partner who wanted to have sex. I’ve certainly thought about that option.”
    “But have you done that yet?”
    “No.”
    “So you endured the tensions, you didn’t take the easy way out, and you hung in there.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why’d you do that?”
    Doreen stopped and thought for several seconds. Then she spoke slowly and thoughtfully. “Because my relationship with Adam is important to me.”
    “Then you operated differently than your own picture of people. Yoursexual desire problem hasn’t ended your relationship—yet. You can use it to help the two of you grow as individuals and as a couple. It comes down to how you go about solving your desire problem. I can show you how to do that if you like.”
    Doreen looked at me and nodded. She was demonstrating an important and often unappreciated aspect of love relationships: they push the best in us to stand up.
----
    IDEAS TO PONDER
     

Your brain, body, mind, and relationship are one whole system in which sexual desire plays a key role. Problems with sexual desire and struggles of selfhood go hand in hand in love relationships.
Developing and maintaining a solid sense of self greatly shapes your sexual desire. Your reflected sense of self and solid self often outweigh horniness, hormones, or your desire for intimacy and attachment.
Love relationships have people-growing processes that call for the best in you to come forward to endure and cope with them. Doing that makes us creative and resilient.
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3

The Low Desire Partner Usually Controls the High Desire Partner’s Adequacy
     
    I n Chapter 1 we began to explore what happens to the low desire partner when there are sexual desire problems. We saw through Connie that your reflected sense of self really takes a beating. But what if you’re the high desire partner? In Chapter 2 we started to see in Doreen that your reflected sense of self also gets bruised, because you take your mate’s lower desire personally, too. Some HDPs don’t feel rejected, inadequate, or undesirable, but they are the exception. Lots of them
say
they don’t take it as a negative reflection on themselves, but a good