DESIRE DIFFERENCES: COUPLES WITH DESIRE DIFFERENCES – KEVIN’S CASE HISTORY
Kevin, a thirty-seven-year-old concert promoter, and his lover, Carl, a thirty-three-year-old graphic artist, sought treatment for desire differences approximately six months after Kevin suddenly seemed to lose interest in sex. Previously, Kevin's level of sexual desire had been somewhat higher than his lover's. After six years together, both partners were baffled by the change.
During an early therapy session, Kevin complained about feeling "disgusted and put down" whenever Carl made sexual overtures. "I don't like him being so aggressive—and impatient. Too impatient to wait for me to start things rolling, so he just takes over the controls. And he does it without considering that I might be stressed out or tired or whatever. It's really insensitive behavior."
As Kevin spoke, Carl's brown eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. When we asked the reserved, soft-spoken young man how he felt, he said, "Amazed. If you don't count the first few months we were together, Kevin has never made the first move. We've even discussed this before. I told him I felt weird about always being the one to suggest sex. With other lovers, I had always been more passive, and coming on to him made me feel awkward and needy. He said he liked me to put the moves on him. It made him feel great to know I wanted him. He said it turned him on."
"Sometimes it does," Kevin conceded and we soon learned that Kevin did indeed enjoy his lover's sexual overtures when he was already feeling sexual desire—an emotional state Kevin believed he nonverbally communicated to Carl. He claimed that when he was interested in making love, he "sent out little signals." However, we soon discovered that those signals were confusing at best. For instance, when feeling sexy, Kevin, might ask Carl to rub his back, but he also requested backrubs when he was feeling tense—and not the least bit interested in making love. Since the signal was the same in both situations, Carl could only guess at its meaning. When he guessed wrong, Kevin became irritated and repulsed. And Carl—already uncomfortable with the initiator's role—felt hurt and confused. Even though the actual differences in their sex drives were minor, Kevin and Carl wound up in a steadily escalating conflict over when and how often to have sex, and who should initiate it.
In the not too distant past, gay men with desire differences were unlikely to end up in a sex therapist's office. Sex was often the highest priority in their relationship and many times it was the only way they could demonstrate their commitment or express intimate feelings and other emotions (gay men were, after all, raised to be men, hearing the same negative messages about displaying feelings as their heterosexual counterparts). As a result, when one partner lost interest or could not keep up with his lover's sex drive, either the relationship would come to an end or the higher-desire partner would simply get his sexual needs met elsewhere. Neither option is as appealing now that AIDS is decimating the gay community. So gay men are undertaking what is for many of them a new and unfamiliar challenge—working to maintain the relationships they are in already. This is difficult enough to, do without the added problem of desire descrepancies.
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