Has sex in your marriage become a yes-or-no question: “Are we having sex tonight?”
For one spouse, that question may bring hope and anticipation. For the other, it may feel like a test they’re about to pass or fail. When every flirtation, touch, or attempt at closeness seems tied to one expected outcome, both spouses may eventually stop reaching for each other.
In this episode, Dan shares how this pass-or-fail dynamic affected his own marriage and introduces a different approach: the “menu mindset.” You’ll learn three practical ways to create more choice, flexibility, and genuine desire in your intimate relationship—without denying what you want or waiting for your spouse to change first.
You’ll learn how to:
• Build a broader menu of physical and emotional connection
• Replace “Are we having sex tonight?” with a better question
• Respond to disappointment without withdrawing or applying pressure
• Make intimacy feel more playful, pleasurable, and freely chosen
Resources
Get the Intimacy Menu in the Intimacy Vault–only available until September 30!
323: Roommate Marriage Episode
321: Why Your Libido Disappeared After the Honeymoon
Next Level Couples Coaching Program
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors or inaccuracies. For the most accurate and complete experience, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode.
[00:00:00]
Dan: what do you think is more common in marriage, a spouse who doesn’t want s*x or a spouse who has stopped reaching out ’cause it always has to lead somewhere? If s*x in your marriage has turned into a yes/no question as in like, “Is it gonna happen tonight or not?” And maybe that fills you with anticipation or even dread, the fix simply isn’t scheduling it, like putting it on the calendar every Friday night. It isn’t doing more date nights. It isn’t getting his or her libido sorted out.
Fundamentally, I think it’s the question itself. As long as it’s, “Is s*x gonna happen tonight?” [00:01:00] feels like a pass or fail in your relationship, at least one of you feels like they’re taking a test, which by the way, is totally not s*xy. And it’s no wonder why some couples prefer to doom scroll or look for other distractions, ’cause those feel more enticing than s*xual play because they feel like they’re taking a test when it comes to s*x.
Now, if that’s where you are in your relationship, you are in the right place. , Don’t despair. Nothing has gone wrong per se. This pattern, by the way, is one of the most common patterns I see in the couples I work with, and it’s a pattern I’m very familiar with because it’s happened in my own marriage for years.
Most couples who are in it have no idea that they’re in it. They just feel like intimacy, or maybe it’s not intimacy in general, but maybe a particular sex act or experience feels like a chore or an obligation or something they feel like they need to negotiate or get, or it’s like a reward for good behavior.
It just [00:02:00] feels like tension sometimes
All right, my friends, by the end of this episode, I’m gonna give you three practical moves that’ll help you take s*x out of pass/fail mode into a much more blissful wanting it mode.
And it’s not by learning how to want s*x less or denying your desires. That’s not on the table, and it shouldn’t be. And you might be even thinking, ” Would my spouse ever sit down and do this with me?” Every one of the three things that I’m about to tell you how to fix this are things you can start on your own this week, this night, without asking your spouse to change anything at first.
And that’s on purpose because in any marriage relationship, the only person you can really take action on and work on is yourself
I should also tell you that I have a tool called the Intimacy Menu Builder that you can access. It is available in a private link. I’m gonna give it the link to you in the description and tell you more about it later in this episode
Before I tell you about what those three steps are, I think I should lay some [00:03:00] groundwork first. I believe in every marriage over time, one person usually settles more into the role of higher desire spouse and the other into the lower desire role. And just to be clear, when I say higher and lower, I’m not talking about hierarchy here.
It’s like a yin and a yang. Both are needed, and both are completely equal and valid. It’s just about how you orient in your approaches towards s*xual desire. So when you wonder if s*x is gonna happen or not, or it feels like a pass-fail experience, the standard advice that you might find online or in a Reddit thread is just to broaden your definition of s*x.
It sounds so nice when people say intimacy is more than just intercourse and can be so much more than a narrow definition. And I’ve actually given that advice to couples before, but deep down, I know it sounds right intellectually, but I don’t think it really changes anything. And I think it’s because that advice sounds about as helpful as telling a hungry person to be satisfied with just the smell of food [00:04:00] without ever eating it or tasting it. The wanting doesn’t go anywhere just because someone told you to be content with less. Now, the other version of the advice you might hear is to fix your spouse’s side.
If you’re high desire and your spouse is low desire, low desire is a problem. It treats low desire as the pathology. There’s something wrong with it, and we need a diagnosis and a plan to fix it. You might hear things like, “Get her libido handled,” or, “Get his testosterone levels fixed.” That’s common advice.
Or it might be, “You gotta be more emotionally involved. Carry the invisible mental labor load around the home. Like do the dishes more.” Or it might be, “You gotta get yourself in the mood better. Wear sexy lingerie to bed,” or some other versions of that. Now, I list these things off because, , as a whole, there’s nothing wrong with any of these things.
There’s nothing wrong with wearing lingerie to bed or doing the dishes more and being a more helpful partner, being more present with your spouse. But I, I think that advice alone is [00:05:00] too superficial. It’s incomplete, and misses the nuance and the greater context of the relationship. ‘Cause in reality, s*xual desire is more complex and isn’t resolved by making a stop by the department store on your way home from dropping off your kid at soccer practice.
You gotta take into account sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress management, and all other factors that play a role in one’s s*xual health, and those things deserve, your attention too when needed.
So if you find s*xual desire being low, instead of treating it as a problem to fix, I wonder if anybody’s ever stopped to think and ask, “Maybe there’s a valid, even a healthy reason why your spouse has lower s*xual desire.” What if it wasn’t a symptom that something’s gone wrong, but it’s a sign that something in the relationship is going right?
It’s operating exactly as it should, and as a result, they should be having lower s*xual desire because it’s the marriage, it’s [00:06:00] the dynamic, it’s the way the couples are interacting together or the, the themes and meanings involved with the s*xual experience is, creating a spouse that has a low desire and a lot of resistance towards s*x.
Now, I know this firsthand, because this was us in my marriage for a long time. I thought our problem was that my wife didn’t like s*x the same level as I did, and I would look at it as trying to get her libido up to my level. And those were even the words we were using at the time.
The problem was that I had decided what counted as good s*x or not. intercourse definitely counted, an org@sm counted. Just talking in bed, cuddling with nothing on, intimate affection and touch, and maybe even falling asleep while attempting to be s*xual. all those things were good, but in my mind , they didn’t make the scoreboard.
So if this was baseball, I was only counting home runs. Home runs were the only things that counted, and not the individual base runs [00:07:00] that lead up to a run.
So as you can see, what I counted as s*x was narrow at that time. She’s already pre-decided earlier in the day that any effort she was going to offer or pretend to promise could probably fail and not gonna happen by the end of the day.
And it just felt like it was gonna be a failed attempt. So, and my wife is smart, she doesn’t wanna fail, so that means she stopped offering. It also meant if she flirted or teased me during the day and I got excited, but if she was worried that she couldn’t go all the way to home base, you know, make it to the scoreboard that night, she’d feel like she failed me, and frankly, I would probably feel like she failed me too.
So it was easier and safer for her to withhold the flirting, teasing, and reaching for me. This isn’t because she didn’t want closeness. This is nothing to do because she doesn’t love me. It’s because of our dynamic. It’s the relationship around s*x that we had [00:08:00] inadvertently created. ‘Cause every one of those actions that she would make, flirting and so on, or my overtures, my initiation, felt like it was tied to a promise that she wasn’t sure she could keep later that night.
And that narrow definition didn’t protect my s*x life. I was starving it
By the way, I wanna know, what do you think is more common in marriage, a spouse who doesn’t want s*x or a spouse who has stopped reaching out ’cause it always has to lead somewhere? Tell me in the comments below
Thankfully, with coaching, studying, my work in this, uh, field really opened my eyes to, and seeing what is actually possible and what’s more healthy, and my own relationship is a million times better. And this is what I have coined, what I call having a menu mindset when it comes to s*x. For a moment, imagine you’re looking forward to going to your favorite nice restaurant.
You’ve made a reservation. Maybe you’ve even dressed nicely. The hostess greets you at the [00:09:00] door and takes you to your table and hands you the menu. With that backdrop, I’ll explain the menu mindset now in three parts. One is to consider the menu, two is order from the menu, and three, learn how to be good company.
So first, consider your menu. Imagine getting seated at that nice restaurant, and after opening the menu, the host apologetically informs you that they’re out of everything except for that one fish dish that you really don’t care that much about. I wonder if couples that struggle with s*xual desire differences are operating as if there’s only one thing to order off of their own s*xual menu.
And a one-item menu isn’t really a menu, right? Instead, it’s a yes/no question. It’s a binary. It’s a pass or a fail. And if you’re not up for that one thing that’s on the menu, well, you’ve failed. It’s easy to take it personally that your spouse isn’t in the mood for s*x rather than consider that maybe it’s not about them not being in the mood for s*x, but it’s that the menu [00:10:00] isn’t right for the two of you.
S*xual desire in humans in marriages is highly tied to our brain’s reward system. The more s*xual experiences you have that feel pleasurable, playful, and good, the more you’ll naturally want it. So that’s why sometimes I think the right thing for couples to discuss isn’t if they’re having s*x frequently or not.
The better question is if they’re liking the kind of s*x they’re having and if are they exploring ways to have more satisfying s*x consistently. Research by Frederick et al., published in the Journal of S*x Research in 2017, found that couples that engage in a variety of s*xual behaviors report higher s*xual satisfaction.
And to me, this makes perfect sense. If your only option as a couple is penis-in-v*gina intercourse, and if it isn’t really pleasurable for both people most of the time, expanding more things on your menu makes perfect sense. My friend Laura Brotherson, a certified s*x therapist, once said on my [00:11:00] podcast that variety leads to vitality in the bedroom, and I believe that.
My own marriage struggled with the one-menu option for a long time. We had a hard time thinking of other things to try, or if we did kinda discuss maybe switching it up a bit, we weren’t sure if that was okay or not. Was that sinful? Was that wrong? So we just stuck to the one-menu option all the time. And all that changed about ten years ago when my friends started sharing with us about their s*xual relationships and their marriages.
And by the way, this isn’t a weird thing. It was a healthy, positive, and appropriate way, but it helped my wife and I see that there was far more to enjoyment and more possibility than we were experiencing. I think the best way to describe it is we realized that we were living beneath our privileges and didn’t know it So what I want to invite you to do is write down your own menu this week.
You can do this alone or together. Get out a piece of paper if you want. Uh, jot down every [00:12:00] kind of physical closeness you enjoy from a long hug, deep conversation, passionate kissing, or to whatever is the equivalent of steak on your menu. Most people are surprised that this list can get pretty long once you start going, and the only option isn’t just intercourse
Allow me to interrupt and tell you about our upcoming couples retreat in St. George, Utah. That’s southern Utah, near Zion National Park. A beautiful, beautiful part of the country in April 2027. This is a four-day, four-night retreat specifically designed for couples who would say they’re in an otherwise good marriage, but wish things were better when it came to s*xual and emotional intimacy.
Over the four days and four nights, you’ll work with me and my team. We’ll do a deep dive on all things intimacy in your relationship. And this isn’t just some boring conference room, stuffy, like, thing. This is a beautiful setting. This is a luxurious setting. We have a whole resort [00:13:00] to ourselves, and we pair it with lots of outdoor activities and plenty of time for you and your spouse to talk and put into practice the things that we’re gonna be teaching you over the weekend.
Uh, you do need to register. You’ll find those details on our website at getyourmarriageon.com. Click Events and then scroll to Couples Retreat. You’ll find everything there. And it’s limited to just, like, 20 couples. So it’s designed to be small to keep it intimate, and we’ve sold out every spring retreat.
So if you’re thinking about going, now is t-the time to register.
Dan – May 2025: So now that we talked about step one, consider the menu, let’s talk about step two, order what you like off the menu.
So if your reservation for dinner is this upcoming Friday, let’s say, and you have to decide by Tuesday what you’re gonna be ordering on Friday, y- you’d struggle, right? It, it doesn’t make sense.
Instead, I think what you do is you show up to the restaurant as you are, and you get settled, you take in [00:14:00] the setting, you open and peruse the menu, and you look at what’s available, and that’s when you pick what sounds good for you that night. And some nights when you’re at the restaurant, it’s gonna be the steak dinner.
Other nights it might be the spicy Asian dish, or other nights it might be your favorite comfort foods like it’s the baked potatoes or the salad. Or other nights you don’t have as much of an appetite, so you’re just gonna order the appetizers and desserts, and that’s okay.
That sounds great. I get that some people think that just ordering appetizers and dessert when your spouse wants steak may sound like you’re lowering the bar, uh, so that you can settle. Now, this isn’t settling at all. It’s about creating a wider s*xual menu for both of you that you can both enjoy and being flexible enough to enjoy what you’re in the mood for in the moment without being pressured to pick something that you actually aren’t in the mood for and wanting.
So as we already discussed, having a wider menu gives both of you a sense of agency. There’s more [00:15:00] choice, there’s more option, and it’s not answering a yes or a no, or a pass or a fail as the only thing on the menu choose from. Instead, you have more freedom to choose. You have more agency and agency and freedom are highly connected to s*xual desire.
And there is research on this. I found a study published in the Journal of s*xual Medicine in twenty twenty-three. Researchers studied the long-term couples going through s*xual rough patches and the ones that could be flexible during the rough patches who didn’t need s*x to go one set way, but were more satisfied , with more flexible options, let’s say.
It turns out they’re much more satisfied in their relationship overall. And here’s the part I love. Not just the flexible person, the other person, their spouse, they were more in love also. This reminds me of a wonderful couple that joined our Net Solo program. And like most couples that join our program, they wanted a better s*x life.
And as I got to know [00:16:00] them, I learned that she was having s*x for her husband, primarily to manage his moods. He’d get low when it’d been a while, and they’d both quietly agreed that s*x was there to take care of his mental health. Then he would wonder why she wasn’t eager to have s*x with him in between the times that they scheduled it on their s*x nights.
And when the scheduled s*x night came, she showed up mostly out of duty. Now, she’s a good sport. She loves her husband, but he can still tell she’s there because she had agreed to do it. It was on the calendar, and they’re really doing it for him and she might even have a great time and have an org@sm. but they both realized the release of an org@sm isn’t sufficient for a s*xual experience to be great. it just didn’t feel like there was a lot of sense of freedom or agency in this relationship in the way they approach s*x. So in our program, we teach couples the skill of collaboration, how to collaborate better.
And this skill helped this couple get better at ordering [00:17:00] off their menu of what sounded good to them in the moment . I recently talked to this couple, and I’m just so happy to hear that there’s more room for passion because there’s flexibility and genuine intimacy in their relationship now. So here’s my advice for you to take action tonight. Instead of saying, “Are we gonna have s*x tonight?” reframe it. “What sounds pleasurable tonight?” And whatever they answer, that’s their order. And by the way, if it’s not exactly what you wanted, sit with that, and we’re gonna talk about that right now in the next step, which is step number three is to be good company
By the way, everything that we’ve talked about up to this point is about widening the menu and getting better at ordering what sounds right in the moment. Now, the third part of the menu mindset is one that actually decides whether any of what I’ve talked about so far actually has teeth and will actually work in your relationship.
Because I believe the measure of a marriage isn’t how you do when things are going your way, when it’s easy. It’s how you hold [00:18:00] each other when things don’t go the way you want them to, which brings me to step three, be good company when it’s not your night. You might be saying, “Dan, everything you say sounds nice, and I have no problem expanding the menu and ordering what feels right in the moment.
It’s that my spouse insists on a very narrow menu and still doesn’t like what’s on it.” So you’re sometimes in a position of wondering, “Do I advocate more for what I want or do I yield to what my spouse wants? And either way, it feels like one of us prevails and the other loses. One of us feels bad, the other feels worse every time, and it just feels like a power struggle, and I’m sick of it.”
This makes sense, and the trap, by the way, is pretending you don’t want it because that’s not honest, and your spouse can tell. Nobody wants to be married to someone that’s performing contentment, right? But acting entitled to s*x whenever you want it or the way you want it [00:19:00] isn’t fair to your spouse either.
Your wanting is real. it isn’t a bill your spouse has to pay, though.
So here’s a few new ways that I invite you to consider looking at a situation. First, realize that people grow and change and evolve all the time. I bet you’re not the same person you were one, five, or maybe ten years ago. I’m definitely not the same person. I’ve changed quite a bit.
So perhaps a better frame isn’t to talk in absolutes like never or always, but rather add a not yet to the end of a sentence. For example, it might be, “My spouse is distracted on his phone and doesn’t want to be emotionally connected with me yet,” or, “I really want to try oral sex, and my spouse doesn’t want that yet.”
There’s something powerful about adding yet. It makes room for growth to be a possible option. It may not be now, but it leaves room for more later, and it changes the way you orient to your problems or to the things that you see are differences in your relationship. Another mental [00:20:00] model that helps me is a visual of me balancing on a log that’s floating down a river.
My feet never stop shuffling as I work constantly to maintain my balance to stay on that log in the water. , In one moment, I am leaning towards my spouse and what my spouse needs. In the next moment, I’m leaning back towards what I think I need or what’s good for us. And this help me eliminates a me versus you mentality where I’m constantly pitting my spouse as my adversary, but rather a partner that gives me practice at helping me have better balance in life.
It gives me practice at better, balance, maintaining a healthy boundary, and so on. And by the way, this balance achievement is a lifelong quest. Anyone that tells you that they’ve got this nailed down, they’ve permanently figured it out, is probably not giving you the full picture I want to reiterate that your intuitive desires for emotional and s*xual intimacy are good.
God gave us these powerful feelings for a reason, [00:21:00] and it’s what pulls a husband and wife towards each other, and it’s what creates this strong bond that binds a man and woman together in a relationship. So don’t apologize for wanting to have s*x or closeness with your spouse, but don’t weaponize it either.
The third mental model that helps me is to remember that one of the primary benefits of marriage is growth and maturity, and that your spouse is gonna give you ample practice in taking on Christ-like character. This approach encourages me to take the long view and optimize for what’s best in a relationship long-term, rather than prioritize short-term wins.
So my friends, if you don’t get what you want, that’s life. You don’t always get what you want. It’s okay to feel disappointed. Feel it. The question is what you do with that emotion. How do you treat your spouse in the next ten minutes after you feel disappointed? That answer says far more about you and your marriage than [00:22:00] just only having good nights ever will.
So next time you don’t get what you’re hoping for, notice the urge to go quiet, get short, get angry, pull away, whatever. Don’t act on it. Stay warm for ten minutes. Lean in instead of out. Tell your spouse how you’re feeling and just share and reveal your emotion. That’s the whole exercise. It might be harder than it sounds, but it’s definitely doable and worth it, and something you get better at doing All right, as we conclude this discussion, I want you to picture two couples that both desire a more fulfilling intimate relationship.
And for both couples, s*x has felt a bit routine, predictable, or almost feels like it’s done out of obligation lately. One of the couples gets out a paper or downloads the uh, intimacy menu creation tool that I’m about to tell you about, and they start discussing their menu. Uh, this couple, by the way, it may not be easy for them to have these conversations.
They’re not used [00:23:00] to it, but they’re patient with each other and make a lot of room for both to explore, share, and discuss. And over the next few weeks and months, they’ve not only developed a menu, but are now getting better at, being flexible and ordering off the menu what feels good. And the dominant question between them is no longer, “Are we gonna have s*x tonight?”
But instead, “What sounds pleasurable for you tonight?” With practice, this couple is also getting better at handling the times that don’t go as planned, such as when the toddler is sick, or when one of them has to go out of town for work, or when the other just isn’t in the mood. They’re able to handle those disappointments with grace.
Meanwhile, the second couple didn’t do anything different. They just maintained the status quo. So you got those two couples pictured in your mind, right? A year from now, five years from now, ten years from now, which of the couples of those two do you think will be happier, smiling more, holding hands and laughing, finding more joy and [00:24:00] fulfillment and meaning in their lives?
I want you to be like that first couple. And I want to invite you in your marriage to take that step and start thinking with a menu mindset. And if you like this discussion, let me know in the comments what’s sticking out for you. I’ve developed a tool as part of our Sextember celebration. This month, we’re doing the Intimacy Vault.
And within that vault, when you purchase this, one of the tools of the many tools and videos and seminars that you get is a, this is my contribution, is a intimacy menu generator. How it works is you download it. It’s like an app. You answer it. Your spouse answers it. And your answers are confidential. Your spouse doesn’t see your answers directly, but it’s really smart in generating an intimacy menu for you that you can regenerate over and over and adjust.
And it really works well at fitting things to your relationship. And I’ll even give you suggestions once in a while of things that are maybe a little [00:25:00] outside of your comfort zone for good because that’s how you grow a relationship. I’m gonna leave a note, uh, down below in the description of how you can get it
S*xual desire in marriage is complex, but you don’t need to overcomplicate it. Sometimes one small but open, honest, and vulnerable conversation can make a whole difference. Usually out of small things are great things brought to pass. Understanding how s*xual desire works in your marriage is key, and having a menu mindset will definitely help you.
If you’d like additional help on this topic, you’ll like our Roommate Marriage episode , which is episode three twenty-three, and the Why Did My Libido Disappear After My Honeymoon episode, which is number three hundred twenty-one. And if you’d like even more help, one-on-one help, you can work with me and my team through our Next Level program or attend our upcoming marriage retreat in April.
Thank you again for watching. Now it’s your turn to go get your marriage [00:26:00] on.
