6 Common Sex Drive Mismatches in Polyamory (And What To Do)
In polyamory desire is rarely simple or evenly distributed. One person wants more sex. Another wants less. Someone is touch starved while their partner is barely thinking about sex. Someone is having the time of their life with new lovers while wondering why that spark feels harder to find with their other partner.
Different levels of desire are completely normal. But polyamory can make those differences impossible to ignore.
More people means more bodies, more chemistry, more histories, more fantasies, more needs, and, inevitably, more opportunities to notice what is happening in your partner’s other relationship and wonder why your sex life with the hinge doesn’t look quite the same.
I’m Millie Boella, co-founder of Decolonizing Love, where I teach relationship models beyond the colonial, monogamous nuclear family. I work in polyamory peer support, have worked with more than 600 polyamorous clients, and have taught workshops on relationality around the world. Sexual desire, or the lack of it, comes up constantly in my work.
So I took the six sexual issues I encounter most often in polyamory and brought them to someone who knows a thing or two about desire.
Anna Linde, MS, is a sexologist and dance and movement therapist with a background in social work and counselling. Her work focuses on somatic sexology and sexual health, with an approach that takes seriously the complicated relationship between our bodies, desire, emotions, and relationships.
I presented Anna with each scenario exactly as it unfolds in real polycules, along with the specific tensions they create. She mostly answered with questions, and I love that about her. She doesn’t hand out quick fixes; instead, she pulls you straight into the shadow work, pointing to what’s really happening underneath.
Here’s how Anna frames desire before we start:
“The more we understand who we are sexually and how we operate, the better we will understand life. For me, as for many of us, how we understand our sexuality, longings, and desire becomes very different when we open up our relationships to include multiple partners.
Our sexual desire and lust change over time, across the lifespan, for all of us. What we’re attracted to or want to explore in our 20s will be different in our 30s, our 40s, and so on. This matters because I so often see people trying to find their way ‘back’ to what they ‘had’ earlier in life.
I also think the intentions we bring to our sexual connections matter a lot. Is the point to explore and have fun? To feel loved, to feel held? To have someone to sleep next to so we don’t feel so lonely? If our intentions don’t match, it’s hard to get what we need. And if they aren’t clear, it’s easy to start resenting the other person, because I might feel I’m ‘the only one not getting what I need’ and feel abandoned.”
What We Will be Covering
In this piece, Anna and I go through these six libido situations that often effect the polyamorous.
The long-term couple with a dormant sex life. One partner is having hot incredible sex with a new lover while their more established partner is wondering: Why don’t they have that with me?
Physical shifts: Transition, postpartum, depression, chronic illness, aging, and the fear that a changing body is unlovable.
Mono-Poly pairings. A lower-libido mono partner, a higher-libido poly partner.
Desire and kink mismatches. Spontaneous vs. responsive desire, and being typecast as the safe, vanilla partner.
Domestic and parenting labor reducing sex drive. Why Anna says this one “is not a problem about sex, at all.”
When desire is only sparked by a new lover: NRE, fraysexuality, and what happens when emotional intimacy dampens desire.
For each one, Anna offers solution to help you get unstuck, alongside insights on enmeshment, repair, attachment, and why a little space can sometimes make attraction burn brighter.