Dear Listener,

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There was a past season in my life when I loved a man so deeply that I was certain I would marry him.

 

We had a rhythm that brought sweet union and rituals that offered us a sense of safety in a chaotic world. I loved how he folded the laundry and how he said my name in the mornings. We shared grocery lists, long-term dreams, and curated playlists that made us feel like we belonged to one another.

And yet, within the quiet space of our warm bed, my body began to lose interest. My desire didn’t fade because of distance or emotional neglect.

It faded within connection itself.

It faded within the sweetness of daily familiarity.

It faded within the very love I believed would carry me for a lifetime.

 

 

I remember asking myself a question I was afraid to say aloud: If I love him so deeply, why don’t I want to have sex with him anymore?

 

Everything I had been taught about love and sex told me they were inseparable. According to the dominant narrative, if you love someone enough, you should always want to be physically close to them. Monogamy was presented to me as the ultimate proof of devotion, the reliable foundation of stability, and the most natural expression of romantic love.

 

So when I stopped wanting sex with the man I adored, I didn’t just feel confused, I felt completely broken.

 

In the midst of that pain, I turned to the only thing I could trust: the research. I dug into the literature. I read Untrue, Mating in Captivity, How Love Conquered Marriage, and Sex at Dawn. I scoured journal articles, traced citations, and reviewed attachment theory and sexual desire across lifespan studies. I examined decades of research on the relationship between gender, desire, and commitment. I even returned to the data I gathered in my own dissertation on Relationship Anarchy, interview after interview with people who, like me, were unlearning the constraints of compulsory monogamy and searching for something more spacious.

 

What I found, again and again, was this:

 

Long-term monogamy, particularly for women, often suppresses desire, not because of a lack of love, but because of the collapse of erotic autonomy and diversity.

 

Women’s sexual desire declines early and sharply in monogamous relationships, far more than men’s. Desire is not sustained by stability alone. It is sustained by sovereignty, diversity, and freedom. As a culture, we have told women for centuries to trade all of that for the illusion of forever (despite the fact that women began cheating in monogamous relationships as much and often more than men once we achieved financial independence in the 1970’s).

 

When I finally stepped into non-monogamy, my body responded in a way that felt immediate and undeniable. New connections brought with them a sense of aliveness I hadn’t felt in years.
 

Wetness returned.

 

Curiosity returned.

 

Playfulness returned.

It felt as though my body was remembering a language it had not spoken in a very long time. That return to aliveness was profound. And yet, it was also accompanied by heartbreak.

 

When my partners formed new connections of their own, I cried. My nervous system flooded with fear. Every new date they went on felt like a potential ending. Every spark they experienced with someone else made me fear that I was being replaced.

 

Even in those moments of deep fear, I chose to stay. As difficult as it was, I knew I could not go back to the version of myself who had tried to force sexual desire into a narrow mold.

I could not go back after seeing what was possible in my own erotic life.

I could not go back after discovering what the research revealed about the reality of long-term desire.

I could not go back after reconnecting with a part of myself that I had nearly abandoned.

 

As a psychotherapist, I understood what was happening on a somatic level. Fear does not always indicate that something is wrong. Often, it means that something old is being touched. My body was reacting to a lifetime of cultural training, messages that taught me love must be exclusive to be real, that safety only comes through control, and that being chosen means being the only one.

 

I was learning, slowly and painfully, that those beliefs were not true.

 

People who want to stay will stay.

Love does not need to shrink in order to be sacred.

Sexual liberation is not selfish; it is a form of healing.

 

This process reminded me of leaving Christianity. When I first began skipping church on Sundays, I felt as though I was betraying something holy. However, over time, the guilt gave way to relief. That relief opened into joy and eventually softened into peace. The system I had left behind was not feeding my soul, it was starving it.

 

Monogamy, for me, has echoed that same pattern. I have grieved the fantasy I once held about what love should look like. I have grieved the comfort of simplicity and the illusion of control. I have grieved the version of myself who once believed she had to choose between being loved and being erotically alive.

 

In its place, I have found the profound relief of living in alignment with my erotic truth. I have come to know that:

 

I can love fully and still want more.

I can feel fear and not allow it to govern my life.

I can choose myself, again and again, even when it is messy, and even when it makes me cry.

 

This is not a story about certainty. It is a story about becoming. It is a story about learning to remain close to my body. It is a story about allowing research and lived experience to validate what my soul already knew. It is a story about discovering, with great tenderness, that desire is not the opposite of love. Desire is, in fact, one of love’s most honest and courageous expressions.

 

And I want to say all of this clearly because I would have given anything to hear it years ago. I wish someone had placed the research in my hands earlier. I wish I had heard the clinical framing, the validation, the truth of what so many people experience but rarely name.

It would have been so profoundly comforting to know that I wasn’t broken. What I was feeling had a name, a pattern, a reason, a research background. I share this now with the hope that it might offer others the kind of clarity and liberation I had to fight for through years of confusion, grief, and longing.

 

If I can help even one person avoid the kind of pain I endured, if I can make the path just a little softer for those walking this terrain, then every tear I cried along the way becomes part of something healing.

 

So I will leave you with this:

 

Pleasure Practice: What is your body trying to tell you about what it needs, even if you’re afraid to listen?

 

Sending All My Love,
Nicole

 

Nicole Thompson, M.A.

Sex and Relationship Psychotherapist

Clinical Psychology

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