Book Summary: Intimacy and Desire by David Schnarch

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On this page

1. Introduction
2. Chapter 1: There Is Always a Low Desire Partner and the Low Desire Partner Always Controls Sex
3. Chapter 2: Since Your "Self" Showed Up, Sexual Desire Hasn't Been the Same
4. Chapter 3: The Low Desire Partner Usually Controls the High Desire Partner's Adequacy
5. Chapter 4: Holding On to Your Self
6. Chapter 5: Intimacy Shapes Your Sexual Desire
7. Chapter 6: Changing Monogamy from Martyrdom to Freedom
8. Chapter 7: Desire Fades When You Stop Growing
9. Chapter 8: Wanting, Not Wanting to Want, and Two-Choice Dilemmas
10. Chapter 9: Normal Marital Sadism, the Devil's Pact, and Other Dark Stuff
11. Chapter 10: What Does It Take to Really Change Things? Safety, Growth, and Critical Mass
12. Chapter 11: A Collaborative Alliance Is More Important Than Perfect Technique
13. Chapter 12: Curing Ticklishness and Noxious Touch
14. Chapter 13: Tender Loving Sex
15. Chapter 14: Blow Your Mind!
16. Appendix A: Referral Information (Additional Resources)
17. Appendix B: Overcoming Discomfort with Oral Sex
18. More book summaries: Sex and desire

Introduction

The book: Intimacy & Desire by David Schnarch

Schnarch starts by saying who this book is not for. If you want to hear that desire runs on hormones, or you want to be told "Just do it!", or you believe desire dies and never comes back, he suggests reading something else.

Most of us grow up with views of desire that assume a healthy person in a healthy relationship simply has it: desire as reproduction, as Freudian libido, as the natural result of true love, or as a hunger like food. By those views, low desire means something is wrong with you. Schnarch takes the opposite view. Desire problems are so common that they are normal. He cites a 1994 study of 3,432 randomly selected Americans in which desire was the number one sexual problem, reported by 33 percent of women and 16 percent of men. In a 2006 online survey he built for NBC's Dateline, about 27,500 people took part, and 68 percent had sexual desire problems.

The book has four parts. Part One explains why normal people have desire problems. Part Two shows how partners push each other to grow through them and introduces the Four Points of Balance. Part Three looks at how your own history plays in. Part Four is more sexually explicit and covers physical ways to work on desire.

Chapter 1: There Is Always a Low Desire Partner and the Low Desire Partner Always Controls Sex

Brett and Connie arrive bitter and polarized. Brett, the partner with higher desire, says Connie withholds sex to control him. Connie says Brett pressures her constantly. A prior therapist had told Connie to do touch exercises even when she didn't want to. Schnarch won't tell her to "Just do it!" He says it promotes impersonal sex. Research on that approach found some couples briefly had sex more often, but with no more desire, and within two years most were back where they started.

He also rejects the idea that sex is a natural function. If desire is supposed to be automatic, the low desire partner (LDP) feels defective.

Then come his two rules. First, there is always a low desire partner and a high desire partner (HDP). These are relative positions, not personality traits, and they shift by topic. You can be the HDP for sex and the LDP for intimacy, chores, or visiting in-laws.

Second, the low desire partner always controls sex. The HDP makes most of the initiations, the LDP decides which ones to respond to, and that decides when sex happens. The rule holds for any shared task. "The partner with the least desire holds the decisive vote." Many LDPs don't want this control. Connie cries that sometimes "all I want is to feel like I belong to me!"

Brett and Connie hadn't had sex in six months. Schnarch tells them nothing is going wrong, because "things going wrong and things not going the way you want are two different things."

Chapter 2: Since Your "Self" Showed Up, Sexual Desire Hasn't Been the Same

Doreen and Adam once had sex twice a week. Now it's once a month, and only when Doreen initiates. Adam says, "I love Doreen, but I'm not in love with her." Doreen thinks it isn't normal for the man to be the low desire partner. Schnarch says the man is the LDP in half the couples who seek his help.

He draws on anthropologist Helen Fisher's three drives of love and desire: lust, romantic love, and attachment. Fisher concludes that romantic love is time-limited. When Schnarch met her in 2002, he proposed a fourth drive: developing and preserving a self. In his clinical experience, selfhood shapes desire as much as the other three, probably more.

The first self humans developed was a reflected sense of self, one that relies on feedback from others. Partners also shape each other, which Schnarch calls co-evolution. Each tries to carve out a personal niche in the relationship, and those efforts collide. He cites psychiatrist Jürg Willi, who sees partners' criticisms as often accurate and as the way normal partners push each other to grow.

Why does the LDP control sex? Schnarch thinks natural selection gave the LDP control because the struggles it produced made the human self grow. In the end Doreen sees why she has stayed through the tension: "Because my relationship with Adam is important to me."

Chapter 3: The Low Desire Partner Usually Controls the High Desire Partner's Adequacy

After twenty years of marriage, Sally has stopped propping Robert up. Robert takes her low desire as a verdict on his own desirability. Early on, Sally began making more signs of pleasure than she felt because he seemed to need it. The more she faked enthusiasm, the less she wanted sex. So the LDP ends up controlling the HDP's sense of adequacy, too.

Schnarch calls this borrowed functioning. "It's like your self is a balloon your partner inflates." You feel better for a while, then you leak and need more, and the partner doing the inflating is drained. When partners depend on each other for a positive reflected sense of self, they have an emotional fusion. They regulate their emotions through each other instead of inside themselves. Schnarch says this describes most relationships, but you need to grow beyond it.

No amount of praise gives you a solid self. "A solid sense of self develops from confronting yourself, challenging yourself to do what's right, and earning your own self-respect." Marriage, he writes, is "an ecosystem designed to help you become an adult."

The chapter also introduces mind-mapping, the constant reading of your partner's thoughts and intentions. Sally and Robert mapped each other every night at bedtime, each watching for signs of sex. And "people who can't control themselves control the people around them." This is why Schnarch no longer preaches compromise and negotiation. He helps people hold on to themselves.

Does marriage kill sex? In a sense, yes, but desire problems belong to the middle phase of marriage. They are how love relationships grow.

Chapter 4: Holding On to Your Self

Carol and Randall trade divorce threats in the first minutes of their session, though neither plans to leave. After a silence, Schnarch asks how long it has been since they've done each other, and they both laugh.

A solid self, Schnarch says, is stable and flexible at once. It is one of four abilities he calls the Four Points of Balance:

1. Solid Flexible Self: staying clear about who you are, especially when your partner pressures you to adapt and conform.
2. Quiet Mind-Calm Heart: calming yourself down, soothing your own hurts, and regulating your own anxiety.
3. Grounded Responding: staying calm and not overreacting, instead of running away, when your partner gets anxious or upset.
4. Meaningful Endurance: facing hard issues and tolerating discomfort for the sake of growth.

Carol and Randall are emotionally gridlocked. "Emotional gridlock is when what you want to do blocks what your partner wants to do, and vice versa." Signs include repeated arguments, more talking making things worse, and apologies that stop working. Sex, money, kids, and in-laws are the usual areas. Gridlock can't be talked through. It is resolved by strengthening the Four Points, a process Schnarch calls differentiation: keeping your emotional balance in your important relationships.

The turning point comes at home. Carol calms herself and says it plainly: "I want you to talk with me about our sexual problem. I'm not going to avoid this anymore." Randall slows his racing heart and tells her the truth about feeling pushed, and about his own part. They kiss, and that afternoon they make love without an argument first. Months later they were having sex once or twice a week. When people ask Schnarch how to become more differentiated, he tells them, "Just get married. You'll get all the practice you need."

Chapter 5: Intimacy Shapes Your Sexual Desire

Sharon is the high desire partner for intimacy and the low desire partner for sex. Thomas is the reverse. Thomas sums it up: "Sharon doesn't want to screw, and I don't want to talk."

Schnarch separates two kinds of intimacy. Other-validated intimacy depends on your partner accepting you, validating you, or disclosing in return. Self-validated intimacy means you validate and soothe yourself while you let yourself be known. Dating couples run on the first kind. Long-term relationships need the second, because sooner or later you have to say something your partner won't like, and the validation stops. "Intimacy is not designed to make you feel one particular way; it's designed to make you grow."

Sharon wanted to map Thomas's mind but didn't want him mapping hers, especially during sex. She froze when he asked what she liked, because her preferences would reveal her. She wanted acceptance before revealing herself, and Schnarch points out that acceptance can only come after.

He borrows from infant research. Babies deliberately break synchrony with caregivers several times each minute, and time out of sync matters as much as time in sync. To resolve gridlock, partners have to get out of step on purpose and stop responding in kind. Self-validated intimacy does that. It isn't venom in the name of honesty. It means confronting yourself and saying what you've avoided. A mix of both kinds of intimacy, he says, works best over the long term.

Chapter 6: Changing Monogamy from Martyrdom to Freedom

Karen is a star saleswoman and the high desire partner. Julian, a high school math teacher, avoided treatment for years for reaching orgasm too quickly. After he backed out of an appointment five years earlier, they became nearly celibate. Karen then had a six-month affair, and she tells Julian it was natural and his fault.

To Schnarch, "monogamy is not a promise; it's a system." It creates a sexual monopoly, and the LDP controls the supply. Julian withheld for many reasons, including fear of being used the way his mother used men. But Karen's affair wasn't freedom. Schnarch calls affairs pseudo-differentiation. Defiance isn't autonomy, because the control still sits with your partner.

The shift comes when Karen stops making promises to Julian. She tells him she won't have more affairs, as a commitment to herself. "I'm not interested in earning your trust anymore. I want to earn my own trust." Schnarch describes two kinds of monogamy. One is imposed from outside, by a spouse or society. The other comes from your own Four Points of Balance and "prompts generosity rather than withholding."

One day Julian catches himself thinking Karen is exploiting him, knows the thought isn't true, and walks over and initiates. Schnarch adds that even well-differentiated people stay attracted to others, and the Four Points help you tolerate that tension cleanly. "Monogamy is about meaningful endurance, tolerating discomfort for growth. So is real love."

Chapter 7: Desire Fades When You Stop Growing

Regina, a TV producer, and Ellen, an attorney, are a conflict-avoidant couple. Regina, the LDP, thought her fading desire was menopause. It wasn't. Trouble surfaced when they planned a move to Regina's hometown, where Ellen would give up her law practice. Schnarch says busy schedules were not the cause.

His explanation for sexual boredom is simple. Each partner rules out what makes them uncomfortable, and the couple does whatever is left. "Sexual relationships always consist of leftovers." People have sex up to the limits of their development, so boredom is guaranteed. The way out is novelty, which raises anxiety, and "sexual novelty is always introduced unilaterally." Novelty is mostly mental. Couples fighting over doing something new are really fighting about revealing something new.

When your partner's importance outgrows your Four Points of Balance, Schnarch says you have four options: dominate, submit, withdraw, or strengthen your Four Points. Regina tried all of them over Ellen's wish for oral sex. She refused to talk, then talked as if it were a burden, then withdrew for almost a month. Finally she faced her own anxiety, and the night went far better than she had imagined.

The core of it is anxiety tolerance, not anxiety reduction. Schnarch also names a common reluctance: "We don't really want to grow, we just want the benefits of being grown."

Chapter 8: Wanting, Not Wanting to Want, and Two-Choice Dilemmas

Schnarch treats desire as a capacity you can develop, one that often increases with age. Human desire is about wanting your partner, not only wanting sex. "Think of desire as wanting."

Tom and Helen have lived together for years. They started out having sex four or five times a week. Now it's less than every other month. Tom, the LDP, says he can't decide whether he wants sex or marriage, and Helen is ready to move on. Schnarch tells Tom, "You want to be wanted, but you don't want to want." Wanting made Tom feel vulnerable, a lesson from a manipulative mother.

The chapter's big idea is the two-choice dilemma. Schnarch defines it as being "when you want two choices but you only get one." The classic LDP version is not wanting sex but wanting to stay married to someone who does. People often solve this by stealing their partner's choice. Tom's endless indecision let him avoid deciding while keeping Helen around.

Tom gets practical help with Quiet Mind-Calm Heart. Give your dilemma meaning, which Schnarch calls humankind's number one self-soothing strategy. Control your behavior if you can't regulate your emotions. Don't take your partner's behavior personally. Take a time-out when you need one, and set a time to reconnect.

Eventually Tom tells Helen honestly that he can't say he wants to marry, and that she should do what's best for her. Sex that night is fantastic. Three months later he proposes. When Helen takes time to decide, he tells her, "Helen, you have to do what you really want." She says yes.

Chapter 9: Normal Marital Sadism, the Devil's Pact, and Other Dark Stuff

Normal marital sadism is the pleasure of inflicting psychological pain, short of physical violence. If you often need to get even, hold grudges, lose your temper, or feel entitled to payback when hurt, Schnarch says you qualify. Sex is its most common arena. Of twenty couples at one of his retreats, every one reported deliberately hurting their partner, and half said they enjoyed it. In a sample of one hundred therapists, 88 percent said they did it too.

Barbie and Ken are a trophy couple who torment each other daily. Barbie withholds sex to make Ken unhappy, and Ken ogles younger women. Then they make what Schnarch calls the Devil's Pact, an initiation deal. Ken stops initiating so Barbie won't feel pressured and can initiate herself. Six weeks pass with nothing. Barbie says she felt Ken watching and waiting, so she felt pressured anyway. The pact doesn't change the system. It makes it worse.

In therapy, Schnarch asks Barbie a hard question. If it is abuse to force someone to do something they don't want, is it abuse to force someone to give up sex they'd legitimately like to have? Barbie declines to look at herself, and the couple ends therapy to see a spiritual counselor instead.

Whether things change, Schnarch says, comes down to Meaningful Endurance, your willingness to tolerate pain for growth.

Chapter 10: What Does It Take to Really Change Things? Safety, Growth, and Critical Mass

What finally makes people act despite their fears? Schnarch's answer is integrity. He questions a common therapy credo, "Safety and security leads to passion." Constant efforts to stay safe, he says, kill desire.

Sue grew up keeping her depressed, volatile mother calm. Joe, her husband of fourteen years, is accommodating to a fault. Schnarch describes two cycles in relationships. In the comfort/safety cycle, things stay familiar and anxiety stays low. In the growth cycle, things change and anxiety rises. Over time the comfort cycle becomes an avoidance cycle and stops being comfortable.

"Marriage gives control to the person who wants to grow." A relationship stays in the comfort cycle only by consensus, so one partner can push it into growth. Joe stops trying to drag Sue along and starts controlling himself. When one partner develops a more solid self, Schnarch says, the other can dominate, submit, withdraw, or grow.

Sue escalates and finally says she's getting a divorce. Joe goes quiet, then says, "Don't ever tell me that again unless you're on your way out the door!" They have reached critical mass, the point where pressure finally triggers real change. It shows up as an uneasy quiet, not an explosion. "Critical mass is not the worst argument you've ever had, but it is the most important." Schnarch's advice for going through it includes moving quickly, not grabbing the high ground, and not giving ultimatums. Weeks later Sue reports they made love four times in two weeks, a record for them.

Chapter 11: A Collaborative Alliance Is More Important Than Perfect Technique

Part Four brings the body in, because holding on to yourself during sex can only be learned during physical contact.

The foundation is a collaborative alliance, which Schnarch defines as "an informal agreement based on mutual interest" that brings out the best in both partners. It can be lost in a moment, and couples with desire problems usually drop it during sex. It involves being honest when it's difficult, not tampering with the truth, confronting yourself and letting your partner read you, and operating from the best in you.

Larry and Juanita have been married nineteen years. By their second year, sex had dropped to once a month. As intercourse approached, Juanita, who was sexually abused as a child, felt alone and on the firing line.

Schnarch gives three tools. In hugging till relaxed, you stand on your own two feet, put your arms around your partner, focus on yourself, and quiet yourself down. In heads on pillows, you lie on your sides facing each other and look into each other's eyes while you calm yourselves. In feeling while touching, both partners follow the point of physical connection, starting with hands, face, and arms. For restarting an alliance, he says all three beat intercourse.

Larry's growth shows first with his father, who keeps pitching schemes. Larry tells him to forget the seven thousand dollars he owes and not to come for money again. That night he tells Juanita he won't have sex the old way anymore. Later, when Larry loses his erection and looks away, Juanita catches his eye. "Don't take away the best teammate I've ever had."

Chapter 12: Curing Ticklishness and Noxious Touch

Ticklishness, Schnarch says, is a bigger problem than people realize, and treating it can help desire. Its laughter is reflexive, not a sign of pleasure.

Anthony and Colleen have been celibate for three years. Colleen says, "When Anthony touches me, my skin starts crawling." Anthony grew up in a family that held each other down and tickled, and at thirteen he simply decided not to be ticklish anymore.

Schnarch's method puts the person being touched in control. When ticklishness hits, all touching stops until the receiver is calm, usually a minute or two, then resumes when the receiver asks. Firm, predictable touch comes first, and lighter touch later. For genital ticklishness he developed palm over groin. The giver rests a palm over the partner's genitals with definite, gentle pressure, showing there's no attempt to probe. For a man, cupping the penis does the same.

In session, Colleen realizes her thoughts about Anthony match the ones she had when her family tickled her. Asked how often she thought them as a child, she says, "Hundreds!" A few days later she suggests they make love. They start with hugging till relaxed and heads on pillows and reach a quieter connection than ever before.

Chapter 13: Tender Loving Sex

"Tender loving sex is not a type of sex. It is a meaning that permeates your sexual experience."

Kate and Paul are in second marriages and have sex once a month. Paul often takes thirty minutes or more to reach orgasm, and sometimes can't, so Kate has learned it doesn't pay to get aroused. Schnarch starts with holding hands in his office. At first they do it mechanically. Then he has them breathe, calm down, and attend to the point where their hands touch. It feels much better, and he tells them this is probably a small picture of their sex. They move on to hugging till relaxed and learn to sense each other's breathing without losing themselves.

He describes brightening, a softening of the face and a look of aliveness that often follows hard but collaborative work. At his nine-day retreats, people start noticing it in each other around day four. Paul realizes he is angry most of the time, learns to tolerate his feelings instead of venting them, and recovers memories of his father's rages.

Kate dreams of eyes-open sex, where both partners let themselves be seen and known. In a survey of 10,500 people on Schnarch's website, 23 percent never made eye contact during sex, and only 13 percent said they or their partner had eyes-open orgasms. People close their eyes, he says, because they fear they wouldn't be loved if they were truly known.

Chapter 14: Blow Your Mind!

The chapter opens with a last lunch with Schnarch's old therapist, who urges him to write about lusty, wanton sex for young couples because they waste so much time. "This chapter is in his honor."

Nicolle and Phillip have sex once a month. Nicolle, the LDP, finds it boring. When Schnarch asks her to describe the sex she likes, her face lights up. She learned about wanton sex with past partners and has hidden it to protect Phillip's reflected sense of self. "You can be the low desire partner and sex-starved too."

Why don't long-term couples have that kind of sex? Schnarch says people don't let go like that with their support systems. It's easier in an affair, where the other person strokes your reflected sense of self and neither of you really sees the other. Wanton sex with your spouse takes Four Points of Balance and healthy aggression, which he separates from the sadism of Chapter 9.

Much of the chapter is about oral sex, which Schnarch argues can calm you and change your brain. Receiving can be a form of giving. Phillip, who reaches orgasm quickly, resists taking his turn receiving, and Schnarch tells him that receiving is how he'll build control. Phillip's father was a violent alcoholic, and Schnarch helps him see the man was weak, not powerful. "Weak people are destructive; powerful people are constructive."

Schnarch closes the book with one line: "You can work on your relationship all you want, but your relationship will be working on YOU!"

Appendix A: Referral Information (Additional Resources)

Some couples need a therapist, especially if their Four Points of Balance are weak. Schnarch says a therapist can't bring you to a higher level of differentiation than he or she has reached. "Find someone with whom you feel productively uncomfortable." For sexual dysfunctions, a certified sex therapist is best. He argues against blending attachment-based and differentiation-based therapy, and he lists his own intensive therapy program, weekend workshops, and nine-day retreats.

Appendix B: Overcoming Discomfort with Oral Sex

This appendix is about getting past sticking points, not technique. If you aren't monogamous, get tested for HIV and other STDs and use condoms or dental dams as needed. Deal with taste and smell outside of sex by deliberately tasting each other beforehand. Let the giver control the pace, and agree in advance how ejaculation will be handled. Above all, regular practice works much better than occasional high-pressure "do or die" efforts.