According to an expert, watching rom-coms or porn for sex advice is like watching the Fast and the Furious and thinking you know how to drive.
In many relationships, there can be a phenomenon known as desire discrepancy and while it can and often does refer to sex, all too often it pops up in many other areas too of the relationship.
Most couples have trouble having the conversations about this discrepancy, but understanding what sparks desire in your partner for you could help with this.
Speaking to The Moncrieff Show, Emily Power Smith, clinical sexologist and psychosexual therapist, explained that this isn't an issue that's limited to heterosexual couples, and same-sex couples experience it too.
She said: "The main reason I see couples is for desire discrepancy, and it's usually sexual desire discrepancy. And it isn't just heterosexual, that would be for same sex couples as well.
"It makes sense if you think about it. The idea that two people are going to, whether they even ever began as exactly the same, are going to remain exactly the same in their levels of desire for intimacy is bonkers.
"That would mean they would have to be the same for their desire for adventure or nights out or time with family or downtime or types of wine. We have differences.
"They're perfectly normal. They're going to happen to us all at some point in our relationships. It isn't something that we have to worry about quite as much as we tend to."
One thing that crops up in her sessions is how there aren't enough models of what relationships are really like, and people are putting a lot of weight into what they see in rom-coms.
"They are going to keep me busy till the end of my days. 'If he loved me, he would just know,' is one of the classics that keeps me busy," Emily jokes.
"It's made up. It's fiction. It's acting. It's you know, it's like watching porn and thinking you then know how to be a great lover. It's all made up.
"It's like watching the Fast and the Furious and then thinking, you know how to drive. You don't do that on real roads.
"None of this gives us useful information, but we're not given anything alternative that we can actually trust.
"So even even the idea of what desire is and what arousal is, we're only given one model, which is a young man, healthy man's model of what arousal should look like.
"A lot of people aren't [young healthy men] and it doesn't work for them. And then they come to someone like me going, 'I'm broken.'
"'I'm not getting the same. It doesn't work for me that way'. And I'm like, 'Well, that's because you don't fit that one small cohort.'"
One of the key things to look into with your partner, Ms Power Smith says, is why we want to be sexually intimate in the first place, and asking questions in a slightly different way.
She suggested instead of asking your partner "Why don't you fancy me anymore?" a more useful question might be, "When are you most attracted to me?"
She continued: "One is kind of accusatory and the other one opens the question, 'Oh, when do I find you most attractive?'
"Often it might be when they see their person doing their job really well or laughing with friends or having an adventure that they're not even a part of.
"There's all sorts of things that we can bring in if we can sit down and have the difficult conversation, which is often where people are stuck.
"People really struggle to have [that conversation]. It's very, very vulnerable because we take it very personally."
Main image: Couple in restaurant, man paying. Pic: Alamy Stock Photo
