Maverick Life

Betrayal, trust and desire — understanding the lasting impact of infidelity

19 Mar 2025

Dr Eve, a family therapist, sex therapist and expert in intimacy trauma, brings years of experience and academic training to her therapy room. In this column, she offers a candid exploration of the deep-seated issues surrounding intimacy, loneliness and connection in today’s world.

My partner has a much lower sex drive than I do, and it’s becoming a real struggle. I’m a healthy 34-year-old man, and intimacy is important to me, but after eight months in this relationship, I feel like I’m not getting the sexual connection I need. At the start, our sex life was great, we were both equally enthusiastic, and I thought I had found the perfect match. But things have changed.

She doesn’t seem as interested in sex anymore, and I don’t understand why. We’ve had some challenges along the way – I did have a fling for a while – but we moved past it. Or at least, I thought we did.

I don’t know what to do. How do I navigate this without sacrificing my needs or hurting our relationship?

Help!

Anonymous

***

Hello Anonymous,

Welcome to the Betrayal Club, a place no one wants to belong to. Membership isn’t just about an act (or multiple acts) of intimate betrayal by a loved one. It’s also about something deeper: the failure to acknowledge the impact of that betrayal – the way a “fling” can fracture trust.

But let’s set that aside for a moment and take a step back. Beyond betrayal, there’s a broader reality at play: desire disparity.

Almost every couple faces it at some point. In any relationship, one partner will always have a higher or lower sex drive than the other; it’s a natural, if sometimes frustrating, dynamic. And among heterosexual couples, it is usually the man, like you, who complains and identifies as having the higher desire.

Irrespective of who has the higher/lower desire, the discrepancy leads to sexual and relationship dissatisfaction.

Daily I ask myself: “Why is this healthy woman on my therapy couch, stating that she has no libido, no desire for sexual activity – with her partner?”

I push aside judgements from societal norms that lead us to believe that it is always women who have the lower desire. I pay attention to the research that consistently shows that about 43% of women at some time of their lives have low sexual interest and arousal.

This is marked by a loss of desire to sexual triggers/cues that the woman previously found arousing, and she is distressed by this loss.

This means that in the beginning your partner was aroused and excited when you did sexual things with and to each other. Now she is no longer excited and aroused when these things happen or may happen. Looking at this figure of 43%, it is understandable that you would label your partner’s low sexual desire as the problem that needs addressing.

I invite you to think again.

Read more: Intimacy, loneliness and connection — Navigating the complexities of modern relationships

Theories of sexual desire often suggest that women’s desire is more context-dependent than men’s and more influenced by external factors. In other words, while your testosterone may readily spark arousal and a desire for sexual release, a woman’s arousal isn’t primarily hormone-driven. Instead, it is deeply connected to a sense of safety – when she feels safe, she is more likely to feel sexy.

A fascinating study in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour, published in January 2023, found that over the long term, women’s sexual desire tended to fluctuate more than men’s. However, in the short term, there were no significant differences in desire variability between the two.

Multiple factors negatively influence women’s sexual desire, namely biological, psychological, relational, cognitive and sociocultural factors.

Take time to consider if your partner has any of these inhibiting factors as these will shut down sexual interest and arousal. For example: if she has a medical illness, if she is on any medication, if she suffers from depression or anxiety, abuses substances, has disordered eating, experienced adult sexual violations or childhood trauma, if she is at risk to have low sexual interest and arousal, or if she has relational distress, her sexual desire and arousal will plummet.

Back to the Betrayal Club.

When you stepped out and had a fling, you shattered her sense of relational safety. And without relationship safety, there can be no sexual safety. This isn’t just about a mismatch in desire, it’s about emotional and sexual betrayal.

You say “we got over it”. But what you really mean is that you moved on – and maybe she hasn’t. I know this because her most vulnerable, intimate part is telling you loud and clear. Withdrawing or shutting down sexually is a common protective response to betrayal trauma; because that’s exactly what infidelity is: a profound breach of trust.

Some people call infidelity a “brain injury” as the brain is in disarray. Her safety with you has been broken. She thought she knew you and suddenly you appear as a stranger to her.

The part of you that kept secrets, the one that deceived and lied, has forced her to question everything. Every shared moment, every act of intimacy, every declaration of love, attraction and commitment now spins through her mind, not with warmth but with a heavy weight of distrust.

And, dear Anonymous, here’s the hard truth: that fling will never fully disappear. If you stay together, it will always be part of your story. Who would have thought that something so fleeting could leave such lasting damage?

I invite you to pause and consider your partner’s loss of sexual desire and arousal through a different lens, the lens of betrayal.

Best you acknowledge – apology is never enough – how your injudicious betrayal behaviour has hurt her deeply to a point of sexual shutting down; acknowledge that your selfish act of infidelity has shattered her trust in you and the relationship.

Prepare to become the most trustworthy version of yourself, for months, and even longer. And perhaps, with ongoing accountability, consistency, transparency and predictability, your partner may once again feel safe enough to open herself to you, both emotionally and sexually. DM

Have a question about intimacy, relationships, or connection? Send it to Dr Eve, [email protected] – she may answer it in an upcoming column. You are welcome to indicate if you would prefer to remain anonymous.

Categories:

Maverick Life

Tags:

DM is much better if you are signed in...

Maverick Life