Dear Roe,
My boyfriend is always getting moody with me and passive aggressive when I don’t want to have sex. We have it at least three times a week, but he has a very high sex drive meaning he wants it daily. I am tired from work and sometimes just not in the mood. Right now he is angry at me because I ate my dinner and was too full to have sex. What should I do?
Dump him immediately.
There are relationships where differing sex drives become an irreconcilable difference, and that’s okay. There are relationships where couples accept or work through differing sex drives, and of course that’s fine too. But your issue isn’t actually that you have different sex drives – it’s that your boyfriend is disrespectful, emotionally immature, manipulative and coercive.
If the issue were simply differing sex drives, you and your boyfriend would be talking about strategies to address this issue so that you both feel desired, appreciated, respected and safe whether you are trying to initiate sex or turning it down; you would be addressing how to stay connected even when not sexually active, emotionally and through non-sexual physical affection; and you would be discussing what boundaries you are comfortable with when it comes to your boyfriend seeking out sexual pleasure when you’re not in the mood, be it masturbation or pornography consumption or, if you were so inclined, opening up the relationship.
If his response to you saying no is anger, moodiness and passive aggression, then it is not always going to feel emotionally safe to say no – and that is coercion
But your boyfriend isn’t trying to respect you, communicate with you, connect with you or make you feel appreciated, loved or safe. He is using anger, passive aggression and displays of resentment and contempt to make you feel pressured and unsafe. If his response to you saying no is anger, moodiness and passive aggression, then it is not always going to feel emotionally safe to say no – and that is coercion. It may be subtle, he may not think of it as such, but it is emotional manipulation and coercion. Sexual consent is about being happy to say yes – it’s not about being afraid to say no.
People of all genders, but particularly women, are often encouraged to normalise coercive, manipulative and downright dangerous behaviour from partners. You don’t mention your gender, but women and people who are partnered with men are often affected by damaging cultural stereotypes around gender and sex. Tired, simplistic narratives about “the male libido” and the idea that men always want sex mean that a lot of women feel under pressure to have sex with male partners even when they don’t want to, in order to be a good partner. (These narratives about men always wanting sex can also deeply harm men, whose experiences of sexual harassment or sexual violence often aren’t taken seriously because of these gender tropes.)
The past few years have also seen a major cultural misunderstanding around the idea of sex positivity, which is particularly worrying for young people. Sex positivity, at its core, is simply about replacing cultural and societal fear, shame and judgment around consensual sex with ideas of respect, autonomy and pleasure; allowing people to make informed decisions about their sex life without being shamed for it.
Sex positivity thus inherently also means respecting everyone’s right to say no whenever they want, or to have very little sex or no sex, whatever their choice. However, cultural misunderstandings around sex positivity – some unintentional, some deliberate and weaponised – have meant that many young people and women in particular can feel under pressure to have sex to prove that they are cool or non-judgmental or non-prudish.
Let us be unequivocal: Shaming people for not having sex is not nor will it ever be sex positive. Shaming people for making decisions about their personal boundaries, comfort and bodies is not nor will it ever be sexual empowerment. And pressuring women into having sex they don’t want to have is not nor will it ever be part of women’s liberation, equality or empowerment.
Your boyfriend is getting angry at you when you say no to sex, showing that he does not respect you, feels entitles to sex with you, is happy to make you feel like an object that isn’t serving its purpose if you turn him down
And yet this type of shaming and coercion happens all the time, culturally and in relationships. This year, Women’s Aid released the results of its Too Into You campaign, which focuses on young people’s relationships. Reports included the responses to a relationship that was targeted at young women aged 18-25 who might already have concerns about their own relationship or about a friend. More than 20,000 people answered the quiz, and of these respondents, 69 per cent (10,465) said their partner had forced or pressured them to do something sexual they didn’t want to do. That is an alarming number of young women who are in relationships where being sexually pressured, manipulated or coerced is normal. This should not be happening. This is not normal, this is not healthy, this is not love.
These behaviours get normalised as coercive people tell their partners that “if they really loved them” you would have sex with them, or that “it’s no big deal”, or sulking and acting passive aggressive if you say no – all ways of undermining your boundaries, making you doubt yourself, and then making it harder for you to feel comfortable saying no the next time.
This happens all the time, and it’s happening here.
Let’s break down the layers of what your boyfriend is doing. He is expressing no interest in or empathy for your daily experience of life, not caring if you are tired or stressed. He isn’t appreciating that you do have very regular sex, and instead is focused only on when you don’t have it. And he is getting angry at you when you say no to sex, showing that he does not respect you, feels entitles to sex with you, is happy to make you feel like an object that isn’t serving its purpose if you turn him down – and, importantly, he is showing that he is very comfortable with the idea of you having sex you don’t want out of fear, guilt or obligation. He is comfortable with emotional coercion.
I promise you that you deserve better than this. Leave this guy, and go find it
It doesn’t matter if he has never hit you, or if he is kind to you sometimes, or if he apologises after losing his temper, or if he tells you that he loves you. He is making active, ongoing decisions to pressure you, objectify you and lash out at you.
That is not someone you should be with.
I promise you that you can have a healthy, loving relationship with someone who treats you kindly and respectfully. I promise you that you can have a sex life that feels empowering, communicative, tender, pleasurable and sexy, without ever being tinged with fear or guilt or obligation. I promise you that you deserve better than this. Leave this guy, and go find it.