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7 Mistakes That Slowly Kill Sexual Intimacy In Relationships
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Do you think you're being loving? Do you
think you're building intimacy? Well,
you might actually be doing the exact
opposite. There are seven innocent
behaviors that slowly train your
partner's brain to see you as anything
except a sexual partner. And the more
loving that you try to be, the faster
you kill their desire for you. Do you
remember when your partner couldn't keep
their hands off of you? When they looked
at you with that hungry look that made
you feel desired and wanted? Now, now
they find excuses. They're too tired.
They're too stressed. They need to wake
up early or they go through the motions,
but you can tell their heart isn't in
it. Now, you've tried everything. You've
been more romantic. You've planned very
special nights. You've bought lingerie
or tried new things. You've been more
understanding about their stress, more
supportive during those difficult times.
You've worked harder to be the perfect
partner, thinking that if you could just
love them better, desire them more, show
them how much they mean to you, things
would go back to how they used to be.
But instead of getting closer, you're
drifting further apart. Instead of more
passion, there's more distance and
you're starting to panic because you can
feel something fundamental shifting in
your relationship. The intimacy that
once felt effortless now feels forced.
The connection that used to be natural
now requires work that never seems to
pay off. The worst part is that you have
no idea what you're doing wrong. You're
being loving, supportive, understanding.
You're doing everything the relationship
experts tell you to do. So why is your
partner pulling away instead of pulling
closer? I'm Adam Lane Smith, the
attachment specialist. I've spent 16
years of training and experience working
with couples whose intimacy has been
slowly dying. And I can tell you that in
95% of cases, it's not about attraction
or compatibility or even love. It's
about specific behaviors that trigger
your partner's nervous system to
categorize you as something other than a
sexual partner. Most people have no idea
that they're doing this. They think
they're being loving, but their
attachment style is driving behaviors
that systematically destroy sexual
desire. Now, the good news here is that
once you understand what's happening,
you can reverse it. The couples who
learn these patterns don't just save
their intimacy, they often end up with
better sex lives than they had in the
beginning. Now, your sexual relationship
right now is dying. Every day that you
don't understand what's happening, your
partner's brain is building stronger
associations between you and burden, you
and obligation, you and everything
except desire. And once that neural
pathway solidifies, it becomes nearly
impossible to reverse. But here's what
happens when you catch this in time. You
stop the behaviors that are poisoning
your partner's attraction to you. You
understand which of the seven mistakes
you're making before they become
irreversible patterns. And you learn how
to trigger the neurochemical responses
that build desire instead of destroying
it. This video today is not just about
saving your sex life. It's about saving
your entire relationship. Because when
sexual intimacy dies, emotional intimacy
follows. And when that happens, you
become roommates who resent each other
rather than lovers who can't get enough
of each other. The couples who ignore
this pattern end up in dead bedrooms,
wondering how they went from passion to
practically strangers. But the ones who
master it, they build the kind of
lasting desire that most people think is
impossible in long-term relationships.
40 minutes from now, the end of this
video, you'll know exactly which side
you're on. Now, of these seven mistakes,
I'm going to break the first couple of
them down based on attachment styles.
And if you're anxiously attached or
quiet disorganized, you might do these
first couple. If you're avoidantly
attached or more loud disorganized, you
might do the next set. Let's look at
anxious attachment intimacy killers
first. Mistake number one, treating your
partner like a therapist. Using your
partner for emotional dumping, going
into emotional crises, dumping every
anxious thought and fear, endlessly
being afraid, and seeking constant
connection and constant reassurance. It
turns them not just into a therapist,
but almost a parent. And thinking that
this builds closeness is really common
for anxious people because they feel
closer, they feel more loving, and they
feel more cared for. But we call this
trauma dumping without boundaries.
expecting the other person to comfort
you and to manage your emotional state.
Remember that we should be
self-regulating about 70% of the time
and co-regulating with all other humans
about 30%. That means your partner might
fit into let's say 15 to 20% of your
co-regulation. That doesn't mean that
they should constantly be caring for you
and endlessly and be the one thing
preventing you from having a bad day. I
know that a lot of men who are paired
with anxiously attached women, their
wife will say, "Oh, it's been a tough
day." And a lot of men tell me in their
head, they go, "Man, when is she ever
going to have a good day?" And he just
feels like he's caretaking her
emotionally. Now, the neurobiological
effect of this, they stop seeing you as
a sexual partner. They start seeing you
as that person I have to manage, that
person who's always upset, almost like
that child I have to comfort endlessly.
This is not to say that your emotional
needs are too much, but if you treat
your partner as the one person on the
planet that you're constantly dumping
negativity at all the time and seeking
constant reassurance, this is going to
kill intimacy very quickly. Now, the
second one is similar but a little bit
different. Mistake number two that a lot
of anxious partners in particular use is
using sex for reassurance and
validation. Anxiously attached people
use sex as a way to get emotional
validation and feel loved rather than
physical connection or bonding intimacy.
You seek comfort and reassurance because
someone wants to have sex with you
through that physical intimacy instead
of a genuine shared desire. This turns
sex into emotional work often for the
partner or at sometimes you just sit
there and make them happy and they feel
that and it becomes an empty experience
because you're like okay I'm getting
enough because you want me that makes it
feel like another form of just
caretaking and sometimes the partner
will say I don't really want this like
dead fish experience is what they call
it. I don't want that level of
connection that that's not what I want
at all. I want someone who's having fun.
Your eyes are glazed over. I want
someone who's having fun here, too.
Right? A lot of partners actually stop
because of this process. I get asked all
the time, what is my attachment style?
What is my attachment style? What is my
attachment style? So, I have finally
launched the attachment assessment. This
is not a short quiz that just spits out
an answer after 3 seconds. This is a
thorough, indepth, sciencebacked
assessment. Check it out on my website,
adamlaneith.com, and learn your
attachment style, the severity of what
you're dealing with, and some next steps
you can take right now to build very
secure attachment. I want to try an
analogy with you. Okay, a lot of the
audience, you like animal analogies. It
works. If you have a cat and it's
constantly throwing up on your carpet
and you have to clean up that mess all
the time and when it sits with you, it
doesn't even look at you or engage with
you. It just sits with you. You pet it
and it doesn't seem to respond. Okay?
You have an unaffectate, constantly
messing cat every single day, throwing
up on your favorite things,
it's going to hurt your relationship
with that cat, right? It's going to make
that a cat much less attractive. You're
bonding with the cat way down. You might
still love that cat, but man, every day
I got to clean up after you. It's always
my favorite shirt or my pants or my
book, everything I love. you are always
throwing up on and you never really want
to connect with me. I have to seek you
out to connect with you. It's
exhausting. The more that you seek
constant emotional reassurance and
connection through your partner, the
comforting, overcomforting, the more
they see you as needy rather than
desirable and connecting with you
becomes emotionally exhausting. This
does often kill a lot of sexual desire
in relationships. Now, these are only
the first two problems, but if you think
that anxious attachment is the only
intimacy killer, you are wrong.
Avoidantly attached people destroy
desire in a completely different way.
And their method is actually more
devastating because it makes their
partner feel like they only matter for
one thing. So, here's two avoidant
attachment intimacy killers. Mistake
number three, the first of them, only
connecting in the bedroom. You are only
connecting in the bedroom. Outside of
it, you pretend you don't even know that person.
person.
You only connect in the bedroom. Every
touch is sexual. Everything has to lead
straight into sex immediately. You use
distance to feel in control through
silence, through pulling away, through
dodging actual connection and intimacy.
This is the heart of late stage avoidant
love. not being emotionally available at
all outside the bedroom while expecting
sexual availability inside of it. That's
not how it's supposed to work. That's a
dopamine binging cycle. That's using
your partner as a dopamine binge instead
of having an experience shared with
them. Now, let's hammer that in a little
bit. Mistake number one is only being
connecting in the bedroom. Mistake
number four goes even deeper. Total
emotional unavailability, especially
outside the bedroom.
They don't just stop needing you outside
the bedroom. Okay, that's not how that
works. A partner needs emotional
connection outside the bedroom to begin
fueling sexual desire. If someone is not
only only present for sex and out, but
they actively reject or or refuse to
engage at all outside.
That's abandonment.
That's what we call emotional
abandonment. The other partner starts
thinking, "You only care about me in the
bedroom, but you actually hate me
outside the bedroom. Outside of that, I
might as well be dead to you." This is
when the desire really starts to die
because sex becomes fully disconnected
from love. It's not a shared experience
anymore and there's no emotional safety
at all. This completely shuts down any
form of safety whatsoever. So if the
anxious person on one side is more
desperately craving validation and
connection and the avoidant partner is
only paying attention to them and making
eye contact if that during the bedroom.
This is a recipe for absolute disaster.
But we haven't even really got to the
bad ones yet. Okay. There's universal
intimacy destroyers that many people
everyone can be doing. There are three
more mistakes that destroy sexual desire
regardless of your attachment style. And
these three are the ones that couples
think are actually helping. This is what
couples do when they're trying to fix
things. That makes it so much worse.
Mistake number five, hot on the heels of
the other four, expecting sex to fix
emotional disconnection. Many couples
expect sex to solve their relationship
problems. Sex will make him pay
attention to me. Or, oo, I'll give her
sex and shut her up. Treating sex like
it's a painkiller. We'll just feel
better after sex. Sex will make
everything work. This turns intimacy
into a band-aid for the deeper issues
that got you there, rather than genuine
connection, desire. You know what's
going to happen? One of you might have a
cool, fun dopamine experience as you
grind one out, and the other one goes,
The more disappointing sex you have, the
more you form an aversion to it at all.
This isn't just, "Oh, we're not having
sex." It's, "Yeah, I I I don't really
think I want to have sex." And that's
that disgust, the ick, that's where it
really starts to die. Couples just try
to do it and doesn't go well. Queen
Victoria was famous for telling her
female subjects, "Close your eyes, think
of England, and do your duty."
That's not a recipe for building a good marriage.
marriage.
I know that a lot of the people watching
this show right now have had attachment
issues for their entire life. That's why
I want to invite every single one of you
to check out my attachment repair
program. It just might be the jump that
you need to go from insecurely attached
and lonely and frustrated to fully
secure, connected, and bonded in a great
relationship like nothing you've ever
felt before. Check out my website,
adamlaneith.com, for the attachment
repair program. Now, mistake number six
starts creeping in as the ick and the
resentment grows. It's weaponizing your
pain instead of sharing it. Instead of
being able to say, "Hey, I'm sad. I'm
lonely. I'm hurting. I feel sad that we
haven't been able to have sex. I'm
confused about our sex life. I don't
know what you want and I'd love to
learn. Can we work on this? Instead of
saying that passive graphs of comments,
right? It's uh it's it's a husband and a
wife watching a movie and the wife makes
a move and and and gives her husband a
big hug or climbs on top of him and the
husband nudges his wife and goes, "Well,
that'd be nice, wouldn't it?" Right?
passive aggressive little comments like
that. The side stabs in it's dodging
real vulnerability by hardening your
heart and hurting the other person, right?
right?
It's the wife watching a movie with her
husband and the husband does in the
movie does something romantic and she
goes, "Yeah, I bet that guy's having sex tonight."
tonight."
Whoa. Great way both sides to make sure
your partner never even watches a movie
with you again, by the way. And as those
passive aggressive comments get worse
and worse and worse,
everybody begins to shut down because
now you're developing overwhelming pain
and cortisol and anger and resentment.
Even if before you were just lonely, now
you're hurt and angry. This is
weaponizing your pain against your
partner. Now, a lot of times all these
six mistakes lead up to mistake number
seven, scorekeeping in the bedroom.
tracking who initiated last time,
keeping calendars of rejection, asking
why don't you want me the way I want
you. There was one famous man on the
internet famous for having a spreadsheet
of how many times in a year his wife
said no. If you remember that, shout out
to that man. Tracking your rejection
from your partner. Yes, it hurts. But if
you're keeping obsessive score, it
becomes a transactional experience and
it creates heavy resentment and
pressure. Look, I understand the
instinct to protect yourself, but a
marriage is not a place where people
should have to protect themsel from each
other, if that's even a thing. You've
already failed at the beginning steps of
marriage. Marriage should have emotional
safety where you can talk to the other
person. We'll talk in a moment about how
to start reversing some of this, but
getting here is not just, "Oh, whoops. I
was anxious. He was avoidant. Doomed."
No. Getting here is a long system of
thousands of little choices that add up.
And there is hope. There is hope. Now,
there is one final mistake. Mistake
number eight, bonus secret mistake.
That's actually the root cause of all
the others. And if you don't fix that
one, you're going to keep falling into
these destructive patterns no matter how
hard you try to avoid them. Okay? And
before I reveal the final mistake, I
want you to understand something
important. These seven patterns, they
don't just happen randomly. They're
driven by your specific attachment
styles. And each style has predictable
ways of destroying intimacy. At the end
of this video, I'm going to share a
resource that shows you exactly how your
attachment style is sabotaging your sex
life and what to do about it. But first,
let me show you the mistake that creates
all the others. Now, the root cause
mistake number eight or number zero,
however you want to look at it, letting
childhood wounds govern your sex life.
Not fixing your attachment issues in
childhood means letting your childhood
wounds rearrange your entire sexual
script. If your nervous system is used
to chaos, freaking out, rejection,
disappointment, performing, you're going
to create those patterns inside your
bedroom. This leads to all the other
seven mistakes because your nervous
system drives you toward familiar
dysfunction rather than healthy
intimacy. Fixing those attachment issues
protects you from falling into these
destructive patterns because you're no
longer operating from childhood survival
mechanisms. Instead of the anxious
person walking in and drama dumping on
their partner, they share and then ask
in return and then share a connection
moment. And then instead of feeling like
they have to constantly get validation
through sex, they feel like let's share
a fun experience and sex is fun and
flowing for both partners. Instead of
the avoidant person walking in and only
connecting in the bedroom, they're
actually connecting everywhere. And they
build to where the bedroom is a shared
experience. And instead of outside being
cold and detached and guarded, they're
open and connected. And the emotional
intimacy is even more fulfilling than
the physical intimacy. They grow
together. Now, when you do all of that,
if there does hit a rough patch, instead
of passive aggressive comments, keeping
score, being angry and resentful, you
say, "Hey, something feels off. Does it
feel off to you? Can we fix it? I I I
want to work with this with you on this.
Let's build a sex life that's fun."
That's what fixing your attachment
brings. It undoes all of these mistakes,
okay? Fixing those attachment issues
protect you from falling into constant
destructive patterns. You're no longer
operating from survival. Now that you
know all seven eight mistakes,
understanding them isn't enough. You
need to know how to reverse the damage
and rebuild desire. So that's what I'm
going to show you here next. Now, the
neurobiological damage here is pretty
tough. These mistakes
cause a lot of pain in your partner's
brain. And first of all, it cuts off
oxytocin production, that bonding
hormone that actually creates most
long-term sexual desire. And as you cut
off oxytocin, you begin emotional
starvation. Partners feel depleted
rather than fulfilled. They pull in and
contract in a sort of famine mode where
they they reserve their emotional
calories, if you will. This then builds
cortisol associations where your
presence, as you begin hurting each
other, triggers stress
instead of pleasure. Now your partner
instead of that's that person I adore is
oh no here they come again.
Now this creates what we call
unintentional wounding. Each of these
mistakes creates wounding in the partner
where you're further hurting each other
probably without meaning to. Their
nervous system then starts associating
you with pain, obligation, stress,
sadness rather than pleasure, safety,
connection, joy. This is why just trying
harder with the same behaviors makes
things worse. Like we talked about in
mistake number five, having more sex.
Just doing it. No, you're reinforcing
the negative associations deeper and
deeper and deeper. So, just have more
sex isn't the answer here that you're
looking for. First, we've got to stop
the behaviors that are creating negative
associations immediately. I come in with
couples and I say, "Okay, what is
hurting each one of you?" will his
passive aggressive comments. You sir, if
you want to continue this marriage, stop
those behaviors immediately. I will show
you how to speak to her about your
concerns, your sadness, your hurt. But
the passive aggressive comments that
died when you were 15 years old. How old
are you now? 45. Stop. Don't do that.
Unless you want a divorce. Okay. Now,
what's hurting you? Well, it's when she
looks at me and then looks disgusted.
Ma'am, you need to stop the looks of
disgust or the eye rolling, there's
another one, at your husband. This is
destructive. You're not a 15-year-old
girl anymore. How old are you? 45. Okay,
that's in the past. That's got to be
done. If you want a divorce, keep
rolling your eyes at him and and
sneering at him. If you want to build a
marriage, this is how you're going to
have to treat each other going forward.
Okay? Stopping those behaviors, saying,
"This is what it will take. we will both
agree to put down our guns and stop
shooting at each other. As we stop the
cortisol association, we stop the bleed.
We at least stabilize the body. Okay.
Next comes rebuilding desire. And this
requires patience. You have to rewire
the neural pathways away from oh no, not
that person to okay, I could do this to
wow, I kind of want to to wow, I really
want to. And it takes time and patience.
Sometimes those pathways you're in,
couples come to me at 30 years of
marriage and it's been 29 years of
damaging pathways and they get mad when
they don't see results in one session.
Okay? No, you got to be a little bit
patient. I'm not talking years of
rebuilding, but you have to be patient
and caring with each other. Okay?
Understand that it will take time to
grow. Understand that it's going to take
more than five minutes to have sex again
and love it. Okay? It will take some
time. And then next comes focus on
creating positive experiences together
with your partner's nervous system.
Remember why you were attracted to each
other in the first place. Rebuild that
connection. Okay? Vasopressin is really
important for this. Vasopressin is the
bonding hormone that says, "You're my
ally. I trust you. I care about you." It
removes cortisol associations and
replaces it with deep trust and
connection. Now, that inspires the
desire for intense oxytocin bonding,
which then drives sexual arousal in
long-term relationships for men and
women. So, hey, what is hurting us? How
can we fix it? What can we do to build
connection? What would make us thrive?
Walking through a plan together and
seeing the results and talking about
them. This is not possible with insecure
attachment style at the beginning. You
have to learn these skills and then do
them. As you build that together, you
rebuild a loving, thriving sex life.
That's how you do it. Okay? Now, you now
understand a lot more about sexual
intimacy than most couples learn, even
in years of couples therapy. But
knowledge without action is going to be
worthless to you. So, here's exactly
what you need to do. Okay? If you
recognize yourself in these mistakes,
first, don't panic. These patterns
developed as ways to seek love and
connection. Your intentions were good,
even if the results were destructive.
Most people make these mistakes because
no one ever taught them how to have
healthy sexual intimacy in long-term
relationships. Do you remember when your
partner couldn't keep their hands off of
you? That hungry look. That person is
still in there, but right now, their
nervous system has learned to associate
you with obligation, stress, and
emotional work instead of pleasure and
desire. You didn't mean for this to
happen, but every day that you continue
these patterns, you're reinforcing those
negative associations.
You can get back to that place where
they can't wait to touch you, where the
passion feels effortless and natural,
where you both feel desired instead of
obligated. But it does require stopping
these eight mistakes and replacing them
with behaviors that create the
neurochemical conditions for desire to
flourish again. Now, here's what I want
you to do right now. I've created the
most comprehensive marriage
transformation system ever developed.
It's called How to Build a Secure
Marriage. This is a complete rewiring
for your relationship's neurobiological
foundation so that intimacy, trust, and
passion happen naturally instead of
feeling forced. Over 1,600 couples have
used this system to transform their
marriages from the brink of divorce to
deeper connection than they had even
during their honeymoon phase. In this
course, you'll learn how to create the
neurochemical conditions that your
partner naturally becomes more available
to you, more sexually interested, and
genuinely connected to you without
having to convince them or wait for them
to change first. The link for that
course is down in the description below.
Get your copy now. Don't let another day
pass making these mistakes when you
could be building the secure, passionate
marriage that you both deserve. I'm Adam
Lane Smith, the attachment specialist.
Thank you for joining me here today.
It's an honor to be able to talk with
you about this and thank you for your
trust. Please make sure you like,
comment, subscribe, pick up your copy of
that course, and come back for the next
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