I hear this again and again from my clients.

It’s just so hard to initiate and they feel terrible about it. More often than not, it’s the woman, but frankly, it can be the men as well.

First of all, be a little understanding of yourself. It is just so hard to be vulnerable. There is almost nothing as scary as communicating “I want to have sex with you” and having the other person not respond positively. It makes us want to crawl into a hole and disappear in the netherworld.

Here are a bunch of the reasons people have trouble initiating:

1. Somehow women think it’s the “guys job” to initiate sex and so we’ve never learned how to do it. And the guys get resentful (understandably.)
2. We’ve gotten shot down too many times before. We’ve tried to initiate sex and we’ve gotten rebuffed or turned down time and again and it’s starting to feel pointless.
3. We’re afraid if we initiate this time, he’ll expect you to initiate all the time, say 3 times a week, every day, 3 times a day? You rather just ignore the whole thing.
4. You’ve gotten turned down in hurtful ways. Being pushed away, ignored, having eyes rolled at you or being belittled with “G-d, all you ever want is sex” really creates a huge sting.  It’s much easier to take a no, if it comes with an I love you so much and I do really want to have sex with you, just not now when I’m in the middle of 2 loads of laundry, finishing the work project due tomorrow and fielding carpooling calls.  How about we make time Saturday night?
5. We’re not at all sure how to do it. We are afraid we might come across as too aggressive or too silly, too transactional or not clearly enough. Initiating really is a dance and you both have to learn the steps.
6. We are just plain out of practice. We haven’t done it in so long and that is part of what makes the hurdle higher and higher. Like anything else, say public speaking, we are just not used to doing it and the longer between gigs the scarier it gets.

I promise you. Once you are aware of what’s getting in the way, it makes it much easier to start turning this around. Hey you… turn off the computer and go initiate sex! Now.