“We get on so well.”
“We hardly ever fight. We’re a great team. And somewhere along the way, we stopped wanting each other.”
I hear some version of this every week, from women and from men. It comes from couples who’ve done everything right. They raised the kids, shared the chores, built the house and backed each other’s careers.
Nothing’s wrong. And something’s missing.
Do you recognise the two of you here?
What’s missing is usually polarity in the relationship. I think of it as the secret sauce of passion.
Think of two magnets.
Turn them one way and they pull towards each other. Turn them so the same poles face each other, and the pull is gone.
The art of intimacy needs different magnets.
What polarity is
Polarity is the pull between two different energies.
David Deida, who has written about men, women and sexuality since the 1990s, calls them masculine and feminine.
In his language, masculine energy is about direction, presence, purpose and stillness.
Feminine energy is about flow, feeling, radiance and the body’s aliveness.
Attraction lives in the difference between two people, the way electricity flows between a positive and a negative pole.
What polarity isn’t
Polarity isn’t gender roles. It isn’t women in aprons and men in charge.
Deida is clear about three things:
- Every person has both energies.
- Men can live more in the feminine, and women more in the masculine.
- Same sex couples have polarity too.
What’s important is that there’s a difference between you in the moment you meet. If you’re both standing in the same place, there’s nothing to flow between you.
Why passion fades when you become too similar
Most good modern marriages are built on being equal partners.
We split the bills and the school runs. We both have careers, friends and our own interests. We talk things through and we negotiate.
This is a huge step forward, and I want to say that clearly. There’s a lot to love about it: respect, fairness, friendship and teamwork.
But there’s a cost.
When both of you spend all day in the same neutral middle, the charge between you fades.
You become great flatmates and coparents. Business partners. Best friends who share a bed and mostly sleep in it.
You know what I mean, right?
Both of you spend the day in a practical, organised, managing energy: work, logistics, decisions and lists.
Then you get into bed still in that mode. Two project managers.
No wonder nothing happens.
This is the stage where couples tell me, “We’re great together, I just don’t want sex anymore.” David Deida calls it the 50/50 relationship, the second of his three stages of intimate relationships.
Why this hits harder after 40
For couples in their forties, fifties and sixties, this sameness can set hard:
- Kids, careers and mortgages ask both of you to run the show.
- Menopause changes how desire shows up for her.
- Many men lose touch with their own direction somewhere between a job they’re tired of and a family that no longer seems to need them in the same way.
Then the kids need you less, and you look at each other across the dinner table.
This is the defining moment.
You can drift further into separate lives, or you can choose what comes next.
Polarity needs safety and pleasure first
I love Deida’s map.
I’ve also sat with enough couples to know you can’t simply decide to have polarity on a Tuesday night.
Two things get in the way.
The cycle. Most long term couples are caught in an emotional dance.
One reaches for connection and the other pulls back to keep the peace. In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), this is called the pursue and withdraw cycle.
It’s very hard to open your heart to someone you’ve been bracing against for years.
Polarity needs safety underneath it.
Deida’s books assume that safety is already there. Couples therapy builds it.
The body. Desire after 40 is often responsive: it shows up after you start, not before. If sex has become painful, rushed or the same old script, no amount of presence will make it inviting.
Pleasure has to come back into the picture.
So in my work, I do three things, in this order:
- Soften the cycle so you feel safe again.
- Bring pleasure back into the body.
- Play with polarity.
Have you become too similar? A quick check
Try this: sit together and answer these honestly. You’re not scoring each other. You’re seeing where you are.
- Do we mostly talk about logistics, or do we still talk about us?
- When did one of us last surprise the other?
- Do we touch each other outside of sex?
- When we have sex, are we present, or just getting it done?
- Does each of us have something that lights us up, separate from the family?
If most of your answers point to sameness, you’re in very good company. It’s the most common place for good couples to get stuck.
It’s also the most hopeful, because the friendship and respect are already there.
Three small ways to bring polarity back this week
Change the room. Before you come together, take five minutes to drop the day: a shower, a walk, music or a few slow breaths.
Leave the project manager at the door.
One leads, one follows. Take turns.
One evening, one of you decides everything: where you walk, what you eat and how you touch.
The other relaxes and receives. Swap on another night.
Notice what it feels like to hold direction, and what it feels like to let go.
Three minutes of eye gazing. Sit facing each other with your knees close, and look into each other’s eyes for three minutes without talking.
It’s awkward.
It’s also one of the quickest ways I know to feel each other again.
Becoming similar isn’t a failure
It’s a foundation.
Many of the couples I work with are deeply bonded and kind to each other, and they miss each other in bed and beyond.
The friendship and respect are already there. Polarity is what brings the pull back.
Want to understand what’s happening between the two of you? Come to Reignite Your Love, a 3 hour workshop in Auckland about the emotional and sexual cycle and how to step out of it. Or start with a free discovery call.
