I want to talk about dishonesty and intentional withholding, because they’re both thorny in a few different ways. They’re easy to oversimplify or view from a place of sexism or stereotype. They’re also both harder to see and figure out when they’re happening, and, if they’re already part of the relationship, harder to hold a partner (or yourself) responsible for, and separate yourself from.
Even though things have been getting better over the centuries, there’s still a strong, pervasive belief that people owe each other sex in some kinds of relationships. But they don’t. In no kind of healthy relationship does anyone owe anyone sex, ever. It doesn’t matter if someone is married to someone, or if someone consented to sex (but then changed their mind), if a sexual relationship is exclusive, if people have agreed to be in a sexual relationship, or if someone has been with someone else for a given period of time. No matter what reason someone might claim a person owes another person sex, they’re in grave ethical error.
If, at any point, anyone in a sexual relationship suspects or is clear they don’t want to be one, I think the person or people they’re in a sexual relationship with are entitled to the care and courtesy of being let in on that. It’s important for all of us to know what people we’re in relationships with do and don’t want in those relationships, especially when an aspect they don’t want is something we previously agreed, or someone assumed, was very central to the relationship. But agreeing to be in a sexual relationship with someone doesn’t ever obligate anyone to go through with sex. It just — in my humble opinion — obligates you to afford the other person the basic respect of letting them know you don’t want to. Communicating about this also makes room to give your relationship the opportunity to become the kind of relationship you and who you’re in it with want it to be.
There are a lot of reasons that someone might be dishonest about their desire to be in a sexual relationship. They might:
- feel like it’s something they have to agree to — no matter who their partner night be or how they might feel — as part of the relationship if they want a romantic relationship, a marriage, or another kind of emotional commitment, with a particular person or with anyone
- feel pressure from somewhere — themselves, the potential partner, friends, their overarching culture — to be sexual, or to agree to be sexual in the future
- be being dishonest with themselves without even realizing it: human beings frequently have a hard time knowing what we really want and what we really don’t want, especially when we’re younger, and there is both a lot of pressure to be sexual, and a lot of ideas out there that people should or have to be sexual
- be using sex as a means of manipulation or control, which can include withholding sex and other kinds of physical intimacy or general affection; this can also happen in the context of a larger dysfunctional, abusive or controlling relationship.
Again, nobody owes anyone sex. It’s not withholding because someone wants sex and someone doesn’t. That’s just someone who doesn’t owe anyone sex and doesn’t want sex saying no to sex, for any number of reasons.
When I’m talking about sexual withholding, I’m talking about the kind of withholding we talk about in the framework of interpersonal relationships and kinds of abuseexternal link, opens in a new tab.
Withholding is a covert abuse tactic where a person being abusive punishes and controls someone else by intentionally withholding things like clear and open (or any) communication and listening; kind words; hugs, hand-holding or other basic kinds of physical affection; access to something vital, like to one’s own finances or other family, like someone’s children or pets; or to any or all kinds of intimacy, including sex. Withholding these things in this case isn’t really about not wanting to give them: it’s about wanting power and control, and using sex to get or keep power and control. People who use withholding as an abuse tactic often pair it with offering crumbs of what they withhold periodically, or as a reward of some kind. Ultimately what a person who withholds like this is withholding is a relationship with a real and deep connection in which they are equally vulnerable and share power and control instead of trying to hoard it for themselves.
It’s hard to say how many people withhold sex and other kinds of intimacy as an abuse tactic because it is covert behavior, hidden by design, which makes it difficult to study or even identify when it’s happening. But I’ve been a sex educator for almost 30 years now, and my sense is while it’s more common than many people realize, it probably isn’t one of the more typical reasons sexual relationships stop being sexual or never are sexual to begin with. It’s also hard to say how many people are dishonest, including because it’s so often based in someone being dishonest with themselves. I’d say that of these two reasons we just talked about, especially when we’re talking about young people, I get the impression dishonesty is more common than withholding.
