When Fantasy and Reality Don’t Match

Untangling the messy truth about desire, love, and long-term intimacy

“I feel broken,” she said quietly, eyes down.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I want sex with people I don’t even like sometimes... but not always with the person I love the most.”

She isn’t the first client to say it, and she won’t be the last.

In fact, I’ve sat in that same feeling myself.

There’s a myth we don’t talk about nearly enough: the idea that desire should naturally flow toward the person we’re most emotionally connected to. That love and lust are always supposed to walk hand in hand. And when they don’t? We think something’s wrong with us. Or worse, we assume something’s wrong with our partner.

But the truth is more complicated. Messier. More human.

Some of us have erotic wiring that isn’t activated by emotional closeness—it’s activated by space, by tension, by the unknown. Sometimes even by power dynamics or taboo. It’s not always about attraction in the way we think of it. It’s about context.

Esther Perel says that love is about having, and desire is about wanting—and those two states don’t always coexist easily. In long-term relationships, the very closeness that fosters deep love can sometimes suffocate erotic mystery. Desire often needs a little air to breathe.

I once worked with someone who found her partner incredibly attractive. Not in a polite, “he’s handsome” kind of way, but in a genuinely visceral way. She adored his body, delighted in his aging, found joy in watching him move, and felt proud to call him hers.And yet… the desire to have sex didn’t always follow.

“It’s not that I’m not attracted to him,” she told me. “It’s that my desire doesn’t work that way. I wish it did. I wish attraction equaled arousal for me. But it doesn’t.”

That’s the painful paradox. Because when a partner hears you want others but not me, what they feel is you don’t find me desirable.

And for those of us carrying old wounds around being unwanted or unseen, that can be devastating.

But this isn’t about worth.

It’s about wiring.

It’s about how our erotic identities are shaped—not just by love, but by longing. By fantasy. By friction. By emotional templates built long before we ever met our partners.

This split between love and lust can be disorienting.

It can feel like a betrayal of everything we’ve been taught to believe about how intimacy is supposed to work.

But it’s not a character flaw.

It’s not proof that you’re broken.

It’s not a reflection of your partner’s desirability.

It’s a signal.

A pattern.

A story worth getting curious about.

Desire isn’t a given in long-term relationships. It’s a practice. A co-creation.

And sometimes, it takes tenderness, courage, and a lot of unlearning to figure out what actually turns us on—and how to make space for that truth in the lives we’ve built with the people we love.

You’re not broken.

And they’re not unattractive.

You’re just human.

And there’s room for that, here.