It's Hard to Desire Someone Who Chooses to Be Miserable
What The Invite gets right about how desire dies in a marriage.
There’s a scene in The Invite that I haven’t stopped thinking about.
Joe (Seth Rogen) and Angela (Olivia Wilde) are a married couple hosting their upstairs neighbors for dinner—the neighbors whose very loud sex life has been keeping them up at night, reminding them of the lust they no longer have for each other.
The whole movie takes place over the course of one evening, and long before the guests arrive, you understand everything you need to know about this marriage from a single data point: how they speak to each other. Sharp. Contemptuous. Mean in the casual way that only two people who once loved each other can be.
The neighbors–Piña (Penélope Cruz) and Hawk (Edward Norton)–pick up on it the moment they walk in.
Toward the end of the evening, a heated discussion erupts between Joe and Angela after they admit they haven’t had sex in a year.
He says, “You’re supposed to want me. You’re my wife!”
To which she responds that it’s hard for her to desire someone who chooses to be miserable.
I hear a version of Joe’s line in my coaching practice more often than you’d think. It’s underneath so many of the conversations couples bring to me.
It’s a script worth tracing back to its source. Whether it came from our upbringing, religion, the rom-coms we watched, or the social contract we absorbed, most of us were taught that desire is a given in marriage.
But desire doesn’t respond to obligation. It responds to conditions. It notices how you’re spoken to and how much affection is present. That’s because affection is the oxygen of erotic connection, and contempt pollutes it faster than anything else.
In fact, in over four decades of couples research, Drs. John and Julie Gottman found contempt—the sarcasm, the mockery, the eye-roll that says you are beneath me—to be the single strongest predictor of divorce.
Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 ways I can help:
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Book a 1:1 Session - I help individuals and couples in long-term relationships find more desire, confidence, and connection—in and out of bed. One private hour, and you leave with a clear plan for what to do next.
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