You Initiate the Way You Want to Be Initiated. That's the Problem.
Research on the receiving end of desire shows how to speak your partner's language.
“Foreplay begins when the last time you had sex ends,” is a phrase I first heard from sex therapist and my good friend Dr. Kate Balestrieri.
It’s an important reframe.
Initiation isn’t the few minutes before sex starts. It’s the whole atmosphere between encounters—every touch, every bid for connection, every conversation.
By the time most couples think initiation has begun, it’s mostly already happened.
For the past two weeks I’ve been writing about The Invite—first about how contempt suffocates desire, then about what we’re actually asking for when we ask for sex. This week, I want to talk about how sexual invitation gets started.
Think about how initiation is portrayed in that movie.
Joe’s version is a grievance: “You’re supposed to want me.” Angela’s is silence. And upstairs, the neighbors’ soundtrack plays on, a nightly reminder that other people apparently just... fall into it. Spontaneously. Effortlessly. The way it happens in movies.
Which is precisely the problem.
Movies are where many of us learned to initiate. We absorbed a script—the sudden grab, the smoldering look, the wordless escalation—and we’ve been running it ever since, wondering why it only lands sometimes.
Yet we also carry long-held ideas that shape how we approach or avoid making the first move. That men should always initiate. That wanting sex too visibly is needy, or unladylike, or desperate. That if your partner really desired you, you’d never have to ask. That initiating and being rejected says something about your worth.
We absorbed them from our upbringing, religion, culture, past relationships.
On top of the inherited beliefs sits a near-universal error I often see in my practice: one partner says “I do initiate. I reach for them in bed every night, and I keep getting turned down.”
And when I ask the other partner how they’d love to be initiated with, the answer has nothing to do with reaching over in bed.
It’s “I want to feel like they thought about me during the day, like a person they’ve been paying attention to, not a body that happens to be in the bed.” Or “I want to feel wanted, not needed, like they desire me, not just sex.” Or “I want to be touched slowly first, without it being a request. A hand on my back that isn’t in a hurry.”
Yes, there are many layers to this, but often what I find is that one partner tends to initiate the way they would want to be initiated.
What reads as thrilling to you may read as pressure to them. What feels romantic to them might feel like a detour to you. Treating your partner the way you want to be treated is guesswork.
This is where the research is useful.
Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 ways I can help:
Couples Intimacy Card Deck - Turn each other on, one question at a time. I created this for you and your partner to bring more connection, curiosity, and play into the bedroom. Get 10% off with code LUST.
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. Start with one session and a clear plan for what to do next.
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