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E254: Couples Coaching: Why Resentment Is Killing Your Sex Life

Pillow Talks

Thu Apr 02 2026

Summary

Pillow Talks Podcast – Episode 254 Summary

"Couples Coaching: Why Resentment Is Killing Your Sex Life"

Hosts: Vanessa & Xander Marin
Original Air Date: April 2, 2026

Overview

In this transparent and practical episode, Vanessa—a sex therapist—and her husband Xander tackle a listener’s deep, complex DM about marital disconnect, low libido, and growing resentment—particularly after years of self-sacrifice and unmet emotional needs. They break down how chronic resentment is a major relationship and sex-life killer, why non-sexual touch is critical, and how couples can reopen lines of emotional and physical intimacy—without affordable access to therapy. Throughout, they offer tough love, actionable advice, and empathetic validation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Listener’s Story: Setting the Stage

[04:07] Listener is married 8 years, has four children (six years to five months). States sex has “always been a struggle,” especially after kids; orgasm is hard to reach, enjoyment is low, libido virtually “nonexistent.”
Financial constraints prevent sex therapy; Vanessa validates this barrier, reinforcing why accessible online resources are crucial.

Vanessa [01:02]: “This is why we’re so passionate about making guides easily accessible online...there just aren’t that many sex therapists out there.”

2. Self-Sacrifice During Sex & its Consequences

[04:41]–[08:20] The tendency to “just take care of him” and forego personal pleasure rapidly builds personal resentment and erodes libido.
Vanessa cautions that deprioritizing self in intimacy might seem “easier” but quickly breeds feelings of undeserving and eventually, anger toward the partner.

Vanessa [05:19]: “If you are denying yourself the experience of pleasure and orgasm during sex, very quickly that is going to come around and start biting you in the ass.”

Resentment arises when one withholds their needs and their partner gets “trained” not to prioritize them.
This pattern results in a sex life that is “routine, predictable, boring—nothing in it for me.”

3. Desire vs. Enjoyment: Mushy Broccoli Analogy

[09:54]–[10:52] If sex is not pleasurable, why would you desire it? Vanessa emphasizes libido issues are usually about enjoyment—not desire.
“Low libido” most often tracks with “low satisfaction.”

Vanessa [10:21]: “If you’re not enjoying something, why would you crave it? It’s true of food and it’s absolutely true of sex.”

4. Orgasm Difficulty: Technique and Socialization

[12:17]–[14:52] Many women struggle with orgasm—a solvable issue.
Sex education rarely covers female pleasure; a vibrator helped the listener, showing she’s “not broken,” but it’s just one tool.
Xander notes men often learn quick orgasm through frequent masturbation (due to privacy/fear of getting “caught”), while women are not encouraged to explore their sexuality, prolonging difficulty.

Xander [12:59]: “With the right techniques and some practice, most women can learn how to orgasm in under 10 minutes, even under five.”

5. Hormones: Not Always the Root Cause

[18:11]–[20:44] Listener’s testosterone is very low; cream helped only “a little.” Vanessa stresses hormones are a minor factor for most, but alternative treatments may be worth discussing with a doctor.
Hormone balance can improve “initial conditions,” but addressing physical, emotional, and relational aspects is crucial.

6. Loss of Non-Sexual Touch: The “Bristle Reaction”

[20:44]–[23:55] Withdrawing from all touch (for fear of “leading him on”) reinforces the idea that any affection must lead to sex, putting both parties on edge and feeding resentment and avoidance.
Non-sexual touch must be rebuilt, breaking the association of physical contact with sex alone.

Vanessa [21:52]: “…if you stop having touch in your relationship, non sexual touch… that is going to make you get so on guard to his touch… you bristle at their touch, and your partner can feel that.”

Important distinction: Most women, 75–85%, have “responsive desire”—they need touch before arousal appears.

7. Facing Hard Questions: What Kind of Marriage Do You Want?

[23:55]–[26:46] Xander challenges listeners: If you “could care less” about any touch, what is the future of the marriage? Is change worth pursuing, and what sacrifices (time, money) are you willing to make?
“Can you afford a divorce?” is posed as a provocative, realistic question regarding investment in therapy or resources.

8. Pornography & Expectations

[26:46]–[27:98] Listener reports husband's on-and-off struggle with porn; Vanessa recognizes this may require support, but scope is unclear.
Porn shapes unrealistic “wanting” expectations. Xander points out:

Xander [27:53]: “Spoiler alert. The girls in porn don’t actually want sex the way you think they do.”

The real craving is “to feel wanted,” not just physical release.

9. Resentment from ‘Obligation Sex’

[30:44]–[31:58] When sex is given out of frustration, not desire, it “destroys your libido, spirit, and marriage.” Both partners are harmed; forced, resentful sex isn't satisfying for either.

Vanessa [31:00]: “Do not force yourself to have sex like this. You are absolutely destroying your libido, you are destroying your spirit, and you’re destroying your marriage.”

10. Recognizing & Naming Resentment

[34:52]–[36:16] The listener’s “huffing and puffing” is a clear manifestation of resentment—a dangerous stage for relationships.

Xander [34:52]: “That’s resentment. That is the thing. And it’s getting to a pretty serious state… It sounds to me like you are very close to snapping.”

11. The Role of Emotional Intimacy & Communication

[36:16]–[41:30] The need for more “emotional attention” is common, but the listener can’t define what she needs—a sign of overwhelm or possibly grief.
Vanessa suggests experimenting to find what feels connecting: more conversations, compliments, gratitude, or non-sexual touch. Specificity in requests is key.
Xander’s “hot take” is that emotional disconnection may not be the main problem—denial of personal pleasure and ripple effects might be larger blocks.

12. Unresolved Issues & Trust

[44:28]–[47:12] The listener hints at a trust violation or discovery about the husband; he believes “it’s in the past.” Vanessa and Xander stress: You cannot move on without processing and repair, usually in therapy.
Suggest low-cost options: look for graduate school counseling centers for affordable therapy.

13. Final Reframes and Advice

Replace “he needs sex” with “he needs to feel close to me.”

Vanessa [47:56]: "Replace sex with feeling close to me."

Both partners need to reconsider how they frame needs and problems in the relationship, seeking empathy rather than blame.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On enjoyment:
— Vanessa [10:21]: “If you’re not enjoying something, why would you crave it? It’s true of food and it’s absolutely true of sex.”
On resentment:
— Vanessa [07:06]: "You forget that you’ve trained your partner to do that because you kept saying over and over again, ‘don’t worry about me, it’s fine, go ahead.’"
On “obligation sex”:
— Vanessa [31:00]: “Do not force yourself to have sex like this. You are absolutely destroying your libido, you are destroying your spirit, and you’re destroying your marriage.”
On non-sexual touch:
— Vanessa [21:52]: “You have to break this connection that you’ve made that touch is only for sex...” — Xander [23:55]: “What kind of marriage do you have? What are the chances for this marriage to be successful in the long term?”

Key Timestamps

[04:41] – Main mistake: sexual self-sacrifice and its consequences
[09:54] – Mushy broccoli analogy: Enjoyment vs. desire
[12:17] – Difficulty with orgasm, the role of technique, and socialization differences
[18:11] – Hormones and libido: real vs. perceived impact
[20:44] – The perils of withdrawing non-sexual touch
[23:55] – Tough questions: What marriage do you want?
[26:46] – Pornography and sexual expectations
[30:44] – Dangers of obligation/resentment sex
[34:52] – Recognizing and naming resentment
[36:16] – Emotional intimacy and its specifics
[41:30] – Specific practical steps for reconnection
[44:28] – Unresolved hurts and trust breaches
[47:56] – Reframing “he needs sex” to “he needs to feel close to me”

Actionable Steps & Resources

Prioritize your own pleasure—do not “self-sacrifice” in bed.
Reestablish non-sexual touch; break the association that all touch is a prelude to sex.
Communicate needs with specificity—experiment and share with your partner.
Seek therapy if at all possible; explore grad school counseling centers for affordability.
Address resentment head-on; it can build invisibly but erode everything.
Listen to related Pillow Talks episodes: “Sex Drive Types” and “How to Get Out of a Dry Spell.”

Tone & Delivery

The Marins deliver tough love with empathy and humor, balancing candor (“bite you in the ass...”) with deep compassion and validation.
Throughout, they make analogies (food, “mushy broccoli”) and reference their own marriage and previous mistakes, keeping the tone vulnerable, straightforward, and non-judgmental.

For Couples Listening Together

Pause at key discussion points to reflect: Do you relate to these dynamics? How would you advise the listener?
Use the episode as a springboard for deeper conversation about your own desires, resentments, and possible action steps.

This episode is essential for any couple wrestling with resentment, disconnection, and the invisible work of emotional and sexual reconnection—especially when therapy feels out of reach. The Marins’ guidance offers clarity, relatability, and hope.

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Transcript

A (0:00)

If you stop having touch in your relationship, non sexual touch. If the only time you guys touch each other is immediately in the lead up to sex or during sex itself, that is going to make you get so on guard to his touch. Because every time he touches you, you're going to think he has a motive. He's trying to go for something. Hello and welcome to the Pillow Talks podcast. We're your hosts, Vanessa and Zander Marin. I'm a sex Therapist with over 20

B (0:37)

years of experience and I'm just a regular dude. We share the ups and downs in our relationship while giving you step by step techniques for improving yours.

A (0:46)

Make sure you subscribe for your weekly double date full of totally doable sex tips, practical relationship advice, hilarious and honest stories of what really goes on behind closed bedroom doors, and so much more. It's the sex education you wish you'd had. In today's episode, we are going to be deep diving into a DM that we got recently. Yes, this woman took the time to write out really long description of the situation that she was going through. And as we were reading it, we just couldn't help but thinking, I bet there are so many people who can relate to so many different pieces of this message, if not the whole thing. So it just felt like the perfect one to do a longer deep dive into. You know, we get so many questions on Instagram and we try our best to answer as many as we can, but of course we can't get to every single one.

B (1:38)

And so, and this one deserves, you know, we. You can't respond to this just via text. Can't really respond to this in a story. This is a. There's a long form answer is not even the right word. There's just the long form response.

A (1:50)

Yeah.

B (1:51)

Is the only thing that, that does, you know, the service of this message.

A (1:57)

So we are going to be reading through it. We'll pause at different points to kind of get into some of our thoughts, feedback, ideas, all that kind of stuff. I think this is also a great episode to listen to with your partner. We really try to design so many of our episodes to open up conversations within relationships. Like listen to it together. You guys can do the same thing. Like pause, talk about, hey, what do you think? Do you relate to this? What would you tell this couple to do? It can just be a nice way to get a conversation going. I think oftentimes it can be easier to talk about other people's relationships rather than our own. So this can be a nice way to get communicating about some Important topics without that vulnerability of, hey, babe, I need to talk to you about something. Okay, so let's get started. Hey. I just wanted to reach out and see what you would recommend for me. Honestly, I feel like going to sex therapy would be beneficial, but we can't afford to do that at this point in our life. I just want to pause there and say this is one of the main reasons why we're so passionate about the work that we do and about making guides that are easily accessible and available online, our business. I don't see people one on one anymore. I made this transition to making online guides and courses because I wanted these tools and resources to be available to people. I mean, the reality is there just aren't that many sex therapists out there. So good luck finding one that's in your town that has openings, that takes your insurance, that's affordable. And it can just be a challenge, like taking that time to go to a session in person, talk about everything that's been going on. And sex therapy, it's also a specialized field, and because there aren't that many people in it, and because it is the specialty, it's often a lot more expensive than traditional therapy too. So just a little aside, I know that wasn't what she was asking about at all, but I just wanted to toss that in there too. Okay. She says, my husband and I have been married for eight years. We have four kids, six years to five months old. So four littles.

B (12:59)

Yeah, that's exactly. I mean, that's the experience that most of the women who go through finishing your orgasm course have is that. Yeah. At the beginning, you start starting to have consistent orgasms. Can actually feel like a lot of work. Oh, it's taking a lot of time. It is taking a lot of work. But it's. What is. It's first, it's having the experience of, oh, yes, I can have them every time. I am having them every time. Then it's about dialing in the technique. But of course, nobody ever teaches you this technique in school, right? So, like, where would you learn it? So it's unfortunate that most people get to this point where they're like, oh, yeah, it's always been really difficult, and now it's just wreaking havoc on my relationship, on my marriage, before they realize, oh, this is actually something I gotta work on. Because honestly, it probably really just gets back to the differences in the way that men and women are socialized. Women are not socialized. That it is okay to masturbate and to experiment with their own bodies, you know, in their, you know, kind of like not prepubescent, but they're pubescent years, Right. Like when they are starting to, you know, have a bit of a sexual awakening. Whereas boys, young men, like, absolutely. They're not encouraged per se, but it's like, oh, you know, boys will be boys. Boys masturbate, Right. Like, it's just something that happens. And I know for me, I. I trained myself relatively quickly because I was doing it all the time. How to come really quickly. Honestly, most men swing too far the other way. Right? Like, it's. It's this thing that's. Oh, you know, it's it's accepted that you do it, but it's, you know, you don't want someone walking in on you, right? So it's like you're just thinking, oh God, let me do this fast, let me do this quick. I don't want to get caught. Right. And we train ourselves to come so quick. So once we start having partnered sex, very often we have to learn how to take longer. So it's just, it's just interesting how, how that works.

B (23:55)

Yeah, I think this might sound a little tough. Vanessa gave a lot of really good advice on how to start to unwind the bristle reaction if you're struggling with that. I think you also have to start asking yourself some really tough questions once you find yourself in this situation. Because she's saying here, I could care less if we kiss. I don't enjoy him touching my body. I don't want him to touch my body. And like, you gotta kind of play this out into the future if this is how you feel and if this is how you are going to continue to feel. What kind of marriage do you have? What are the chances for this marriage to be successful in the long term? Do you truly never want to have sex again? Is that what you actually want or is that what you feel like has to be the, the answer right now, but you're hoping that maybe something will change. And I think that a lot of us are too scared to play this out. And yeah. So I'm not saying, oh well, you just have to start having sex, you have to just start wanting sex or else your marriage is going to end. But I do think that you have to, you have to accept this is not a tenable long term approach for a successful marriage. This is not the type of marriage that I got into, a non sexual one. Some people do get into non sexual marriages and if you, that's what you got into, that's the arrangement that you have, then absolutely, that is great. But I assume this is not the type of marriage that you got into. And so I think you have to ask yourself, how much do I want to make a change? How. And, and, and I, I know that you say you can't afford therapy, but also can you afford a divorce? Like what is it going to look like if your marriage ends because you're not, because, because your sex life, you know, between you and your partner is broken. So I think that as hard as it is, we got to get our head out of the sand a little bit and ask ourselves, what else am I willing to sacrifice in my life financially in order to get the help that we really need in order to stay together long term? Do we even want to be together long term? I think a lot of people get into this situation but don't really, like, don't just don't really have a strong opinion on, okay, like, do I actually want this to last? Or just like, okay, this is where I am right now and it's really hard, but I'm just gonna kind of deal with it day by day. But I would encourage you to try to find the motivation for what you truly want, to play this out in the future and figure out how much, how much kind of sacrifice are you willing to make to make a real change?

A (39:28)

Yeah. So I think, you know, when it comes to being practical, because I get I get that, like just you have to feel the grief of this existential grief. That doesn't feel super helpful. Right. But that is definitely a piece of it. I think going back to trying to make something practical here, I would encourage her to prioritize reconnecting emotionally with her partner first. Even if the sole message had been, we have four kids under six. I think just from that alone we could have said, hey, you and your partner probably need to spend a little bit of time and energy trying to reconnect with each other because that is such a season of survival that you're in. But what I would encourage, encourage her to do is to experiment with different things. So we always say, like, you have to be specific with your partner. You have to teach your partner how you want to be loved. Because your partner's a different person, they want to be loved in different ways. They're going to try to love you in the ways that would feel good for them. So we have to be specific. You cannot tell your partner, I want more emotional intimacy. What does that mean? That doesn't mean anything. That's not setting your partner up for success. So we have to, to get specific. And if she's feeling like, I don't really know, that's okay. But experiment with a few things. So what does it feel like to try to prioritize the two of you having quality time together where you're truly putting your phones away, not turning on the TV and like having a real conversation about how you're feeling? What might it feel like to ask him to give you more compliments or say more like kind things throughout the day? What about asking him to express gratitude for you more often? What about bringing back in more non sexual touch, like holding hands, hugging each other, giving each other kisses, that kind of stuff. So like experiment with different things and see at this season in life, what is it that's helping you feel closer and more connected with him? Cause it sounds like he's really trying. She said, like he does try. He doesn't understand fully. Cause she doesn't understand something.

B (41:33)

Which actually brings me to a slightly different take, possibly a hot take. Oh, on this one. This is again so hard. If we were in session with this person, we would be digging into this. Absolutely. But to me, there is a world here where, sure, more emotional connection is always good. Sure. That might create better initial conditions, just like getting the hormone hormones, better balance might create better initial conditions for desire. But like we said, yeah, sure, she can have all the testosterone in the world, but if she's denying herself pleasure and, you know, bristling at his touch and all this stuff, like all the testosterone in the world isn't going to solve that, that problem. That's an emotional problem, a relational problem. It's not a physical, hormone based problem. What I, I've read, there's a lot of. There's a lot of challenges in this couple's marriage. But what I haven't seen in here is we're just so disconnected. We're ships passing in the night. It feels like he doesn't know me anymore. He doesn't care about me. In fact, they're saying, she's saying, I've told him I need more emotional attention. And he does try. It's not like, oh, he's too busy. He says he's too busy or he can, or we can't afford to go out on date night. I, like, I haven't seen any of those things in here. And I think it's telling what we write. She wrote a long message and, you know, we focus on the things that feel most pertinent. And of the stuff that she's focused on, I would say more emotional attention. Yeah, sure, that's always nice if we, if we can, especially if we're feeling disconnected. But that might not be the main thing here. I mean, I think that to me, me, the main thing here is denying yourself pleasure, making yourself feel like you don't deserve it. I'm creating this dynamic now where the way that sex looks in your relationship, it's something that's for him and it's not for you. So you feel resentful of him. You bristle at his touch because you don't want to show him that. And, you know, any kind of touch coming from you might lead to something more that you don't feel ready for. And why would you feel ready for it? Because you resent the hell out of him, him for wanting it. And, you know, and even, you know, all the stuff tied up in, in the, you know, the idea at least that he just wants you to want porn, want you to want sex, like, like one of the porn stars do. You know, it feels like to me, it's more of all this stuff wrapped up than the emotional connection. Of course, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh, yeah, no, we're super disconnected. I'm just not open. I'm, I'm not. Even if I wanted it, I wouldn't be open to connecting Sexually, because of that, then, yes. Invest in emotional connection. But I think there's also a world in which he may be doing a pretty good job in this area. And it's just these other things that are getting in the way.