Resurrecting Sex

What it is about

Resurrecting Sex is Schnarch on sexual problems that persist in committed couples, treated as problems of anxiety, meaning, and selfhood rather than as a missing trick. He describes how avoidance, performance fear, and a stuck sexual life become a second gridlock: each person starts to manage the other’s disappointment, and the bed becomes a place where neither can remain solid. The book’s claim is that such problems are common, often able to change as the two people grow more able to hold a self in contact, and not evidence that the match was a mistake. It is the more symptom-focused companion to Passionate Marriage, not the later desire-system book and not a medical protocol.

Questions it can answer

• How can a persistent sexual problem become a gridlock about anxiety and meaning, not only about the body?
• What happens when each partner’s main job in bed becomes managing the other’s disappointment?
• Why does Schnarch refuse to read a stuck sexual life as proof the match was wrong?

What you will not find

• A medical protocol for pain, illness, or medication effects
• A stack of positions presented as the cure
• The later book’s full model of higher- and lower-desire positions, restated as this book’s centre