Sex in long-term relationships: a systemic approach to sexual desire problems.

Most concepts of sexual desire implicitly refer to early phases of attraction and youthful living systems. For an alternative conceptual approach of decreasing sexual desire in long-term relationships, three points are addressed which influence the definition and theorizing on decreasing sexual interest: (1) passive vs. active negation of desire; (2) desire as part of sexual function vs. desire as passion in its own right; and (3) desire as individual trait vs. emergent function of structural coupling of the partners.