The sexual mental load refers to carrying, often invisibly, the responsibility for initiating, organizing, or sustaining the couple’s intimate life: remembering to create moments, anticipating the other’s desire, or worrying about an imbalance. Like the everyday mental load, it often weighs more heavily on one of the two partners and can, paradoxically, extinguish the very desire it is trying to sustain. Naming it and sharing it, instead of bearing it alone, is often a first liberating step. Talking about it together helps rebalance things and rediscover spontaneity.
Definition