The Shame of Wanting More

He wakes up again with the familiar discomfort. Not the physical ache — although that’s there too — but the emotional one that sits underneath everything. His wife lies on the far edge of the mattress, facing away.

Their backs rarely touch anymore. When he shifts slightly closer, she doesn’t respond. She sleeps. He stares at the ceiling and wonders if this is how the rest of his marriage will look: two people sharing a bed but nothing else.

He still loves her. He remembers how things once were — the affection, the spark, the private jokes. But years pass, work piles up, routines harden, and intimacy disappears without either of them daring to mark the day it left. Now, he barely recalls their last spontaneous kiss or when they last held hands without obligation. Asking for sex feels like pressing on a bruise neither of them wants to acknowledge exists.

There’s an unspoken rule in their house:
Don’t bring it up. Don’t make it awkward. Don’t want too much.

So he stops asking. Every rejection — verbal or implied — has trained him to stay quiet. The message is clear: to want more makes him a problem. A burden. Someone who should be satisfied with what he has.

To be fair, many aspects of their marriage still function. They get on with life, pay bills, shop for groceries, and even laugh sometimes. But the absence of physical intimacy overshadows everything else. When a person no longer feels desirable, it becomes harder to believe they are loved.

He tries not to show it, but the disappointment lingers. He wonders if he did something wrong. He wonders if something about him changed. He wonders if she simply stopped wanting him — and whether anyone would want to be desired only out of pity.

The shame grows silently. Society rarely talks about the high-desire partner as a victim. They’re portrayed as pushy, insensitive, selfish. Complaining about a lack of sex makes them look shallow. So he says nothing. He swallows the frustration and replaces honesty with uncomfortable tolerance.

But silence doesn’t prevent resentment. It feeds it.

He hears friends talk casually about affection — hugs in the kitchen, stolen kisses, date nights that turn into something more. He smiles along, pretending he’s part of that normal experience, while privately feeling like an outsider in his own marriage. When television shows portray couples tumbling into bed with ease, he changes the channel. When romantic scenes appear in movies, he pretends to look at his phone.

He hides how much he misses being touched.

Meanwhile, his partner doesn’t appear troubled. That’s one of the hardest parts. She isn’t withholding affection deliberately — she simply has no interest in pursuing it. She doesn’t see the harm because she doesn’t feel the loss. To her, everything is fine.

To him, everything is not fine.

Love feels uneven. Connection feels incomplete. The relationship feels like a house with a locked door he is no longer allowed to open.

He is left with a complicated, embarrassing truth:
He wants more than she is willing to give.

And because of that, he believes there is something wrong with him.

He has tried to bury desire — to convince himself that companionship should be enough. But the emptiness keeps resurfacing. Humans are wired to crave closeness and validation. When one partner stops showing it, the other begins to doubt their worth.

This dynamic — the resentment, the withdrawal, the desperation to feel alive again — echoes strongly in the themes of the novel SEETHINGS. The story follows a marriage much like this: a quiet absence disguised as normality. A spouse who feels invisible. A growing sense that wanting intimacy is a shameful flaw rather than a natural part of being human.

In SEETHINGS, suppressed desire becomes a destructive force. Characters make choices they never imagined because they feel ignored and emotionally displaced. The book shows what can happen when communication stops, and unmet needs are left to rot beneath the surface. While fiction exaggerates for impact, the roots of the story come from a very real place — a place where longing is treated as a defect, and silence becomes a survival tactic.

That’s what makes the shame of wanting more so damaging.

It convinces the high-desire partner to blame themselves rather than address the problem. It encourages them to shrink rather than speak. And over time, it erodes the foundation of what used to be love.

He does not need much — not daily passion or cinematic drama. Just the reassurance that he still matters as a partner, not merely a housemate. But for now, he keeps his distance. He keeps his thoughts to himself. He tries to pretend that a part of his marriage isn’t missing.

And every night, he rolls toward the edge of the bed a little further, preparing for the possibility that wanting more may always feel like wanting too much.

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)