Sexual Incompatibility in Arranged Marriages: Can It Be Fixed?
Most couples who believe they are sexually incompatible are not. A clinical psychologist on the difference that changes everything — and what actually helps.
In over 30 years of clinical practice, I have sat across from many couples who arrived in my consulting room carrying the same word: incompatible.
They had tried. The honeymoon had not gone as expected. The months that followed had not improved matters. And now, one or both of them had reached a conclusion: they were simply not compatible in this way. Some things could not be fixed. Perhaps this was one of them.
In the vast majority of cases, they were wrong.
Not wrong to be distressed — the distress was real and deserved to be taken seriously. Not wrong to seek help — seeking help was the right instinct and the right action. But wrong about the diagnosis. What they were calling incompatibility was, in almost every case I have seen, something else entirely: unfamiliarity. Silence. The absence of the foundation that physical intimacy requires — and that the arranged marriage structure, by design, did not build.
Incompatibility and unfamiliarity look identical from inside them. The distinction matters enormously, because they have entirely different prognoses. This article is about that distinction.
Why Listen to Dr. Prerna Kohli?
The Critical Distinction: Incompatibility vs. Unfamiliarity
This is the most important thing I can offer any couple who comes to me with this concern. Before anything else, before any intervention or framework, this distinction must be made — because it determines everything about what is possible.
Two very different problems — one word for both
In my clinical practice in Gurugram, I estimate that approximately 80% of couples who present with sexual incompatibility are actually experiencing sexual unfamiliarity. They have never had an honest conversation about intimacy. They have never built the emotional safety that physical vulnerability requires. They have been operating under enormous cultural pressure and enormous personal anxiety — and in those conditions, intimacy does not flourish for anyone.
Most couples who believe they are sexually incompatible have never actually been sexually honest with each other. You cannot be incompatible with someone you have never truly met in this dimension. What you can be is unacquainted. And what has not been begun can always be built.
— Dr. Prerna Kohli, Clinical Psychologist, Gurugram
What Three Decades of Practice Shows
The Four Forms of Sexual Incompatibility in Arranged Marriages
Not all sexual incompatibility in arranged marriages is the same. In my clinical practice, I distinguish between four distinct presentations — each with a different cause, a different treatment approach, and a different prognosis. Understanding which category applies is the first step toward addressing it effectively.
This is the most common presentation I see — and the most readily resolved. Both partners have desires, preferences, and discomforts they have never named to each other, because nothing in their courtship or cultural background gave them permission or language to do so. In the absence of that conversation, both partners are attempting to navigate physical intimacy with no map of the other person's interior landscape. The incompatibility here is not between their desires — it is between their silence and the intimacy they are trying to build. Open the conversation honestly, with professional support if needed, and the landscape changes almost immediately.
A failed or uncomfortable early experience creates anxiety. The anxiety makes the next attempt harder. The harder attempt fails or is avoided. The avoidance deepens the anxiety. This loop, which I see consistently in arranged marriage couples who present within the first two years, is not evidence of incompatibility. It is evidence of a pattern that has not been interrupted. Breaking the loop requires, first, removing the pressure of expectation — explicitly, with both partners' agreement — and then rebuilding approach to physical intimacy from a place of comfort rather than obligation. It is methodical work. It is also almost always successful when both partners commit to it.
A genuine and sustained difference in sexual desire or preference — where one partner consistently wants significantly more or less, or where specific preferences are fundamentally at odds — requires more than communication to resolve. It requires both partners to understand their own desires clearly, to communicate them honestly, and to find a middle ground that neither is merely enduring. As I discussed in my article on sexual frequency in marriage, desire discrepancy is one of the most common issues couples bring to therapy — and one of the most workable with professional support. The key is that both partners must be genuinely trying to meet in the middle — not one capitulating to the other's definition of normal.
In a small but significant number of cases, what presents as sexual incompatibility in an arranged marriage is rooted in a fundamental mismatch of sexual orientation or identity — a partner who is gay, asexual, or otherwise oriented in ways that make heterosexual married intimacy deeply conflicted for them. In India, where social and family pressure can be enormous, these situations are rarely disclosed before the wedding and sometimes not acknowledged even afterward. This form of incompatibility is genuinely difficult — not because the individuals are broken, but because the mismatch is fundamental. It requires specialist clinical support, a great deal of compassion for both partners, and honest assessment of what the marriage can and cannot be.
Why Arranged Marriages Are Particularly Vulnerable
Sexual incompatibility in arranged marriages is not more common than in love marriages. But it is more likely to go unaddressed — and more likely to be misdiagnosed as incompatibility rather than unfamiliarity — for several specific reasons that I observe consistently in my clinical practice.
No courtship foundation. Love marriages allow physical familiarity to develop gradually, across months of growing emotional connection. Arranged marriages ask two strangers to build physical intimacy in hours, on a wedding night, under maximum social pressure. The foundation that makes physical vulnerability possible — comfort, trust, familiarity — has not been built. What follows is not incompatibility. It is the predictable result of starting without a foundation — which is exactly what premarital counselling helps couples build before the wedding.
No language for the conversation. The arranged marriage process does not provide — and Indian culture does not generally supply — any vocabulary for honest conversation about sexual desire, preference, or discomfort between prospective spouses. Couples arrive at marriage without the language to navigate the most intimate dimension of their relationship. Silence is the default. And silence, in this context, is not neutral.
Cultural shame compounds the difficulty. For many Indian women, desire is something to be suppressed rather than expressed. For many Indian men, sexual difficulty carries profound shame — about masculinity, about adequacy. Both of these cultural weights make honest conversation about sexual experience extremely difficult. And without that conversation, the difficulty cannot be addressed.
The family environment inhibits recovery. In joint family households — where the wedding night and subsequent weeks may be spent with in-laws nearby — the conditions for building physical intimacy are structurally hostile. Privacy, spontaneity, and freedom from the awareness of others are prerequisites for intimate vulnerability. Their absence is not a minor inconvenience. It is a clinical barrier.
If you are navigating this — WhatsApp Dr. Prerna Kohli for a confidential conversation. In-clinic in Gurugram and online globally.
What Actually Helps
Before any intervention, this question must be answered honestly. Have both partners genuinely communicated their needs, desires, and discomforts to each other? Have they done so explicitly, without euphemism, in a context of emotional safety? If the answer is no — if what they are calling incompatibility has never actually been named and examined between them — then incompatibility is not yet the diagnosis. Unfamiliarity is. And unfamiliarity has a very different — and considerably more optimistic — treatment path.
Low desire, physical discomfort, and sexual dysfunction can all be symptoms of medical conditions — hormonal imbalances, PCOS, low testosterone, medication side effects, and a range of other physiological factors. In my clinical experience, a meaningful share of presentations that look purely relational turn out to have a physiological cause at their root. Before any psychological or relational intervention, a thorough medical evaluation is essential. Many couples have experienced years of relational distress around a problem that was physiological — and highly treatable — at its root.
Physical intimacy requires emotional safety as its prerequisite. A couple who does not feel emotionally safe with each other — who carries unspoken resentment, unresolved conflict, or the absence of genuine mutual understanding — will not become physically intimate simply by trying harder. The emotional work comes first. Often this means individual sessions for each partner before joint work begins: understanding their own relationship with desire, their own fears, their own cultural conditioning. Only when each partner understands their own interior landscape can they begin to share it honestly with the other.
The conversation that most arranged marriage couples need to have — about what each partner wants, fears, and needs from physical intimacy — is one of the hardest conversations available in a marriage. It requires vulnerability, honesty, and the kind of explicit language that Indian cultural conditioning has made deeply uncomfortable. A skilled therapist can create the conditions for this conversation: the safety, the structure, the neutral presence that allows both partners to say what they have been unable to say alone. This conversation, when it finally happens, is almost always transformative.
The most important reframe I offer couples is this: physical intimacy in an arranged marriage is not something that arrives. It is something that is built. Slowly, deliberately, with explicit communication and patient attention to each other's comfort. This is not a consolation — it is a clinical reality. Couples who approach intimacy as a construction project rather than a natural phenomenon almost always build something more durable than couples who simply waited for it to arrive. The effort is not evidence of inadequacy. It is evidence of genuine commitment.
What I Have Learned From 30 Years of Counselling Indian Couples
The word "incompatible" almost always arrives too early. In my clinical experience, couples use this word before they have actually tested whether they are. They have not yet had the honest conversation. They have not yet removed the anxiety loop. They have not yet built the emotional safety. What they have done is attempted physical intimacy under conditions of maximum pressure and minimum preparation — and found it difficult. That is not incompatibility. That is a starting point.
Silence is the most common cause of sexual difficulty in Indian marriages — and the most treatable. In over 30 years of practice, I can count on one hand the cases of genuine, irresolvable sexual incompatibility I have encountered. I cannot count the cases of sexual silence — couples who had never spoken honestly about what they needed, never named what they feared, never given each other the language to navigate intimacy together. When that silence was broken, in the safety of a clinical setting, the landscape almost always changed. Sometimes dramatically. Almost always for the better.
Both partners carry the problem and both partners must carry the solution. Sexual incompatibility is never one person's issue. It lives in the space between two people, and it is addressed in that space — by both people, together, with equal commitment. The partner who is more reluctant is not the problem. The partner who wants more is not the problem. The absence of a shared, honest conversation about what both need is the problem. And that absence belongs to both of them equally.
Most Couples Who Think They Are Incompatible Are Not. Let's Find Out Together.
As a clinical psychologist with 30+ years of experience in Gurugram and Delhi NCR, I work with arranged marriage couples on intimacy, sexual compatibility, and the conversations that change marriages. In-clinic and online globally. Always accepting new clients.
WhatsApp Dr. Prerna Kohli +91 9811862338 · [email protected] · Strictly Confidential · Gurugram & Online