Why have we stopped having sex?

What counts as a sexless marriage, and does the number matter?

Fewer than 10 times a year is the line most writing on the subject draws, and it describes rather than diagnoses.

That line, and the estimate that about 20 per cent of long-term couples sit below it, come from American survey data reported at second hand¹, and the survey is old. Read it as a sign that this is common, not as a measurement of Copenhagen now.

The number settles nothing that matters to you. I have sat with couples who have sex a few times a year and are at ease about it, and with couples who have sex most weeks where one of them is quietly wretched. What counts is whether you are at ease with where you are, and at ease to the same degree. Almost all of the trouble lives in that gap.

Why did the 2 of you stop when neither of you decided to?

Through a run of small reaches and small refusals, each of which makes the next one more likely.

• The first refusal means nothing. One of you reaches for the other and is turned down. That happens in every relationship.
• The repetition does the damage. It happens again, and in the mind of the one reaching the refusals stop being separate evenings and become a verdict.
• So the reaching stops. Not out of indifference, but because being turned down by your own partner is a particular pain and you have had enough of it.
• And the other reads the silence. They notice that nobody reaches for them any more and conclude they are no longer wanted, which is the reverse of what happened.
• Then ordinary touch goes. A hand on a shoulder has started to mean a question, so it gets withdrawn, and the talking thins out after it.
• Two private accounts. Each of you carries a version of events the other has never heard, and the silence is now the larger problem.

The load is rarely even. The one with less desire carries the guilt, the one with more carries the humiliation, and each assumes the other has the easier half. Read more about telling a quiet relationship from a finished one.

Why does wanting it make it harder to ask?

Because asking puts the answer in the room, and being turned down by the person you want is harder to carry than an evening in which nothing was asked.

So the asking stops being asking. You move closer in bed and leave enough space that it could have been nothing. You go up 10 minutes after your partner so the question never has to be put. Your partner reaches a hand across and takes it back half a second early, and you read that half second as a refusal when it was nerves.

Your bodies learn the same caution. Desire arrives at the wrong hour, or arrives for one of you in a week when the other has nothing left. When touch has meant a request for years, arousal comes slower in the one being asked and goes sooner in the one asking, so you can both want sex on the same evening and still not have it. I see that often. It is not a rule.

Then each of you explains it to yourself. One decides they are not wanted. The other decides they are being inspected. Neither says so out loud, and both live with a conclusion drawn from half a second in the dark.

What else sits behind it?

More than most couples allow for, because sex is rarely the first thing to stop.

• The year you are having. Broken sleep, a new baby, grief, a stretch of work that takes everything: desire goes quiet in all of them, and none of it is a judgement on the relationship.
• The division of the week. One of you holding most of the household in your head is a reliable way to arrive in bed as a manager rather than a partner.
• Resentment nobody finished. An argument left unfinished waits, and bed is where it turns up.
• Being far from home. For couples who moved to Copenhagen, one partner often has the work, the language and the colleagues, and that imbalance shows in who feels entitled to ask for anything, sex included.
• Tiredness, which is often the truth. It is also the easiest sentence available when the real answer is harder to say, and asking what else is in it is how you find out.

Read more about growing apart in a relationship.

Is a sexless marriage a reason to leave?

It is a reason to leave if sex is something you are not willing to live without, and saying that out loud is a legitimate position rather than a failure of generosity.

I take no side on whether you stay. I would rather you decided with better information than you have now. The first thing worth finding out is whether this is a pattern both of you want to change, which is a different question from whether you love each other, and couples answer the 2 of them differently all the time. Some work through all of this and settle at less sex than either expected, and are content. That counts as having worked. Read more about a partner who runs hot and cold.

How do couples start again, and when is that not enough?

By taking the pressure off touch first, rebuilding ordinary affection next, and letting sex come back last, which is the reverse of the order most couples try.

• Raise it at a neutral hour. Not at bedtime and not after a row, because both turn the conversation into a verdict.
• One sentence about yourself. Say one thing about your own experience, nothing about your partner, then stop. The point of the first conversation is that it happens at all.
• Agree that sex is off for now. An explicit pause, which one source calls a sex embargo and pairs with structured full-body touching exercises¹, so that touching stops carrying a question.
• Why that helps. Much of the anxiety here comes from the belief that any touch has to end in sex².
• Rebuild the ordinary touching. Kissing, holding hands, lying against each other, a massage. Small and frequent beats a grand gesture at the weekend.
• Put sex back in small steps. At a pace you are both comfortable with, with sexual touch only once you have both said you want to try², and either of you free to slow it down without justifying it.

None of that is a sequence you owe anybody, and a couple who try it and stop have learned something real.

These steps are not enough when neither of you can raise it without the evening ending in a row, or when one of you has already decided and is going through the motions. They are the wrong steps where sex has become something one of you submits to in order to keep the peace, because graded touch then becomes one more thing to comply with, and that needs separate help first. What stays uncertain is whether desire comes back or whether the 2 of you are rebuilding affection and friendship instead. You find that out by starting rather than by deciding in advance.

Questions people ask

Will a therapist actually talk about sex directly, or talk around it?

I use plain words for what you do and do not do in bed, because a conversation held in hints is the one you are already failing to have at home. You set the pace, and nothing is asked of you in the room beyond describing it.

What if my partner will not come with me?

Come on your own, because when one partner changes how they raise this what comes back changes too, and because you need somewhere to say the part you have carried alone. Couples work stays available later if your partner changes their mind.

Will we be given exercises to do at home?

Yes, and only the ones you have both agreed to, because an exercise one of you accepted to keep the peace adds another evening of pretending. Graded touch of that kind is where most of this work starts.

Is this couples therapy or sex therapy, and which do we need?

I work as a couples therapist, which means starting with how the 2 of you talk, refuse and reach for each other rather than with technique. Where the difficulty is more physical than relational, specialist sex therapy is the better fit and I will say so.

How do I raise it without my partner feeling blamed?

Bring it as something that has happened to the 2 of you rather than something your partner has done, and say what you miss rather than what is missing. I offer a free 30-minute call if you want help working out how to open it.

If desire has gone quiet between you, my intimacy masterclass is a focused way to understand why and find each other again.

Sources

1. The Gottman Institute, Can a Sexless Marriage be Saved, citing Laumann and colleagues (1992)
2. Relate, We have stopped having sex

How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.