When to Walk Away from a Sexless Marriage

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Guide to when to walk away from a sexless marriage

In short:

Wondering whether you can recover from a sexless marriage — or whether it's time to walk away? A lack of sex doesn't automatically mean a marriage is over, but years of disconnection can leave couples feeling stuck, lonely, and unsure what to do next.

Many couples can recover from a sexless marriage when both partners are willing to understand what happened, take responsibility for their part, and change the patterns that keep them disconnected.

This article explores what makes sexless marriage recovery possible, what can stand in its way, and what to consider when you're wondering whether there is hope for you.

Approximate reading time: 10–12 minutes

The decision to end a sexless marriage can be a gut-wrenching one.

On the one hand, you may still love your partner.

You may even laugh together here and there. Raise your children well together. Share a home, a history, a thousand ordinary moments.

On the other hand, sex — the thing that once allowed you to bond, share love and show care for each other — has disappeared.

Maybe it's been months.
Maybe years.
Maybe decades.
Maybe you can't remember the last time you felt genuinely wanted by your partner — or wanted them in that way yourself.

And now you're asking a question you never imagined you'd have to ask:

Can I live without this for the rest of my life?

Or perhaps the harder question:

Is the fact that we're no longer having sex enough reason to leave a marriage I otherwise don't want to lose?

And there may be another question underneath both of those:

Is there still something here to recover?

If you've been living in a sexless marriage for a long time, you may have already tried to fix it. You may have talked about it until you were exhausted. You may have tried couples therapy, sex therapy, date nights, initiating differently, waiting for desire to return — or simply stopped talking about it because every conversation seemed to make things worse.

By this point, you're not just dealing with the absence of sex. You're dealing with everything that has happened because of it.

The rejection that leads to pressuring the other. The disappointment that leads to pulling away. The loneliness that makes both shut down. The resentment that pushes each other away. The ways you've both learned to protect yourselves.

I call these the “pressure cycles.”

They become so entangled and complicated that it can be very difficult to know whether your marriage is truly over — or whether you've simply become deeply stuck in gridlock.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I've spent the last decade successfully helping couples 🔗 find their way back to each other after years, and often decades, without sex. I've seen couples who arrived exhausted, disconnected, and often on the brink of divorce rebuild emotional intimacy, sexual connection and a relationship that works for who they are now. I believe recovery is possible — so I am biased.

Despite my bias, I also don't believe every marriage should be saved. There are times to end and move on.

A sexless marriage can be a reason to leave. But the absence of sex alone doesn't tell you whether you should.

What matters is what is happening underneath the sexlessness — and whether there is still a willingness, on both sides, to face it together.

That's what this article explores. I am going to break down the details about sexless marriage, when to work on it and when to consider walking away:

What Does "Sexless Marriage" Actually Mean?

When people talk about a “sexless marriage,” they often mean a marriage where sex has become infrequent or has stopped altogether. A commonly used definition is having sex fewer than 10 times a year.

But frequency alone doesn't tell the whole story.

For some couples, where sex had always been about connection 🔗, closeness, and intimacy, a marriage where you have sex starts to happen of duty, obligation, or simply to get it over with — without genuine desire for the connection it can create — may feel sexless even if you are technically still having sex. They may feel that sex without genuine desire, pleasure, or connection isn't the kind of sex they want in their marriage, regardless of frequency. For them it is the quality of their sexual and physical connection that matters.

For other couples, it's about how often they have sex. Some may count the number of times they've had sex or orgasmed together.

A sexless marriage can be temporary, lasting six months or a year, due to a particular phase or circumstances of life. Or it can become the state of a relationship for decades.

In other words, there is no single definition of what counts as a sexless marriage.

Nor is every marriage without sex is a problem. Some couples may simply place little importance on sex from the start. For them, the absence of sex may not represent a lack of intimacy or dissatisfaction with the relationship. Others may have a marriage that isn't centered around sexual or romantic connection, such as a marriage where one person is gay and the other heterosexual. There are couples who value sex purely for reproductive reasons and not for romantic ones; once childbearing is completed, sex may no longer be important. And there are couples who may both be asexual and do not find sex to be an appealing option.

A sexless marriage becomes a problem when a couple loses a form of connection that once mattered to them (such as for most couples at the beginning of their relationship) — and at least one partner longs to find their way back to it.

The reasons a couple stops having sex — or stops experiencing sex as meaningful connection — can vary widely:

None of these circumstances automatically means a marriage cannot recover. In fact, every one of my clients experienced at least one of them during their marriage; many lived through several.

Because what matters is what happens next, after you find yourselves in a sexless marriage: whether you can acknowledge what is happening with vulnerability and honesty, become curious about what is underneath it, and find a way to address the challenges together.

And that means looking at what happens both inside and outside the bedroom.

  • Physically, something needs to change. If sex has become painful, unsatisfying, disconnected, or difficult to access due to lack of desire, those issues need to be addressed. Rebuilding a sexual relationship requires creating the conditions for both partners to experience sex as something they can genuinely want and enjoy — not something they have to endure, perform, or provide.

  • Emotionally, the damage needs attention too. When one partner feels rejected and the other feels pursued, or when sex has become associated with obligation, conflict, disappointment, or fear of letting someone down, desire can begin to shut down. The more pressure someone feels to want sex, initiate sex, or respond in a particular way, the harder it can become to access genuine desire. The hurt and resentment that have accumulated along the way need to be acknowledged, repaired, and replaced with ways of relating that meet both partners' needs.

  • And practically, the life you're living matters. What happens in the bedroom often reflects the real-life pressures on desire from everywhere else: exhaustion, unequal responsibilities, unresolved resentment, parenting demands, chronic stress, health changes, financial strain, or being left to deal with the overwhelm of it all alone. If those realities aren't addressed alongside the sexual problem, simply asking a couple to have more sex can create even more pressure without changing the conditions that made desire difficult in the first place. This is at the heart of my forthcoming book, DESIRE UNDER PRESSURE 🔗 — the idea that desire is not separate from the life we're living. What happens outside the bedroom comes with us into it.

Recovering from a sexless marriage isn't just about getting back to sex. It's about creating the right conditions — in your body, your relationship, and your everyday life — for connection and desire to take root and thrive.

A sexless marriage will remain sexless when a couple stays unable — or unwilling — to understand and actually change the patterns keeping them stuck. Without honest conversations about desire, sex, resentment, pressure, and what each person actually needs, the sexual problem can gradually become a relationship problem. Couples here tend to get pulled into a “death spiral” of intimacy-destroying behaviors 🔗, where repeating cycles of rejection, pressure, avoidance, resentment, and disconnection begin reinforcing one another. The longer couples remain caught in the same cycle, the more difficult it can become to find their way back to each other.

You can also read more about the damaging cycles in 15 Signs an Unresolved Sexless Marriage Is Damaging Your Relationship 🔗.

The pain of a sexless marriage comes when what once was a form of connection that mattered to the couple disappears — and at least one partner desires to find their way back to it.

That's when the question becomes far more than “How can we have sex more often?”

It becomes: Do we want to find our way back to each other sexually — and how?

Why Does a Sexless Marriage Hurt So Much?

A sexless marriage may be painful for various reasons and usually a combination of most of these:

  • Rejection. One partner might feel deeply rejected by the other — and it’s so much more than about sex. It’s about being validated by your partner as being attractive and desirable. It’s about made to feel wanted and necessary in your partner’s life — like it matters to your partner that you are a part of theirs, that you’re needed in more ways that just taking out the garbage or caring for the kids. It’s also a rejection of your involvement in your partner’s joy, pleasure and satisfaction.

  • Loss of closeness. Sexual intimacy is more than about the physical act of sex and orgasm. The reality is that sex lubricates the relationship and makes you feel like a team against the rest of life. It acts as a way to get closer. Therefore a sexless marriage is a rejection of bids towards closeness. The rejection of that closeness ends up removing a way for the couple to come together as more than just parents and keepers of the house.

  • End of a dream. The dream of spending a lifetime with a lover in a deep romantic and sexual bond runs deep for many people. By severing the romantic aspect, a sexless marriage shatters that dream — as well as the ability for that partner to share themselves romantically and sexually with their beloved. The grief and pain are very real and can feel like an amputation of a vision of their life that they have deeply held for a long time.

  • Loss of a common bond. Sex has the potential to be a safe space in the relationship where you can be vulnerable with each other and show up naked physically, emotionally erotically in ways that you cannot with others. Sexual vulnerability and intimacy makes lovers out of two people, taking the relationship further than sharing household duties, child and pet care, and being each other’s emergency contact. In a monogamous relationship, opening up to each other through pleasure and expression of desire breeds closeness unlike anything you get to share with anyone else. Most couples do not explicitly discuss the importance of sex as a bonding mechanism at the beginning of the relationship, simply assuming that it is. So it can come as a deep shock when one partner decides that sex is no longer of importance for them and refuses to work on sex.

  • Loss of security. Sex is a glue in a romantic relationship, a place where couples can unite with each other just to be with each other, reinforcing the safety of their relationship. It sends a message that “we’re ok!” A sexless marriage sends the opposite. Couples in a sexless marriage doubt their commitment to each other and fear the end of the relationship is around the corner. This translates into constantly living on the edge, in a perpetual state of stress and fear. Loss of security is one of the last stages of the “death spiral” of intimacy-destroying behaviors 🔗.

  • Loss of touch. Touch is a human need and a powerful way to feel safe, relaxed and close with each other. Couples who stop having sex often stop touching altogether. Lack of human touch can cause anything from irritation and feeling on edge to depression and withdrawal. (Read how the first-time parents Alan and Grace worked through his depression due to loss of touch when their son was born 🔗)

    While both men and women suffer from the loss of touch, many men quietly experience physical affection as a primary signal of acceptance, connection, reassurance, and being wanted by their partner. Learn more about the emotional impact in How Men Struggle in a Sexless Marriage 🔗.

  • Sexual frustration. Sexual frustration need not be only because of the lack of sex; obligatory sex devoid of emotional connection can cause deep sexual frustration. It can also stem from having a lack of opportunities to be sexual with each other and express their sexuality. Sexual frustration often manifests as a persistent state of irritation, agitation, and stress.

  • Loss of confidence and self-esteem. It’s hard not to take personally the rejection of sexual requests, lack of sexual intimacy and touch as well as opportunities to be sexual. It creates a feeling of being unworthy, unwanted, undeserving, and unappreciated that seeps into the rest of the relationship. Additionally and crucially, the lack of sex leaves people feel unsafe in their relationship, which further catapults them into insecurity, wondering and fearing if their partner will walk away. All of this compounds into an erosion of their sense of self, their ability to confidently show up in their relationship and in the rest of their life — including career, taking care of children, and dealing with life’s challenges. Couples stuck in a sexless marriage are often more brittle and reactive, unable to deal with the smallest stressors between them, because the weight of the situation takes up so much of their energy.

    This erosion of confidence is particularly common among men who experience years of sexual rejection and emotional disconnection. Many describe feelings of inadequacy, abandonment, grief, and powerlessness. Learn How Men Struggle in a Sexless Marriage 🔗.

  • Shame and guilt about not being able to model a healthy, sexually-fulfilling relationship for their children. For many couples, it is critically important that their children grow up with more opportunities for fulfilled on all levels, including relationships. Many couples struggle with shame and guilt about their own sexless marriage because they are missing the opportunity to give their children an experience of being raised in a home where love and intimacy are the norm.

Why Is It So Hard to Recover from a Sexless Marriage?

One reason a sexless marriage can be so difficult to recover from is that, over time, the couple stops responding to the original problem. They're responding to everything that has happened since.

Maybe it started with exhaustion after having children. Or painful sex. Or one partner withdrawing because of pressure. Or a period of intense work stress.

But when that original problem isn't resolved, the experiences begin to pile up.

One partner reaches for sex and is turned down. They try again. The other partner feels increasingly pressured and pulls away. The first partner feels rejected and becomes more frustrated — feeling powerless to change anything because the underlying reason was not addressed — or stops initiating altogether. Touch starts to feel loaded. Conversations about sex become arguments. Then silence and avoidance replaces conversations altogether.

Eventually, sex itself can become associated with the pain and frustration of what has happened around it: rejection, pressure, disappointment, resentment, fear, shame, or the anticipation of another difficult conversation.

This creates a vicious cycle. The partner who wants more sex may pursue more intensely because they're desperate for connection. The partner who wants less may withdraw more because they feel pressured. Each person's response makes sense from their own experience — but it also reinforces the other's.

And this isn't always conscious.

Your body can begin reacting before you've even decided what you think about what's happening. You may brace when your partner touches you because you're anticipating that the touch will lead somewhere you don't want to go. You may avoid initiating because you're afraid of being rejected again. You may shut down during conversations about sex because they have become too emotionally charged. Or you may become angry because anger feels easier than admitting how hurt, lonely, or afraid you are.

This is where fight, flight, and freeze can show up in the bedroom 🔗

The bedroom becomes a place where both partners are protecting themselves rather than reaching for each other. One pushes. One pulls away. One shuts down. And neither may recognize that these reactions are part of the very pattern keeping them disconnected.

That's why recovering from a sexless marriage isn't simply a matter of deciding to have sex again, or having it more often.

The couple has to address the history that has accumulated around sex — and create new experiences of safety, choice, connection, and trust. Otherwise, even when both partners genuinely want things to change, their old protective patterns can take over.

How to Recover from a Sexless Marriage

If you’re wondering whether your marriage can recover a few years or a few decades of no sex, the next question is: what would recovery actually require? It starts with looking beyond the absence of sex and understanding what has happened between you — and creating the conditions for intimacy and desire to grow again.

Here are some places to begin.

1. Stop Treating Sex as the Only Problem

Sex may be the problem you're talking. But it may not be the whole problem.

Look at the relationship around the sex.

How do you relate to each other outside the bedroom? How much affection is there? How do you handle conflict? Is it emotionally safe to be yourself in your relationship — and to have your needs, desires, and boundaries heard and respected? Are you both responsive to each other’s needs? How is the mental and practical load divided? Do you feel supported by each other? Do you have time together? Is there resentment that never gets addressed? Do you feel emotionally connected—or more like roommates managing a household?

Usually, the sexual problem is a symptom of what is happening between two people — and sex then becomes the place where all of the mounting wounds around being understood, seen and met in the relationship finally show up.

2. Understand the Cycle You're Stuck In

Most couples don't simply stop having sex. They develop a pattern around the absence of sex.

One partner reaches out. The other pulls away.
One feels rejected and tries harder. The other feels pressured and withdraws further.

Someone stops initiating to avoid rejection. Their partner experiences the withdrawal as further evidence that they are no longer wanted.

Over time, both people can become trapped in a cycle neither one actually wants.

Ask yourselves:

Who pursues? Who withdraws? What happens after rejection? What happens after initiation? What does each of you do when you feel hurt?

Once you can see the pattern, you can begin to change it.

If you've been caught in this cycle for years, read The Fight-Flight-Freeze Bedroom: Why Sexless Marriages Become Emotional Battlefields 🔗 to understand how these patterns can eventually make the bedroom feel like an emotionally unsafe place.

3. Stop Trying to Force Desire

Desire doesn't respond well to pressure. In fact, it creates the opposite response: contraction, recoiling, withdrawing and even fighting back.

You can't make yourself want sex because your partner is disappointed. And your partner can't make you want sex by asking more often, becoming more persistent, or reminding you how long it's been.

The more someone feels that they should want sex, the harder it can become to discover what they actually want.

This doesn't mean giving up on sex. It means getting curious about desire instead of treating it as something that needs to be fixed or produced on demand.

  • What makes you want to move toward your partner?

  • What makes you pull away?

  • What helps you feel open, relaxed, playful, and available for pleasure?

  • And what makes you brace?

  • What happens inside you when I initiate?

  • What makes touch difficult for you right now?

  • What happens between us before we get to the bedroom?

  • What do you miss about our physical connection?

  • What would make it easier for you to move toward me?

Those questions can tell you much more about how to recover your sexual connection than simply counting how often you're having sex. Talking honestly about sex can feel vulnerable, especially after years of hurt. But it allows you to start building your path back towards each other.

4. Men and Women — Seek to Deeply Understand Each Other

One of the most important parts of recovering from a sexless marriage is learning to understand the sexual experience of the person sitting across from you.

Men and women aren't wired to experience desire in the same way. And when couples assume that their partner's sexual experience should work like their own, misunderstanding can quickly turn into hurt, rejection, pressure and resentment.

Understanding each other's differences isn't about putting people into boxes or making assumptions based on gender. It's a starting point of conversation and curiosity about your particular partner.

I’ve written about this here 7 Insights to Understand About Each Other That Make Sex Flow in a Long-term Relationship 🔗

Understand What Sexlessness Can Feel Like for Men

For many men, repeated sexual rejection can become much more than frustration about not having sex.

Over time, it can affect how a man experiences himself in the relationship. He may begin to wonder whether his partner still finds him attractive, whether he is wanted, or whether there is something wrong with him.

Years of unresolved rejection can lead not only to resentment, but also to loneliness, grief, shame, and withdrawal. And sometimes the withdrawal can look like not caring.

A man may stop initiating. Stop talking about it. Stop reaching for his partner. Stop asking for what he wants because he has learned to expect rejection.

From the outside, that can look like he's given up. Inside, there may be a great deal of pain.

Understanding this doesn't mean that repeated pressure or entitlement is okay. It means recognizing that the absence of sex can carry a profound emotional meaning for the partner who wants more of it.

I've written more about this in How Men Struggle in a Sexless Marriage 🔗

Understand How Women's Desire Often Works

Women are not less sexual because their desire doesn't always arrive in the same way.

For many women, desire is responsive rather than spontaneous. Instead of feeling a spontaneous urge for sex that appears spontaneously from a mere glance or waking up ready, desire emerges in response to feeling connected, relaxed, safe, affectionate, touched, aroused, and engaged with a partner.

The engine is different — and that difference matters enormously in creating the dynamic that ends up resulting in a sexless marriage.

If a woman expects herself to feel desire first before she can move toward sex, she may conclude that something is wrong with her when that desire isn't there. She will feel broken.

Her partner may reach for her and experience her hesitation as rejection. She may experience his initiation as pressure. He reaches harder. She pulls back further. And both people end up believing something is wrong with the other — or with themselves.

But responsive desire means that the safety, connection and play between two people is a part of what creates the desire in the first place.

Desire begins long before the bedroom. It can be influenced by how connected the woman feels to her partner, whether she has space in her mind and body, whether she feels supported rather than overloaded, how touch happens throughout the day, and whether she has enough time to become aroused.

That doesn't make her less sexual.

It means her sexual system may need different conditions in order to come online.

I've written more about women's sexuality, desire, and arousal in:

And Then There Are Differences Between Women

Even the idea of “women's desire” isn't one-size-fits-all.

Some women are particularly sensitive to their environment, their partner's energy, the amount of stimulation around them, and the time they need to transition from the demands of everyday life into intimacy.

For Highly Sensitive Women (HSPs), being aware of what happens before sex can be especially important.

If you are partnered with an HSP woman, learning what helps her feel regulated, connected, and available for pleasure can make a profound difference to the experience of intimacy for both of you.

I've written specifically about this:

The point isn't to learn a formula for getting your partner to want sex.

It's to become deeply interested in how your partner experiences desire, arousal, touch, rejection and connection.

When you understand that the person you love may have a different sexual engine than you do, you have a much better chance of stopping the cycle of “You're rejecting me” and “You're pressuring me.”

And you can begin asking a much more useful question: “What helps you feel safe, connected, and able to want me — and what helps me feel wanted by you?” That is where the possibility of meeting each other deeply begins.

5. Rebuild Emotional Safety and Connection

When a marriage has been sexless for a long time, both partners may have learned to protect themselves.

The higher-desire partner will typically protect against rejection by withdrawing, shutting down, or no longer asking.

The lower-desire partner will protect against pressure to have sex by avoiding touch, bracing when a partner reaches for them, or disconnecting from their own desire.

This is itself an erosion of emotional safety that needs to be rebuild before a couples can deeply reconnect by turning toward each other again — emotionally and physically — in small, honest, vulnerable ways.

This is what emotional safety looks like.

It's being able to tell your partner what is really happening inside you without fearing that you'll be punished, dismissed, criticized, pressured, or hurt in return.

It means being able to say:

“I'm scared.”
“I miss you.”
“I want to be close to you, but I'm not ready for sex.”
“I want you, but something in me is still holding back.”
“I don't know what I want yet.”

And trusting that your vulnerability will be met with curiosity rather than defensiveness.

Safety is rebuilt vulnerable moment by vulnerable moment.

And it isn't only emotional.

It shows up in the physical relationship, too.

  • It means being able to touch without knowing exactly where the touch is expected to lead.

  • It means being able to say no without punishment.

  • Being able to say yes without pressure.

  • Being able to slow down.

  • Being able to ask for what you want.

  • Being able to change your mind.

  • Being able to stay connected even when your desires are different.

This is how couples begin to experience each other as people they can be real with again, rather than people they need to protect themselves from.

And this doesn't mean emotional intimacy has to be completely repaired before physical intimacy can return. The two can grow together. A vulnerable conversation can create connection. A safe moment of touch can create connection. Saying no and remaining emotionally connected can create connection. You can also read Can You Fix Emotional Intimacy Before Physical Intimacy in a Sexless Marriage? 🔗 for a deeper exploration of how both emotional and physical intimacy can be rebuilt together.

Over time, these moments can change what intimacy means between you. Instead of sex becoming a place where one person feels rejected and the other feels pressured, the bedroom can gradually become a place where both people can be present, honest, curious, and free to respond to what is actually happening between them.

That's the foundation of what I call Connection Sex 🔗 —sex rooted in presence, vulnerability, and genuine connection rather than performance, obligation, or pressure.

For more on finding your way back to each other, read How to Find Your Way Back to Each Other and Revive a Sexless Marriage 🔗

And if your relationship has become stuck in a cycle of pursuit, withdrawal, rejection, and pressure, read What to Do When Your Sex Life Is Gridlocked, Stuck or Shut Down 🔗

6. Look at the Big Picture of Your Life

Your sex life doesn't exist in isolation from the rest of your life.

If you're exhausted, overloaded, chronically stressed, disconnected from your body, carrying resentment, or feeling alone in the responsibilities of everyday life, those experiences don't disappear when you walk into the bedroom. They put pressure on desire.

So it’s important to ask: What needs to change in the life we're living together?

Maybe one person needs more support.

Maybe the division of labor needs to change.

Maybe you need more time together — or more time apart.

Maybe you're living like business partners and need to rediscover each other as lovers.

Maybe the relationship has become so focused on parenting, work, finances or caring for everyone else that there is no space left for the two of you.

When desire is under pressure, changing the pressure may be more important than trying harder to create desire or having more sex.

7. Repair the Hurt That Has Accumulated

After years of sexual disconnection, there is usually more to repair than the sex itself.

There may be years of rejection.
Years of feeling pressured.
Years of feeling unwanted.
Years of resentment.
Years of initiating and being turned down — or avoiding initiation because you expected to be turned down.

Those experiences don't simply disappear because you decide to start having sex again.

Repair means being willing to understand the impact you've had on each other without turning the conversation into a trial about who was right.

It means being able to say:

“I can see how that hurt you.”

And:

“I didn't understand what was happening for you at the time. I understand it differently now.”

Repair doesn't require agreeing with your partner's version of every event. It requires making enough room for their experience to matter.

8. Talk About Sex Differently

If the only time you talk about sex is when one of you is frustrated, rejected, or asking when you are finally going to have it again, sex becomes a loaded subject.

You need conversations that are bigger than “Are we having sex tonight?”

  • Talk about what you like.

  • What you don't like.

  • What you're curious about.

  • What has changed.

  • What feels good now that didn't used to.

  • What you miss.

  • What you want to explore.

  • What you don't know yet.

And give each other permission to be a work in progress.

This can be especially important for women, who may have spent years learning to talk about sex primarily in terms of whether they are willing to have it rather than what they actually want. Sometimes finding your sexual voice begins with talking to other women, discovering that your questions and experiences aren't unusual, and realizing that you are allowed to be curious about your own desire.

You don't have to know what you want before you start talking about it. You can begin with: “I don't know what I want yet. But I want to find out.”

Learn more about how to talk to your partner about sex in Talking About Sex Can Be Hard — but This Will Help 🔗

9. Create a Sexual Relationship That Fits Who You Are Today

You aren't the same people who stood at the altar — or who first fell in love.

That’s just how life goes.

  • Your bodies have changed.

  • Your lives have changed.

  • Your responsibilities have changed.

  • Your desires may have changed.

So recovering from a sexless marriage should not mean re-creating the sex you had 10, 20, or 30 years ago.

It means discovering what sexual connection can look like now.

  • Maybe sex needs to be slower.

  • Maybe you need more time to become aroused.

  • Maybe you need more affection that isn't a prelude to sex.

  • Maybe what turns you on has changed.

  • Maybe you need to make more space for pleasure instead of treating sex as another item on the list.

  • Maybe you need to become lovers again in a way that neither of you has experienced before.

The goal isn't to return to the past: it's to create a sexual relationship you both want to be in now. It requires deep curiosity and learning about who each of you is today — and what your needs and desires are now.

10. Get Help When You're Stuck in a Pattern You Can't See From Inside

Sometimes you know something needs to change but can't figure out how to change it together.

You've had the conversations.
You've made promises.
You've tried to stop fighting.
You've tried to have more sex.
And somehow, you keep ending up in exactly the same place.

That's often a sign that you aren't dealing with a lack of effort. You're dealing with a pattern that has become difficult to see from inside the relationship because it is in your blind spots.

Outside support can give you a different perspective, help you slow down the cycle, and create a place where both partners can be heard without having to defend themselves.

You don't need to wait until your marriage is on the brink of divorce to get help.

Sometimes the most useful time to ask for support is when you can still feel that there is something here worth fighting for.

Problems That Can Look Like Reasons to End a Marriage — But Are Not

These are what I call “decoy” problems — problems that we focus on because they’re the most front-and-center and are often backed by what we see in the media, in online chat rooms, or during girl talks. They sound as very plausible reasons for a sexless marriage — and for ending it — but they rarely are. They draw attention away from the real problems that are harder to detect and address without expert support, allowing the deeper problems to fester.

1. “We’re just not compatible.”

From the outside, it can look like you're simply incompatible. The final diagnosis.

One of you wants sex more often. The other wants it less. One wants more touch, the other needs more space. One experiences desire spontaneously; the other needs connection, time, or the right conditions before desire has a chance to emerge.

But if compatibility means always wanting the same things at the same time, most couples are incompatible.

Desire rarely stays perfectly synchronized over the course of a long relationship. People's bodies change. Stress changes. Hormones change. Life changes. What you need for sex to feel good and connected changes.

The more important question isn't whether you're always on the same page. It's what you do when you're not.

  • Do you lean toward each other or pull away?

  • Do you become curious about what is happening inside your partner, or do you immediately make it mean something about yourself?

  • Do you care about your partner's experience, even when it is different from your own?

  • Can you talk about desire without turning the conversation into a negotiation, a demand, a defense, or a rejection?

  • Can you stay connected when one person wants sex and the other doesn't?

Mismatched libidos will likely solidify into an incompatibility when you aren't curious enough — or don't have the tools — to look beneath the difference to see the deeper inner experience.

What looks like “You don't want me” might contain loneliness, fear, or a longing to feel desired.

What looks like “You only ever want sex” might contain a longing for closeness, reassurance, or connection.

And what looks on the surface like differences in libido may actually be a much more complex interaction between two people's inner worlds.

2. “I lost my attraction to my partner”: When faced with a reduced frequency of sex in a long-term relationship, one of the first things that people question is if they’ve lost attraction for their partner. Sometimes it might be the case, especially if one person has discovered a different aspect of themselves, such as same-sex attraction. More often than not, the loss of attraction can be attributed to relational factors, such as the drop in relationship closeness and loss of respect.

3. “We’re bored with each other.”

It can feel intractable. You had the passion, the butterflies, the excitement of discovering each other — and now you've been together long enough that you know each other's routines, habits, stories, and patterns. What is true is that the passion and butterflies of the beginning of a relationship won't come back in exactly the same form. You're no longer strangers discovering each other for the first time. But that doesn't mean there is nothing left to discover.

In fact, what you can create together over time can be richer, deeper, and more satisfying than what you experienced in the beginning. “We know each other” can become a lazy explanation for why we've stopped being curious about each other.

You may know what your partner does, what they like, how they take their coffee, and what they're going to say in a familiar argument. But do you know what is happening inside them?

What are they longing for? What are they afraid of? What has changed for them? What are they protecting? What makes them feel alive? What do they wish you understood about them? Who are they becoming?

Long-term intimacy asks us to keep discovering the person we've chosen — not because we don't know them, but because they are still changing, and so are we.

Sometimes what looks like boredom is actually a loss of curiosity. And sometimes the problem isn't that you've become too familiar with each other. It's that you stopped taking the time — or never learned the skills — to really look at each other, inquire into each other's inner worlds, and allow yourselves to be known.

You don't recover desire by pretending you're newly dating. You recover it by becoming interested in the person who is right in front of you now; you get to look at the same person you looked at for the last few decades with new eyes.

4. “I’ve lost my libido.”

Changes in sexual desire for women in a long-term relationship is one of the most common issues. Most women — and their male partners — believe that it’s a sex issue. But when we dig deeper, we see a different picture: usually it’s one of an exhausted woman, run ragged by responsibilities, having no energy for sexual desire. She has what I call the “Empty Cup” syndrome and her low desire is simply common sense 🔗 — not a dysfunction.

From my own survey on the “faces” of low libido in women 🔗, more than 70% of those taking it marked that their libido is a result of these three:

  • “Sex feels like so much hard work because it takes so long for me to “get in the mood” after a heroically busy day. I barely even have a moment to myself in peace, and I have no sexual energy to give to my partner even though I really love him and want to show him my love. It’s been like this for years that I have not felt sexual.”

  • “I cannot relax or turn my mind off during sex, and I can’t get into it at all. Then it’s just all performance and hard work for me, while he gets to enjoy himself. I definitely don’t crave sex; it’s more that I dread it.”

  • “I don’t remember the last time we were romantic with each other — it’s all parent talk, house responsibilities, what each of us have done wrong, and work stuff. I don’t feel cherished, adored or like a woman, and wanting him sexually is the last thing on my mind.”

If the romantic connection with your partner is tenuous and the experience of sex has been average at best, you naturally won’t want sex (watch my free video series How to Authentically Overcome the “I Don’t Want to Have Sex with my Husband” Problem 🔗 where I go over this and more). Moreover, when the resentment cup runneth over from all of these, it has a disproportional effect on the libido cup. Unresolved resentment will make sexual desire disappear, fast.

When we look deeper at each of these problem, the problem is not at all what it seems. In fact, these deeper problems are challenges that all couples face — they’re your garden-variety, human relationship problems. Getting the tools and the right resources to help you untangle the situation and organize your life in a way that supports you connection and desire will make a big different if both partner are on board.

When Is it Time to Consider Leaving a Sexless Marriage?

A sexless marriage can often be recovered when both partners are willing to understand what has happened, take responsibility for their part, and work together toward something different.

But recovery requires two people who are willing to participate.

Sometimes the question isn't whether the sexual problem can be solved. It's whether there is enough willingness, responsiveness, care, respect, and desire for the relationship itself to make trying worthwhile.

Here are some conditions that may tell you it is time to seriously consider letting go.

There Is No Willingness to Engage

You don't have to have all the answers. You don't even have to know whether you want sex to change yet.

But there needs to be some willingness to engage with the reality that something isn't working.

If you repeatedly try to talk about the lack of sex, your loneliness, your needs, or the impact the situation is having on you and the relationship — and your partner consistently refuses to engage — that refusal becomes part of the problem.

  • It can look like silence when you reach out.

  • Humor or deflection when you try to have a serious conversation.

  • Changing the subject.

  • Walking away.

  • Saying, “I don't want to talk about this,” every time you try.

  • Or simply acting as though the problem doesn't exist.

The obvious truth is that one partner cannot create intimacy alone.

And over time, being repeatedly met with silence or dismissal will feel profoundly lonely. You’re only human. It can leave you feeling as though you are carrying the entire relationship problem by yourself — a form of emotional abandonment within the partnership.

There is an important difference between “I'm not ready to talk about this right now” and “I am unwilling to ever talk about this.”

The first can be a situational boundary. The second can become a wall that further creates distances and damages the relationship.

There Is Persistent Contempt or Cruelty

There is a difference between being angry, hurt, frustrated, or even deeply resentful — and losing the ability to see your partner as a human being who has their own experience, pain, and good intentions.

When the sexual problem has devolved into persistent contempt, humiliation, cruelty, or hostility, something much deeper than a lack of sex is happening.

Contempt can sound like:

Through more than 30+ years of relationship research, the Gottman Institute has identified contempt as a particularly significant predictor of relationship dissolution, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse 🔗 as they call it.

For a relationship to turn around, there needs to be some capacity to move beyond “I'm right and you're wrong” and become curious about the other person's experience.

That doesn't mean agreeing with your partner. It means being able to find the rightness in their perspective — to understand why their experience makes sense to them, even when you see things differently.

If the pain between you has become so entrenched that neither partner can access curiosity, compassion, or basic respect for the other, it may be time to let the relationship go.

And if contempt, humiliation, coercion, or cruelty is present, protecting yourself and any children involved becomes more important than trying to restore sexual intimacy.

Your Boundaries and Needs Are Repeatedly Ignored

Sex cannot be rebuilt on pressure.

If one partner says, “I'm not ready,” “I need to slow down,” “That hurts,” “I don't want to do that,” or “I need a break,” those words need to matter.

Repeatedly pushing for sex after a partner has said no, pressuring them to continue when they are uncomfortable, mocking their requests to slow down, or making them feel guilty for needing rest or more time erodes something fundamental: the ability to trust that your body and your boundaries will be respected.

The same is true in the other direction.

A partner who wants more sex should be able to say so without being mocked, shamed, dismissed, or made to feel that their desire is inherently wrong.

Both people's needs matter. But neither person's needs give them the right to override the other's boundaries.

A relationship can survive differences in desire.

It cannot become healthy if one person's boundaries repeatedly don't count.

There Is No Willingness to Repair

Sometimes couples genuinely want to change but don't know how.

They have tried talking. They've tried date nights. They've tried scheduling sex. They've tried taking vacations. They've tried doing nothing and hoping things improve.

Failure doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is beyond repair.

The more important thing to consider is whether there is still a willingness to repair.

  • Are you both willing to look at what has happened between you?

  • To acknowledge the hurt you've caused each other?

  • To take responsibility for your part and show up differently?

  • To get help when you cannot find your way through it alone?

You don't have to agree about what caused the sexless marriage.

You don't have to want exactly the same thing.

But there needs to be some shared willingness to explore a different way of approaching things when the old way does not work for both people.

If one partner has effectively decided, “This is how things are. I'm not interested in changing anything, and I'm not interested in exploring it with you,” then the problem is no longer simply a sexless marriage. It is a relationship in which two people fundamentally want different things.

You No Longer Want the Relationship

Sometimes the answer you’re needing to walk away from a sexless marriage may be as simple as no longer wanting the relationship.

You don't have to prove that your marriage is bad enough to leave.

You can love someone and still recognize that you no longer want to be in the relationship.

You can care deeply about your history together and still know that the relationship you have today isn't the relationship you want for the future.

If, after honestly exploring what is happening, you realize that you no longer want to build a life and intimate relationship with this person, that matters. And it is a valid choice.

There Is a Refusal to Grow

A long-term relationship isn't a train traveling along a fixed track toward a predetermined destination.

It's more like a boat navigating changing weather and currents.

You will change. Your partner will change. Your bodies will change. Your desires will change. Your circumstances will change. What worked sexually ten or twenty years ago may not work now.

Sex in a long-term relationship goes through different stages. Sometimes an old form of sexual connection naturally dies, creating an invitation for something new to emerge.

Passionate, connected sex 🔗 requires a willingness to grow — to discover each other again and again as the people you become through the decades of experience. That doesn't mean constantly reinventing yourself to please your partner. It means remaining open to learning, adapting, and finding your way through change together.

Whereas refusal to grow can sound like a rigid position: “I'm not changing. Take it or leave it.”

It can look like refusing to discuss what has changed, refusing to explore what might make things better, or refusing to consider outside support when the two of you cannot find your way forward alone 🔗.

If one or both partners are unwilling to grow, adapt, or engage with the reality that the relationship has changed, there may come a point when holding on simply keeps both people stuck.

There Is a Lack of Care for Each Other

At the heart of a partnership is a basic interest in each other's wellbeing.

That doesn't mean you will always be able to meet your partner's needs. You can't manufacture desire on command — nor should you ever have to.

But you should care that your partner is hurting.

You should care about the impact the situation is having on them.

And you should have some interest in finding out whether there is a way to create more common ground.

A lack of care can look like continuous stonewalling, silence, and avoidance. It can look like refusing to engage with a partner's pain or sexual needs over and over again. It can even look like continuing to have sex in a way you know is painful or distressing for your partner without being willing to address what’s happening.

When care and respect have disappeared, rebuilding sexual intimacy should no longer be the central question. It is now a matter of whether this relationship is respectful of you.

One or Both of You Have Already “Quietly Quit” the Relationship

Sometimes a relationship doesn't end with a dramatic fight, an affair, or a decision to divorce.

Sometimes one or both partners simply quietly quit.

(This term was coined by journalist Monica Corcoran Harel in her viral November 2025 article for The Cut, “The Women Quietly Quitting Their Husbands” 🔗 which explores the phenomenon of independent midlife women who emotionally detach from unhappy marriages while remaining in the household.)

You may still live together. You may still parent together, share a home, pay the bills, take vacations, and look like a couple from the outside.

But emotionally, at least one partner already stepped away.

You've stopped reaching for each other. You've stopped asking questions. You've stopped sharing the parts of yourself that matter. You may no longer fight because you've stopped believing that anything will change. You may have built separate lives within the same household and become more comfortable with distance than with closeness.

This can happen after years of disappointment in a sexless marriage. Repeated rejection can lead one partner to stop initiating. Repeated pressure can lead the other to stop engaging. Eventually, both people can become so tired of the cycle that not trying feels safer than trying and being hurt again.

Sometimes this emotional disconnection is temporary — a way of protecting yourself when you've been overwhelmed or hurt for too long. And sometimes it goes deeper.

The important question is whether there is still some willingness to turn toward the relationship.

  • Do you still want to know your partner?

  • Do you still care about what happens between you?

  • Is there any part of you that wants to see whether something different might be possible?

Because recovering from a sexless marriage requires more than changing your sex life. It requires two people who are willing, in some way, to re-engage with each other.

If one or both of you have already emotionally left the relationship — and have no desire to come back and explore what might be possible — it may be a sign that the question of separation to lead a more fulfilling life must be addressed.

Deciding Whether to Walk Away

When you are living in a sexless marriage, it is natural to focus on whether you can get sex back.

But recovery asks bigger questions:

  • Is there still care between us?

  • Can we respect each other's boundaries and needs?

  • Are we both willing to look honestly at what has happened?

  • Can we become curious about each other's experience again?

  • Are we willing to grow and change?

  • Do we both want to find our way back to each other?

If the answer to these questions is increasingly no, the question may no longer be how to recover the marriage. It may be whether continuing the marriage is keeping both of you from living the life and having the relationship you want.

Can Your Sexless Marriage Recover?

If you're asking whether to leave your sexless marriage, you may have been living with this question for a long time.

You may be exhausted from trying to fix it.
You may have had the same conversation a hundred times.
You may be wondering whether the love is still there — or whether you've simply become roommates who share a history, a home, and a family.

Before you decide that your marriage is beyond repair, it can be worth understanding the pattern you're actually caught in.

And before you decide that you have to stay, it can be worth getting honest about what you need from your relationship — and whether the two of you are willing to create it.

Sexless marriage recovery isn't about forcing yourselves to have more sex.

It's about understanding what happened to your connection, what keeps the two of you stuck, and whether you can create something different together.

Sometimes that work brings couples back to each other.
Sometimes it brings clarity about what needs to change.
And sometimes it clarifies that the relationship has reached its end.

You don't have to know the answer before you begin.

You just have to be willing to find out.