How sex survives routine: intimacy you can (and can't) plan

“What about Thursday? The kids will be at Grandma’s, I’ll be home by six.”

She said it with half a smile, he nodded, and then they both went quiet. A feeling hung in the air that many couples know: that something must be wrong if closeness has to be booked like a dentist’s appointment. That sex ought to “just happen”, the way it used to. And that arranging Thursday is some kind of admission of defeat.

In this piece I would like to look at whether that is true. What happens to sex in a long relationship once it is surrounded by work, children, laundry and tiredness. Whether planning kills it or saves it. And what a couple can do so that intimacy does not become one more item on the to-do list — nor something you wait for indefinitely.

The myth of spontaneity

When couples remember the beginning, they often say that back then “everything was spontaneous”. Sex happened by itself, without a plan, without an arrangement. And because that is how it was at the start, it feels as though that is how it should be.

But look more closely and nothing at the beginning was truly spontaneous. Dates were planned. You took ages choosing what to wear. You thought about the meeting all day, perhaps all week. The flat was tidied, the phone put away. Anticipation built for days in advance. What felt spontaneous was in fact wrapped in an enormous amount of attention and preparation — it is just that back then the preparation came by itself, because everything was new.

In a long relationship this automatic attention settles down. That is not a sign of less love, but of a life that has filled up with other things. If a couple then waits for sex to “just happen” again, they often wait a very long time. Not because they do not want each other, but because everyday life never produces a moment when both are rested, alone and in the mood at the same time.

How much is enough — and why it is not a contest

One of the questions that weighs most on couples is whether what happens between them is “normal”. They compare themselves with friends, with films, with themselves ten years ago. Here research offers some relief.

In 2016 Amy Muise and colleagues analysed data from more than thirty thousand people and found that sexual frequency is indeed linked to satisfaction with life and with the relationship — but only up to a point. For couples who had sex about once a week, the link levelled off. More frequent sex was not associated with any additional satisfaction. The study did not show that once a week is the “right” amount anyone should be aiming for, but that more is not automatically better.

Even more interesting is a study in which George Loewenstein and colleagues asked couples in 2015 to double how often they had sex. You might expect them to become happier. They did not. They even reported less desire and less enjoyment. The researchers explained this by the fact that sex had become a task imposed from outside — and when intimacy becomes an obligation, it loses part of what makes it precious.

Taken together, these two findings say something important: it is not about the number, but about where what happens between you comes from.

Scheduled sex: the research is mixed

The advice “put sex in the diary” has become almost a cliché. Does it work? The honest answer is: it depends. There are few studies that directly compare couples with planned and unplanned sex, and those that exist do not paint a single picture. The study on doubling frequency suggests that pressure from outside can do harm. At the same time, many couples who set time aside report that it helped, because otherwise they simply would not see each other.

The difference probably lies in what exactly you are planning. If you plan time — an evening when you will be alone, without phones and without obligations — you create a space in which many things can happen, sex among them. If you plan an outcome — “on Thursday we’re having sex” — that outcome becomes a task, and one of you may start to feel like a debtor.

It helps to know that for many people desire does not appear before closeness, but only during it. They do not come to bed full of desire — desire wakes up once they are there, relaxed and connected. This is called responsive desire. For people like this, time set aside is often the only door through which desire can come in at all.

Familiarity and mystery

In her book Mating in Captivity, the therapist Esther Perel wrote down a thought that almost everyone who reads about relationships now knows: love needs closeness, while desire needs a little distance. Love wants to have; desire wants to want. When partners become completely known, predictable and safe to each other, love deepens — but desire can fall silent, because there is nothing left to reach for.

Perel does not suggest that partners should drift apart or become unpredictable. She suggests that they once again notice another person in each other — not just the role of parent, flatmate or organiser of the week. This often happens when you see your partner in their element: speaking on a stage, laughing with friends, doing something they are good at. For a moment they are not “my husband”, but someone you can look at again from a little distance.

Why desire settles down in both partners over a long relationship, and what stress and resentment have to do with it, will be explained in more detail in Loss of desire in a long relationship: why it happens and what can be done. Here I am more interested in what everyday routine can do differently.

Novelty: the things you did together for the first time

The psychologist Arthur Aron and his colleagues spent decades researching what happens when a couple does something new together. In a well-known study from 2000 they invited couples into the lab and gave them a task: half did something dull, the other half something unusual and slightly exciting — tied to each other, they had to get through an obstacle course together. Afterwards, couples in the second group reported greater satisfaction with their relationship.

In an earlier study, couples set aside some time each week for ten weeks for shared activities. Those who chose activities that were new and exciting for them were more satisfied at the end than those who chose only pleasant, familiar ones. Aron explained this through the idea of self-expansion: with a partner with whom you experience something new, you feel bigger than you were. The feeling of a relationship’s beginning — when a whole world opened up through the other person — can partly return when the world opens up again.

Novelty does not mean extreme sports or expensive trips. It can be a course where you are both beginners. A path you have never walked. A restaurant with a cuisine you do not know. What matters is that you are both a little outside the familiar at the same time — and that you experience it together, not side by side. This is not a cure for sex either. But it is the air that intimacy needs so that it does not start to smell stale.

When routine digs in so deep that one day starts to look exactly like another, boredom can appear too — which is not shameful, but a signal that something needs to change. At the same time, routine itself is not the enemy: it provides the safety in which you can relax at all. The problem is not routine, but a routine with no room left for the two of you.

Closeness that is not sex

When a couple senses that there is less sex, something unexpected often happens: all the other touch disappears too. A hug in the kitchen, a hand on the shoulder, a kiss when leaving. One partner starts avoiding tenderness for fear the other will take it as an invitation they will not be able to follow through on. The other takes this as rejection. And so a distance grows that is bigger than it needs to be.

A large American study by David Frederick and colleagues in 2017 found some common ground among couples who had kept passion alive in a long relationship: they talked more about sex, paid more attention to mood and atmosphere, were willing to try something new, and told each other what they liked. For them, sex was not cut off from the rest of the relationship, but was its continuation.

That is why the first step is often not more sex, but more touch that asks for nothing. An agreement that a hug is just a hug. That you can curl up together on the sofa without anyone expecting anything more. When touch becomes safe again, desire often returns as well — because it is no longer tied to fear of rejection or to duty. What it is like when one of you wants more than the other is described in When your desires don’t match: sex in a long relationship and in the entry differences in sexual desire.

The conversation that opens this subject can be very simple (a composite, not real people):

“I’ve noticed you don’t touch me at all any more, unless … you know.”
“Because I’m afraid you’ll say no. It’s easier not to try.”
“And I thought you didn’t want me any more.”
“What if we sometimes just held each other? Nothing else?”

This conversation did not settle anything for good. But it revealed that they were both standing on the same side of the same fear — and that the silence each of them had read as rejection was in fact caution.

Exercise: an evening with no goal

This exercise is for a couple who feel that closeness has become rare or loaded. One evening a week, for a few weeks in a row.

1. Agree on time, not on an outcome. One evening when you will be alone. Say it out loud beforehand: tonight, sex does not have to happen. It may, but it is not the goal.
2. Put away your phones and the outside world. At least an hour without screens, without talking about the children, work or bills.
3. Do something you have never done. A new dish, a new walk, a game, music from when you first met. Something at which you are both a bit of a beginner.
4. Allow yourselves touch that asks for nothing. A hand massage, a hug on the sofa, lying side by side. Either of you may say at any moment, “I’m happy here, I don’t want to go further.”
5. At the end, tell each other one thing. What did you enjoy tonight? Not an evaluation, not a criticism — one thing.

After a few weeks, talk about what has changed. It often turns out that this exercise brings more sex — precisely because it was not ordered.

When routine is not to blame

I want to be honest: not every decline in closeness is the result of routine. Sometimes the answer lies elsewhere — and then no evening with no goal will find it.

The body. Hormonal changes, pain during sex, erection problems, chronic illness and some medicines (including antidepressants and some blood pressure medication) can affect desire and response. If you notice a change you can link to your body, the first port of call is a doctor — your GP, a gynaecologist or a urologist. I am neither a sexologist nor a sex therapist; in couples therapy intimacy can be one of the themes, but for sexual dysfunctions the right place to go is a doctor or a specialist in sexual medicine. The piece When to see a doctor, when a sex therapist, and when couples therapy is enough will cover where to turn and when.

Mental health. Depression, burnout and severe stress almost always reduce desire. Then it makes sense to look after those first, rather than treating sex as a separate problem.

Resentment. If there is a lot left unsaid between you — a sense that one of you carries everything, old wounds that have not healed — it often shows first in your sex life. The body does not want closeness with someone it is angry with. Planning does not help then; talking about what stands between you does. There is more about this in It is not about the dishes: what really lies underneath recurring arguments and From blame to needs: how a couple learns a new language.

Pressure. If one of you feels they have to “give” sex to avoid an argument or a bad mood, that is not routine but pressure. Sex without free consent will never be a source of closeness.

What you can talk about in couples therapy

Couples often come to therapy because of arguments, tiredness or a sense that they have become flatmates. They bring up sex only after a few sessions, because the subject is sensitive. But once they open it, it often turns out that everything else is concentrated in it: how each of you asks for closeness, how you react to rejection, what you learned at home about the body and pleasure.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we look at exactly these patterns. We do not look for someone to blame for there being less sex, but for an understanding of what keeps repeating between you — and what could happen differently. Sessions take place in person in Ljubljana, and I also work with English-speaking couples; there you can talk about intimacy as one of the themes of your relationship, at your own pace and in words that feel like your own.

What to remember

• The spontaneity at the start of a relationship was in fact full of attention and preparation — in a long relationship it has to be created consciously.
• More sex is not automatically better; in research the link with satisfaction levels off at about once a week, and pressure from outside can reduce desire.
• Plan time for the two of you, not an outcome — an evening set aside is an invitation, a quota is an obligation.
• Novelty in shared activities and touch without expectations often do more than talking about frequency.
• If the decline is down to the body, depression or resentment, routine is not to blame — have physical causes checked by a doctor first.