A sexless relationship: when sex has gone and nobody raises the subject

In the evening, once the children are finally asleep, they sit at opposite ends of the sofa. He is on his phone, she is reading. At eleven she says, “I’m going to bed,” and he replies, “I’ll be there soon.” By the time he comes, she is asleep — or pretending to be. In the morning they kiss quickly, like relatives. They don’t argue. They don’t hate each other. They even love each other. There just hasn’t been any sex for two years, and neither of them knows any more how they would even begin to talk about it.

If you recognised yourself in that scene, you are not alone. A relationship without sex is one of the most common and at the same time most silenced difficulties couples face. People don’t talk about it over coffee with friends, often not even with their doctor, and least of all at home. This piece is not meant to convince you that something is wrong with your relationship. It is meant to give words to a subject you are both carrying in silence.

How often does this happen?

Researchers don’t fully agree on when a relationship should be called “sexless”. The American therapist Barry McCarthy, who wrote a book on the subject together with his wife Emily, proposed a threshold that has since become widespread in both professional and popular writing: a relationship in which the partners have sex fewer than ten times a year. The line is of course arbitrary — nobody claims that a couple with eleven times a year is happy and a couple with nine is not. But it is useful, because it makes clear that we are not talking about the months after a birth or one exhausting month, but about a state of affairs that has become a pattern.

In 1993 the sociologist Denise Donnelly analysed data from a large American national survey of families and households. She found that around 16 per cent of married people had not had sex in the month before the survey. Sexual inactivity was more common among older couples and among those who described their marriage as less happy. More recent research paints a similar picture: Jean Twenge and her colleagues, working with data from the American General Social Survey, found that the frequency of sex among adults fell noticeably between the late 1980s and the mid-2010s, among married people too.

I am not aware of comparable data on sexless relationships in Slovenia, so I won’t quote any. But I know from conversations that the feeling “it’s only like this for us” is almost always wrong. And that very feeling is part of what keeps the subject closed.

It doesn’t happen overnight

Rarely does a couple say, “From today, we won’t sleep together any more.” Far more often, sex fades gradually, almost imperceptibly. At first there is a good reason: a small child, an illness, a move, a new job that takes all the energy. There is less sex, and that is understandable. Then comes a moment when it could return — and it doesn’t. Because now it feels awkward. Because one of you has suggested it a few times and been turned down. Because the other has started avoiding even a hug, so that the hug won’t be read as an invitation.

And so a cycle forms that keeps turning on its own. Less sex means the subject becomes more loaded. A more loaded subject means every touch carries expectation. Where touch carries expectation, both of you start to avoid it. And where there is no touch, there is even less sex.

It matters to notice that there is no villain in this cycle. The one who suggests sex is not “obsessed”, and the one who declines is not “cold”. Both have ended up in a pattern neither of them chose. As with other recurring patterns in couples — I wrote about this in The anxious and the avoidant partner — each of you is reacting to the other’s reaction, not to the original reason.

Why you both stay silent

When a couple comes to therapy because of “communication” or “distance”, sex is often a subject that only surfaces after several sessions. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because it matters so much that it is hard to say out loud. The silence usually has several layers.

• Shame. Sex is one of the few areas where people feel judged as a whole person. When there is no sex, the thought “there is something wrong with me” appears quickly — which, incidentally, is exactly the voice I describe in Shame: the emotion that whispers “There is something wrong with me”.
• Fear of rejection. The one who wants more is afraid the question will be heard as pressure, and that the refusal will be spoken aloud — which is worse than a silent one.
• Fear that the truth will hurt. The one who wants less is afraid of having to say something that will wound the other: that the attraction has faded, that something bothers them, that they are simply worn out by everything.
• Protecting the relationship. Paradoxically, silence is often an attempt to keep the peace. “We get on well, why open something that will only spoil the evening?”

When I work with couples who bring this subject, I notice that both partners are often convinced the other doesn’t think about it at all. In fact they both do, each in their own silence. Here is a short example of how a first attempt can sound (composite, not a real person):

“I don’t know if this is even a topic for here.”
“Which topic?”
“You know. That … that we don’t sleep together any more. I don’t think it’s his fault.”
“I thought you didn’t care. That you’d decided and it was simply better that way.”
“Didn’t care? Every evening I think about how I could start.”

In this brief exchange, something important happens: both discover that the other has been suffering too. That alone doesn’t bring sex back. But it does bring back the sense that you are in this together — and that is the first condition for everything that follows.

See a doctor first

Before you treat sex as a purely emotional or relational question, it is wise to rule out physical causes. This is not a formality. Sexual desire and response can be changed by hormonal shifts (for example in perimenopause, after giving birth or with lower testosterone), pain during sex, erection difficulties, chronic illness, poor sleep and many medicines — among them some antidepressants, hormonal contraception and blood pressure medication. Depression itself often reduces the desire for everything that once brought pleasure.

So the first stop is your GP, a gynaecologist or a urologist. If it turns out to be a sexual dysfunction — pain, erection problems, a marked absence of desire that causes distress — the right place to go is a doctor or a specialist in sexual medicine. I am not a sexologist or a sex therapist myself. In couples therapy, intimacy can be one of the subjects we talk about — how you drifted apart, what you didn’t dare say, what is happening between you. But for the treatment of sexual dysfunctions I will always refer you to someone trained for that.

Not every sexless relationship is a problem

This may be the most important sentence in this piece: a sexless relationship is not a diagnosis. Some couples live without sex and are content with it. Perhaps both are asexual, or both have very low desire. Perhaps one of them is ill and together they have chosen a different form of closeness. Perhaps they are in old age, when tenderness and belonging are expressed differently. If it suits you both, there is no reason for anyone on the outside — friends, the media or a therapist — to insist that “something is missing”.

A study I often mention when couples compare themselves with others is the work of Amy Muise and her colleagues from 2016. They showed that how often people have sex is linked to well-being, but only up to about once a week — beyond that, well-being did not rise any further. The number on its own, then, doesn’t tell you whether a relationship is good. What decides it is something else: whether the arrangement is agreed and whether it suits you both.

So the problem is not that there is no sex. The problem is when one partner is struggling but cannot talk about it, or when both miss it but neither knows how to find the way back. Then it is not about sex as an activity, but about the loss of a closeness that was once there.

What happens to a relationship when the subject stays closed

An unspoken subject does not stay quiet. It gives rise to things that are later harder to mend than sex itself.

The first is resentment. The one who misses sex starts to keep count — not aloud, but inside. Each refusal is added to the pile. As the pile grows, the resentment starts to show in everything else: in the tone when you discuss bills, in sharp remarks, in no longer wanting to go on holiday together. You can read more about how resentment works in the knowledge base under resentment.

The second, on the other side, is guilt. The one who withdraws often knows they are hurting the other and feels guilty. But guilt does not awaken desire — on the contrary, it makes sex feel even more like a duty to be avoided.

The third is distance in everything. Because you both avoid touch, the tenderness that has little to do with sex disappears too: a hand on a shoulder, a hug in the kitchen, a kiss that lasts longer than a second. The couple becomes a good team for running the household and the children, but loses the sense of being two people who keep choosing each other — rather than just flatmates.

If criticism, contempt and withdrawal begin to appear alongside this, it helps to know the patterns described by John Gottman — I wrote about them in The Four Horsemen in relationships. A sexless relationship is not necessarily a relationship that is falling apart. But it can become one of the paths there if the subject stays buried for a long time.

How to open the subject: an exercise for this week

There is no magic sentence that opens the subject without discomfort. But you can reduce the discomfort if you approach the conversation thoughtfully. Here is an exercise you can try today. The aim is not to solve everything in one evening, but to break the silence for the first time.

1. Choose a time that is not in the bedroom. Not in bed at night and not straight after a refusal. Ideally on a walk, in the car or over coffee, when nobody is expecting anything physical. Say in advance: “I’d like to talk to you about something that has been weighing on me. We don’t have to solve anything today.”
2. Start with yourself, not with the other. Instead of “you never want to”, say “I miss you” or “I notice we’re both avoiding it, and it makes me sad.” Sentences about your own experience open things up; accusations shut them down.
3. Say what you are not asking for. “I’m not saying this to push you into anything. I just want you to know how it is for me, and I’d like to hear how it is for you.” This lowers the other person’s defences.
4. Ask, and listen to the end. “How is this for you?” Then don’t correct or explain, but sum up what you heard: “If I’ve understood you right, you feel …” The exercise a conversation without interruption can help with this.
5. Agree on one small step that is not sex. For example: a hug every evening that lasts twenty seconds, with nothing to follow. Or that you will talk about it again in a week. A small step you can both keep is worth more than a big promise.

If you would like more guidance for the conversation, there is a separate piece, How to talk to your partner about sex without blame, and on why desire fades for both partners in long relationships, Loss of desire in a long relationship: why it happens and what can be done. If your difficulty is mainly that one of you wants more than the other, read When your desires don’t match.

What couples therapy can offer

When the conversation at home doesn’t get going — because it ends in tears, silence or a row every time — that is a sign the subject carries more than the couple can manage alone. That is when a third person who is on neither side can help.

In couples therapy I don’t treat sex as a technical problem, but as part of the relationship. It often turns out that the absence of sex is not the cause but the consequence: unspoken resentment from the time when one of you was alone with a baby; a feeling that your partner has become more of a parent than a lover; a disappointment that was never voiced. In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we also ask what each partner brought from their own family about closeness, the body and vulnerability. Someone who grew up in a home where nobody hugged will experience touch differently from someone used to tenderness. These differences are not a problem in themselves, but they become one if nobody puts them into words.

What couples therapy can give you is a safe space in which the subject can be discussed without blame. What it cannot give you is a guarantee that sex will return in the form it once had. Sometimes it does. Sometimes the couple finds a new form of closeness. And sometimes they realise their paths are parting — and even that can be an outcome better than years of silent struggle.

When the answer is not in conversation

I want to be honest: conversation is not the solution to everything. There are circumstances in which the answer lies elsewhere.

When the cause is physical. If pain, a hormonal change or a side effect of medication is behind it, no conversation will remove it. Talking can help a couple decide to see a doctor in the first place, but treatment is a matter for medicine.

When one of you withdraws out of fear. If someone avoids sex because of a traumatic experience, because they were coerced in the relationship or because they are afraid of their partner, then pressure to “bring sex back” can do harm. Safety comes first, often with individual therapy too. If there is violence in the relationship, that is the first subject — not sex.

When sex is only the last symptom. Sometimes a couple realises that it is not only sex that has gone, but also the wish to be together. Then bringing sex back is not a goal that makes sense, and it is more honest to talk about what lies beneath it.

When it suits you both. As I wrote above — if you are both content, there is nothing to fix. Nobody should tell you that you ought to have “more”.

What to remember

• A relationship without sex is more common than you think — according to older American data, roughly one in six married people had not had sex in the previous month.
• It usually happens gradually: a good reason, awkwardness, avoiding touch and finally silence.
• Check physical causes with a doctor first — your GP, a gynaecologist or a urologist; for sexual dysfunctions the right place is a specialist in sexual medicine.
• A sexless relationship is not a diagnosis. What matters is whether the arrangement is agreed and suits you both.
• Start the conversation outside the bedroom, with yourself, without demands — and with one small step that is not sex.