Married, in Love, and Not Having Sex: What a Sexless Marriage Is Really Telling You
By Alexis Honeycutt, LMHC | Certified Gottman Therapist
Many of the couples who come to see me have been together for fifteen or twenty years. They've raised kids, built careers, and made a life they worked hard for. They still laugh at each other's jokes. They'd each call the other their best friend without hesitating. However, they haven't had sex in months, sometimes years.
Usually, neither one can pinpoint exactly when this changed. There was a time when they couldn't keep their hands off each other. Then sex became a weekend thing. Then a vacation thing. Then, with no formal announcement, it stopped happening altogether.
By the time they're sitting in my office, each has usually settled on a private explanation. One wonders whether their partner still finds them attractive. The other insists the love is still there; they're just exhausted, and every time the subject comes up, the pressure gets worse. One feels rejected. The other feels inadequate. Neither says it out loud, but both are wondering what happened to the marriage they once knew.
When a couple reaches this point, it's tempting to conclude that their sexual relationship is broken, or that attraction has disappeared. I'd be careful about drawing either conclusion too quickly.
A sexless marriage describes what is happening between two people. It doesn't necessarily explain why.
And the why is exactly where I would begin.
What Is Considered a Sexless Marriage?
"Sexless marriage" is commonly used to describe couples who have sex fewer than ten times per year, though some therapists call that a "low-sex marriage" and save "sexless" for couples who haven't had sex in a year or more. Neither term is a formal clinical diagnosis, and I would caution against placing too much weight on the numbers.
Some couples have sex infrequently and are perfectly happy with the arrangement. Others have sex once or twice a month and feel real distress about the lack of intimacy.
A 2016 study published in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests more sex isn't automatically better. Researchers Amy Muise, Ulrich Schimmack, and Emily Impett analyzed data from three studies involving more than 30,000 participants. Among people in relationships, sexual frequency was associated with greater well-being up to about once per week. Beyond that, they found no additional association.
That doesn't mean every couple should be having sex once a week. It means there's no magic number that guarantees a happy marriage.
I'm far more interested in whether both partners are satisfied with their sexual relationship than in how often they're having sex.
Why Do Couples Stop Having Sex?
When couples tell me sex has disappeared from their marriage, my first job is to find out what is actually going on inside the relationship.
There is rarely a single cause of a sexless marriage. But I find it helpful to separate four possibilities, and many couples are dealing with more than one.
1. A Relational Disconnection
Sometimes fading desire is a symptom, not the root problem.
Has resentment built up over an unequal share of parenting or household work? Has emotional distance crept in because the couple stopped protecting time for "we"? Has a parent-child dynamic worked its way into the marriage? Are old emotional wounds still sitting there, unaddressed?
In my experience, when the answer to any of these is yes, desire often returns once the rupture is repaired. When couples carry resentment, unhealed hurts, or years of unresolved conflict, sex becomes one more place where they feel disconnected.
Gurit Birnbaum and her colleagues have studied this link directly. In a 2016 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, they examined how a romantic partner's responsiveness influences sexual desire. Across three studies, responsiveness was associated with increased desire, particularly among women.
In other words, feeling understood, valued, and important to your partner may shape how desirable that partner becomes to you.
Improving emotional connection won't automatically restore desire, but what happens outside the bedroom clearly influences what happens inside it.
That's why I don't typically begin treatment by telling a couple to schedule sex twice a week. If there's an underlying relational problem, we need to understand it and address it. More frequent sex won't paper over it.
2. Stress, Kids, and the Season of Life
Stress drains the energy and bandwidth that desire needs. Work deadlines, a family member's illness, and the relentless demands of daily life are common culprits.
A 2025 study published in the International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology looked at this day by day. It followed 229 couples for 56 days. In each couple, one partner met clinical criteria for low sexual desire or arousal. On days when the partner with these difficulties felt more stressed than usual, both partners tended to report lower sexual desire and satisfaction, along with higher sexual distress.
That study focused on couples already experiencing sexual difficulties. Even so, its findings reinforce why stress belongs in any conversation about diminished desire.
In my practice, a sexless marriage after kids is one of the most common versions of this story. Parenthood rearranges nearly everything: sleep, energy, bodies, schedules, and the way people see each other.
Partners who used to be lovers can slowly become co-managers of a busy household. Their conversations shrink to pickup times, permission slips, and who's handling dinner.
For many parents, especially the one carrying more of the mental load, being touched, needed, and asked for things all day leaves little appetite for being touched at night. Postpartum recovery, breastfeeding, and hormonal shifts can add physical layers to that exhaustion.
The partner who keeps saying no often isn't issuing a rejection; they're running on empty.
The season of young children often explains how sex slipped away, but it doesn't mean it has to stay gone. Kids grow up, but the habit of not reaching for each other can outlast the diapers and the sleepless nights by years, unless a couple decides to interrupt it.
None of these pressures are likely to disappear on their own. So the couple has to get intentional about leaving room in the margins of life for play.
The Latin root of the word "decision" is caedere, meaning "to cut." Sometimes we have to cut out golf tournaments, PTA meetings, yoga, and yes, even some of the kids' soccer games to find breathing room for fantasy and romance.
I often invite couples to think of intimacy as a verb. We make time, and we create space, for the things we cherish.
3. Medical and Physical Factors
Not every change in sexual desire begins inside the relationship. Hormonal changes, medications, depression, anxiety, chronic illness, fatigue, and pain during sex can all affect someone's interest.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists identifies hormonal changes during pregnancy, perimenopause, and menopause, along with certain illnesses, medications, stress, and relationship difficulties, as possible contributors to sexual problems.
Picture someone who begins experiencing painful intercourse during menopause. They may gradually start avoiding sex. Their partner may read that avoidance as rejection or lost attraction, when the real issue is physical discomfort.
The same pattern can show up with erectile difficulties. A man who is anxious about whether his body will cooperate may start avoiding sex altogether, and his partner may read that as lost interest.
Certain medications, including some antidepressants, can have sexual side effects as well.
Couples can spend years treating a change in desire as a relationship problem when there's also a medical piece to the puzzle. A significant or unexplained change in sexual functioning deserves appropriate medical attention.
4. Desire Versus Attraction
Couples sometimes come to me worried that their attraction to their partner has faded. Often, what they're actually describing is a lack of desire.
Those aren't the same thing. A person can remain very much attracted to their partner and still feel little desire for any sexual activity at all.
Desire also doesn't always show up spontaneously.
Researcher Rosemary Basson introduced a model of women's sexual response that challenged the assumption that desire must come before sexual activity. For some people, especially in established relationships, desire develops in response to pleasurable touch, emotional closeness, or other favorable conditions, rather than appearing out of nowhere.
Think about what that means for a couple married for twenty years. One partner may be waiting to spontaneously feel like it, while daily life leaves almost no room for that feeling to grow.
This does not mean anyone should agree to unwanted sex in the hope that desire will eventually arrive. It means spontaneous desire isn't the only way sexual interest develops. Sometimes couples need to build the conditions where desire has a chance to emerge.
Sometimes, though, attraction itself shifts, even when the relationship is relatively healthy. You can genuinely love your partner and still experience a loss of attraction in marriage. That isn't necessarily a sign that something is wrong with the marriage, or with your partner, and it deserves careful thought before anyone decides what it means.
Mismatched Sex Drives in Marriage
One of the hardest situations couples face is a significant difference in sexual desire, which clinicians call desire discrepancy and most people call a mismatched libido.
One partner may feel rejected, unattractive, or unwanted. The other may feel pressured, inadequate, or frustrated that sex has become a recurring fight.
Over time, the difference takes on a life of its own. The higher-desire partner may pursue sex more often, trying to feel connected. The lower-desire partner may withdraw, because every hug starts to feel like a request for something more. Both end up feeling misunderstood.
A 2021 study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior by Jean-François Jodouin and colleagues looked at what that gap does over time. The researchers followed 229 couples in committed relationships, tracking them daily for 35 days and again a year later. When partners' levels of desire were further apart, both partners reported more sexual distress, from one day to the next and over time.
What matters here is that neither partner's desire should be treated as the "correct" amount.
The person who wants sex more often isn't necessarily unreasonable. The person who wants it less isn't necessarily withholding affection. The couple needs to understand what sex means to each of them, what may be shaping their desire, and how to face the problem together instead of against each other.
Sex, Affection, and Feeling Wanted Aren't the Same Thing
When one partner says they miss sex, what are they actually missing? Is it sexual pleasure? Physical affection? Feeling desired? Emotional connection? Romance? These aren't interchangeable.
For some people, sex is a primary way they feel emotionally close. For others, emotional closeness has to come first before they feel any interest in sex. One partner reaches for sex to feel connected. The other needs to feel connected before they can reach for sex. Without understanding that difference, couples can have the same argument for years and never touch what's underneath it.
Often, no intimacy in marriage didn't start in the bedroom. The lingering kiss goodbye went first. Then sitting close on the couch. Then the hand on the back while passing in the kitchen. Sex may be the last thing to go.
In Gottman Method terms, each of those small gestures is a bid for connection, and the motto for keeping them alive is "small things often." (I've written more about the everyday habits that keep love healthy.)
How to Talk to Your Spouse About a Sexless Marriage
Conversations about lost intimacy should lead with curiosity instead of criticism.
If you're the partner who wants more, consider the difference between these two openings:
"I miss being close to you, and I've missed it for a while. I don't want this to turn into another argument.
Can we try to figure out together what's gotten in the way?"
"We never have sex anymore. What's going on with you?"
The first describes what you miss, the second describes what your partner is doing wrong.
If you're the partner who wants less, the same principle applies when it's your turn to respond:
"You're not wrong that something's changed. I don't want you thinking I've stopped wanting you. Something has been getting in the way for me, and I'd like to figure out what it is."
"I'm just tired. Can we not do this right now?"
The first takes what your partner has noticed seriously. The second closes the door, and your partner will fill in the reason on their own, usually with the worst one available.
Timing matters, too. Don't raise this in the middle of an argument, or right after a sexual advance has been turned down. When one or both partners are emotionally heightened or already feeling raw, the conversation is at best poorly timed. At worst, it can leave a lasting wound.
Whichever partner you are, avoid criticism at all costs. Stay far away from statements like "You only care about sex" or "You never make any effort anymore."
How to Fix a Sexless Marriage
I'm hesitant about the word "fix," because it suggests there's one broken part to replace. In my experience, how to fix a sexless marriage depends entirely on why the marriage became sexless in the first place.
If the root is resentment, the couple needs to address those emotional wounds before expecting desire to return.
If stress and exhaustion have taken over, they need to make some difficult decisions about where their time and energy go. That's caedere again: cutting something so intimacy has room to breathe.
If there are medical concerns, those deserve proper attention from a physician.
If desire has faded but attraction hasn't, the couple may need to build the conditions where desire has a chance to emerge, rather than waiting for it to arrive on its own.
If attraction has genuinely changed, the couple may need difficult, thoughtful conversations about what each person needs and what remains possible.
If desire is mismatched, both partners need to stop treating their own level as the standard and start understanding the meaning each assigns to sex.
What I would not do is make increasing the number of times a couple has sex the goal. The goal is to understand what happened to their intimate life, and to create conditions where closeness, affection, and desire have room to grow again.
Some of these conversations are hard to have without help, and that's what couples therapy is for.
Can a Sexless Marriage Survive?
Yes, often. But survival looks different for different couples.
Not every sexless marriage will become sexually active again, and not every couple wants that outcome. Some couples are genuinely at peace with a relationship built on companionship and affection, with little or no sex. When both partners feel that way, that's a valid way to love someone.
The marriages that struggle most are the ones where one partner is grieving in silence and the other won't talk about it. In those marriages, the silence does more damage than the missing sex itself.
A sexless marriage is not automatically a loveless marriage. And it certainly isn't automatically beyond repair.
Before You Say Anything, Try This
This week, before you talk to your partner about sex, sit down alone with a pen and finish these three sentences honestly:
When I think about what's missing, what I miss most is... (pleasure? touch? feeling wanted? feeling close? romance?)
Something that makes it harder for me to reach for my partner right now is...
Something I've been afraid to say about our intimacy is...
Don't share it yet. Just read what you wrote.
Before a couple can change their sexual relationship, each person needs to know what they're actually trying to get back.
Research & References
Muise, A., Schimmack, U., & Impett, E. A. (2016). Sexual frequency predicts greater well-being, but more is not always better. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(4), 295–302. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615616462
Birnbaum, G. E., Reis, H. T., Mizrahi, M., Kanat-Maymon, Y., Sass, O., & Granovski-Milner, C. (2016). Intimately connected: The importance of partner responsiveness for experiencing sexual desire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(4), 530–546. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000069
Girouard, A., Bergeron, S., Huberman, J. S., & Rosen, N. O. (2025). Daily perceived stress and sexual health in couples with sexual interest/arousal disorder. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 25(2), 100582. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijchp.2025.100582
Basson, R. (2000). The female sexual response: A different model. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 26(1), 51–65. https://doi.org/10.1080/009262300278641
Jodouin, J.-F., Rosen, N. O., Merwin, K., & Bergeron, S. (2021). Discrepancy in dyadic sexual desire predicts sexual distress over time in a community sample of committed couples: A daily diary and longitudinal study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 50(8), 3637–3649. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-01967-0
American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Your sexual health. https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/your-sexual-health
Mayo Clinic. Erectile dysfunction: Symptoms and causes. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/erectile-dysfunction/symptoms-causes/syc-20355776
Mayo Clinic. Female sexual dysfunction: Symptoms and causes. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/female-sexual-dysfunction/symptoms-causes/syc-20372549
About the Author
Alexis Honeycutt, LMHC, is a Certified Gottman Therapist specializing in couples therapy and intensive relationship treatment. She works with couples facing emotional disconnection, changes in attraction, relationship dissatisfaction, and other challenges in long-term partnerships.
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