Sexless Marriage: Causes, What Helps and When to Get Support
A sexless marriage is usually described as one where a couple has sex rarely or not at all, and a rule of thumb many therapists use is less than once a month, or about ten times a year. The number matters less than how you both feel: if one of you feels lonely or rejected, the marriage has a problem worth taking seriously. The good news is that most causes can be worked on, often with a doctor, a couples or sex therapist, and some very gentle honesty.
What is a sexless marriage, really?
Definitions vary, and that is fine. Two people who both have little interest in sex, and who feel close and content, do not have a problem to fix. Some people are asexual, some have low desire, and some couples simply put their energy elsewhere. If you are both happy, nobody else gets a vote.
The painful version is a mismatch. One partner wants more touch, more desire, more of being wanted. The other avoids it, feels pressured, or has stopped noticing. Over months the subject turns into a minefield, and both people start sleeping a little further apart in the bed.
It is also more common than it feels at two in the morning. Long marriages go through quiet seasons, around babies, illness, grief, job loss or simply years of being tired. A quiet season is normal. A silence nobody can talk about is what hurts.
Why marriages go sexless: the common causes
Most sexless marriages have more than one cause, tangled together. It helps to sort them into three piles.
The body
Hormone changes, menopause and perimenopause, pregnancy and the months after a birth, erection problems, pain during sex, chronic illness, poor sleep and the side effects of some medications can all switch desire off or make sex unpleasant. None of this is anyone's fault, and much of it is treatable. If sex hurts, or desire vanished suddenly, see a doctor before anything else. In the UK and Europe your GP is the start; in the US and Canada, your family doctor or a gynaecologist or urologist.
The mind
Stress, depression, anxiety, body image worries and past experiences can all make sex feel like one more demand. A person who feels bad about themselves rarely feels like being seen. A licensed therapist can help here, and so can treating the stress itself.
The relationship
This is the pile people least want to look at. Resentment over chores, money or parenting. Feeling criticised. Feeling like flatmates who run a household together. A pattern where one partner keeps asking and the other keeps retreating, until the asking feels like pressure and the retreating feels like rejection. Desire struggles in a house where people do not feel liked.
And then there is plain drift. Kids, phones, shifts, the sense that you will get back to it next week. The longer it goes, the more awkward the restart feels, so nobody starts.
How to talk about it without a fight
The conversation matters more than any trick. A few things make it go better.
Pick a calm moment, outside the bedroom, never straight after a rejected advance. A walk works well, because you are side by side instead of staring at each other.
Lead with what you miss, not what they fail to do:
- "I miss being close to you. I'm not blaming you, I just want us to understand what's going on."
- "I've been feeling lonely, and I'd rather tell you than let it turn into something worse."
If you are the partner with less desire, honesty helps just as much:
- "It isn't about you, and it isn't that I don't love you. I don't feel it right now and I don't fully know why. I'd like to find out together."
- "When I feel pressured, I shut down. Can we take the pressure off and see what happens?"
Things that make it worse: keeping score, sulking, guilt, sarcasm, comparing your marriage to your friends', and ultimatums delivered in the heat of an argument. One conversation will not solve it. Aim for a first one that leaves you both feeling a little less alone.
Sexless marriage advice: small steps that help
These are not a cure, but they move many couples off a stuck point.
- Take sex off the table for a while. It sounds backwards. Agree that for a few weeks, touch will not lead to sex. Hugs, a back rub, lying together. When nothing is expected, the anxious partner can relax. Sex therapists use a structured version of this called sensate focus.
- Schedule time, not sex. Book an evening that is only for the two of you, phones in a drawer. What happens in it is open.
- Fix the non-sexual stuff. Shared chores, more sleep, a night off from the children. Plenty of desire problems are really exhaustion problems.
- Learn how desire works for each of you. Many people, especially in long relationships, find desire turns up after they start being close, not before. Therapists call this responsive desire. Waiting to feel spontaneously in the mood can mean waiting forever.
- Bring back some newness. Our guide on how to spice up your marriage has gentle ideas that start well outside the bedroom.
- See each other from a distance. Esther Perel's argument in Mating in Captivity is that desire needs a little space and mystery, the very things a busy household squeezes out. Watching your partner be good at something, among other people, can change how you see them.
Couples therapy for a sexless marriage
If talking alone keeps going in circles, get help sooner rather than later. Couples often wait years, and by then the hurt has set hard.
A couples therapist works on the relationship: communication, resentment, the ask-and-retreat loop. A sex therapist focuses on sex itself: desire, arousal, pain, mismatched needs. Many do both. In the US, look for a certified sex therapist; in the UK, the usual term is psychosexual therapist. Nobody has sex in the therapist's office. You talk, and you get small exercises to try at home.
Rule out medical causes with a doctor first, or alongside. And if you are already in a non-traditional relationship, a poly-friendly therapist will not spend your first three sessions questioning it.
Should you stay in a sexless marriage?
Only you can answer that, and it is not a decision to make alone in the dark. Some questions that help:
- Do we still like each other, laugh together, feel on the same side?
- Has my partner been willing to talk, see a doctor or try therapy?
- Is this a season with a cause, or years of refusal to discuss it?
- Am I staying out of love, or out of fear of the alternative?
Plenty of couples rebuild. Some decide a low-sex marriage suits them both and find closeness in other ways. Some separate kindly. The most damaging path is the one where nothing is said, one partner withdraws further and the other grows bitter. A therapist can help you decide, whichever way you lean.
Sexless marriage and opening up
People search this, so here is a straight answer. Opening a marriage does not fix the reasons sex stopped. If the cause is resentment, depression or a medical problem, it is still there after you open up, now with jealousy and new feelings on top. Opening up as a bargain ("you can see other people so I don't have to deal with this") usually ends badly.
A small number of couples with a settled mismatch, who still love each other, have talked it through with a therapist and both genuinely want it for themselves, do choose an open arrangement. That is a different starting point from a marriage in trouble. If you are curious, read what an open marriage is and our honest look at whether open relationships work before raising it, and treat it as a separate question, not a rescue.
We meet couples who opened up and couples who decided not to. The ones who are glad either way are almost always the ones who had first learned to talk to each other about sex without flinching.
You are not the only ones
A sexless marriage feels private and shameful, and it is neither. It is one of the most common things couples struggle with, and one of the least spoken about. Having friends you can say it out loud to, without being judged or lectured, changes how heavy it feels.
That kind of easy, adult honesty about sex is what our community is built on. If you want to meet people who talk about this stuff over dinner like it is normal, because it is, you can join Rope & Candy. It is free and takes one email, and when someone from our team is in your city, we meet you for a coffee or a dinner. Nothing is expected after.
Questions people ask
How long can a marriage survive without intimacy?
There is no clock. Some couples live happily for decades with little or no sex because neither of them minds, while others feel the damage within a year because one partner is quietly hurting. What decides it is whether you can still talk, touch and feel on the same side.
What is the 7-7-7 rule for marriage?
It is a popular piece of advice: a date every seven days, a night or weekend away every seven weeks, and a proper holiday every seven months. It is not research, just a handy reminder to protect time as a couple. Use the spirit of it and ignore the maths if your life does not fit.
Can a sexless marriage be saved?
Often, yes, especially when both partners want to try and the cause is found. Medical issues, stress, resentment and the long drift of family life all respond to help. It is much harder when one partner refuses to talk about it at all.
Is it normal for sex to fade in a long marriage?
Desire usually changes over a long relationship, and quieter seasons around babies, illness or stress are very common. It only becomes a problem when one or both of you are unhappy about it and nobody feels able to say so.