11 real reasons couples stop having sex (and how to reconnect)

Dawn Laven (not her real name) and her husband have had sex maybe twice in 10 years. She blames the most recent drought on the discomforts of menopause, but the spark left her 27-year marriage long before that.

“We’re just friends, roommates, people who do life together,” Laven says. “There’s nothing sexy about it.”

A sexless marriage can stem from many possible causes, including lack of interest, lack of time, stress, illness, affairs, addictions, or simply letting life get in the way. Often it’s multiple factors at once.

“Sex is never just about sex,” explains licensed marriage and family therapist and certified sex therapist Lori Cluff Schade, PhD. “It’s deeply entangled with the relationship—and each one affects the other.”

Regardless of why it’s happening, there’s no reason to feel embarrassed. “Most couples who are struggling believe every other couple is having frequent, mind-blowing sex,” Schade says. But many aren’t, and they’re just not talking about it.

If you’re experiencing a sexless marriage, understanding the root causes is the first step toward addressing them. Below, we’ll explore 11 factors that often contribute to sexual disconnect—from communication barriers to health issues—and share expert-backed strategies to help you rebuild intimacy.

What Is a Sexless Marriage?

There’s no scientific definition of a sexless marriage, so it depends whom you ask.

“If you ask a researcher, a sexless marriage is having sex fewer than 10 times per year, or less than once per month,” says licensed marriage and family therapist and board-certified sex therapist Shadeen Francis, LMFT, CST. “However, if you ask someone who is not a researcher, they’ll mostly say it means ‘significantly less sex than we want to have to be happy.'”

It also depends on how you define sex. “Most people agree that traditional intercourse is sex, but other erotic exchanges could also be considered sex,” Schade says.

It’s important to note that a marriage without sex isn’t always bad or dysfunctional. As Schade notes, sometimes couples have sex infrequently but are both content with it. A lack of sex only becomes problematic when one or both partners in the relationship are not satisfied with the frequency or quality of their physical connection.

How Common Is a Sexless Marriage?

Studies put the rate of sexless marriage in the U.S. roughly between 15 and 20 percent, with one study finding numbers as high as 40 percent among older adults.

“I’m not surprised anymore by how many people married over 20 years tell me they haven’t had sex for months or even years,” Schade says.

What’s more, those numbers may actually be low. “The estimate is almost always an underestimate when it comes to things people are ashamed of,” Francis says.

It’s tricky to get accurate data on the topic because people who are willing to answer questions about sex are already going to be different from those who decline, Schade notes. “Plus, sex is measured differently across studies and is very subjective.”

Does that mean a sexless marriage is normal? Francis believes it is. “You would be hard-pressed to throw a stone into a crowd and not reach someone who’s saying, ‘Yeah, that’s me—either now or at some point.'”

Reasons Why Your Marriage Is Sexless

If you’d like to get out of a sex slump, the first step is to understand the possible reasons behind it, including the following.

1. Not Knowing How to Talk About Sex

Few people want to talk about a lack of intimacy in marriage. “Sex is a vulnerable area for people, so they don’t bring it up,” Schade says. “Because if a partner doesn’t respond well, it can really hurt.”

She notes that sometimes during sex, one partner will make a move the other partner doesn’t like, and that partner reacts with a lot of negativity, creating a rejecting or shaming experience that shuts down risk-taking. But they never talk about it afterward.

Another common scenario: A couple has never discussed what each person wants out of a sexual relationship in the first place. Not only is it an awkward conversation because we’re not socialized to talk about sex, but a lot of people don’t even know what they want in bed.

2. Being Overly Cautious

Many of us don’t have a good system for initiating sex. We might think we’re queuing it up by planning a dinner date, for example, but too often we fail to send or read the signals required to clearly communicate our desires.

“We can’t read each other’s minds—we actually need to be explicit,” Francis says. “And yes, there is a huge space here for body language, but we’ve also fallen out of practice with that form of communication.”

For example, we often fail to make eye contact, we’ve learned to keep our hands to ourselves, and we’ve been trained not to assume we know what another person wants.

“So, without explicit conversations about this, without clear requests, without open invitations, we are missing opportunity after opportunity to connect,” Francis says.

This challenge is particularly common among younger couples who may lack the communication skills to navigate intimate conversations effectively. Francis has seen couples in their 20s and 30s struggle with discussing desire openly, often avoiding these conversations altogether due to fear of rejection or embarrassment. “Without the skills to talk frankly about consent and desire, couples can get stuck in a cycle of unclear communication,” she says.

The result is that couples may want to connect but lack the tools to communicate their interest clearly. After their dinner date, they end up passing out on the sofa after scrolling on their phones because neither one knew how to express their desires or check in with their partner about theirs.

3. Mismatched Libidos and Desires

Just as we’re not all hungry at the same time, we don’t all have the same appetite for sex. Up to 80 percent of couples regularly experience a desire discrepancy, in which one partner wants to have sex and the other doesn’t.

It sounds cliché, but studies have confirmed, most recently in 2022, that in heterosexual relationships, men often have higher sex drives than women. “Men tend to have stable libido and desire, and women experience more fluctuation related to hormones—menstrual cycles, pregnancy, and menopause,” Schade explains.

Libido mismatches can happen in any relationship, and when they do, the partner who’s less interested may just go through the motions to keep the other partner happy, which of course makes sexy time feel anything but sexy.

“That can lead to more sex avoidance, which often leads to more rejecting of the higher-desire partner, which leads to a common scenario where the higher-desire partner finally decides it’s not worth the risk to even reach out anymore, because they don’t want to be rejected,” Schade says.

4. Relationship and Trust Issues

If you don’t feel safe with your partner, you probably don’t want to get naked with them.

“Sexual pleasure—while not universally experienced this way—is often a kind of surrender, a letting go,” Francis says. “There’s vulnerability in being present, in releasing, in asking, in allowing. And trust is the experience of: ‘I am safe to do risky things with you.'”

At the root of not feeling safe is usually some kind of betrayal. It could mean infidelity, but it could also mean failing to live up to an expectation or a promise. It could be not showing up when you were needed. It could also be cruelty—saying or doing something unexpectedly hurtful.

“All of that erodes trust. And when trust is compromised, you become vigilant. And when you’re vigilant, you can’t play,” Francis says. “You can’t surrender.”

5. Lingering Resentment or Contempt

Everybody fights sometimes. That’s OK. Fighting is not problematic, but not repairing well afterward can drive a wedge between couples.

Lingering resentment says, “You hurt me, and I haven’t gotten over it.” Contempt says, “I’ve lost respect for you.” Both of those essentially mean, “I don’t like you very much.”

“You can be in a relationship where you love someone or are committed to someone—but you don’t like them,” Francis says. “And if I don’t like you, I probably don’t want to lick you.”

Those feelings can be temporary or, if the grievances stack up, they can become permanent.

A common cause of resentment is a partner who always gives in to a more controlling partner at the expense of what they want. They will capitulate to avoid conflict, but they stuff their unhappiness. Another example is when one partner shoulders a disproportionate share of household duties or childcare, creating ongoing feelings of unfairness and exhaustion.

“This creates a slow drip of resentment and a decreased desire to be close to that person,” Schade explains. “I’m constantly telling the controlling partner, ‘If he/she doesn’t want to do what you are asking and does it anyway, you have lost, because you have just become emotionally unsafe.'”

6. Life Events and Transitions

“Stress is a huge killer of sex,” Schade says. Anything perceived as high stress—moving, pregnancy, having kids, job loss, a death in the family, caring for an aging parent—can interfere with making time for sex or having the physical or emotional bandwidth to even want it.

She gives three examples of life events and transitions that can be sex killers:

1. A couple with two toddlers is exhausted from all the demands and gives up trying to have sex, let alone high-quality sex.
2. A husband develops diabetes and is having a hard time maintaining an erection, is embarrassed, and gives up.
3. A menopausal wife has a thinning of the vaginal lining and sex becomes painful, so she simply avoids it.

Transitions such as menopause can make it physiologically difficult or impossible to have sex. In a 2019 study that looked at the impact of menopause on sexual health, up to 50 percent of participants reported low sexual desire, up to 30 percent reported poor lubrication, and up to 45 percent reported genital pain before, during, or after intercourse.

It doesn’t help that we tend to define sex as intercourse only. “Sex is lots of things,” Schade says, “but as long as people link it to traditional orgasm response and ejaculation, that narrow view of sex will make them withdraw.”

7. Mental Health and Emotional Factors

Our ability to connect with others is deeply tied to how connected we feel to ourselves. And most mental health challenges interfere with that. They make our relationship with ourselves feel fraught or fragile, Francis says.

Depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD—even when well-managed—all make it harder to feel present, safe, or grounded in your own body. And that impacts how much or how little you can be present with someone else.

The challenges vary depending on the mental health concern, but according to Francis, they can include:

• I’m not motivated.
• I don’t feel pleasure.
• I don’t feel safe or trusting.
• I’m physically unable.

If one partner with bipolar disorder has episodes of hypersexuality, for example, that increases demands on the other partner, who finds it exhausting and stressful and eventually avoids sex altogether, Schade explains. Another scenario is a partner with depression who experiences both decreased desire and struggles with basic functioning. This decreases sexual risk-taking and triggers ongoing rejection of the other partner, which can cause feelings of shame about not wanting sex and lead to avoiding it even more.

“Good mental and emotional health are correlated with more stability and predictability, which add to emotional safety,” Schade adds. “If you’re more sure of your partner and how they will respond, you are likely to feel more certainty and then take more sexual risks.”

That doesn’t mean people with mental health conditions are fated to have a sexless marriage; it just means it can be more challenging and often takes more effort.

8. Health Issues 

Everything from seasonal allergies to cancer can reduce blood flow, lubrication, energy, hormonal stability, and sexual interest. Pain or limited mobility are also often at play. This all changes your relationship to your body—and how much you can do with it.

“Most people don’t feel very sexy when they’re sick or adjusting to a changed body,” Francis says. “With physical health issues, we move from ‘I don’t want to’ or ‘I’m not feeling it’ into ‘I cannot.'”

A 2024 study links health issues such as hypertension, depression, diabetes, and heart disease with sexual dysfunction. Among study participants, 76 percent of women and 76 percent of men with chronic disease reported sexual impairment. Hypertension was found to be especially problematic, with nearly 78 percent of men with hypertension-related impairment reporting erectile dysfunction.

“If classic intercourse is not possible anymore, people give up instead of being flexible about how to expand the range of what sex is,” Schade says.

It’s also true that an illness can feel like an unwelcome house guest who intrudes on everything and never leaves. “So unless a couple intentionally creates a space where they aren’t focusing on the health issues and are intentionally putting effort into sexual contact, it might not happen.”

9. Medication Side Effects

Even if both partners are down for a romp, side effects of medication can spoil the fun.

“Anything impacting mood, like steroids, which can cause irritability; anything where vascular functioning is compromised; and anything that makes it harder to perform or feel pleasure are culprits,” Schade says.

It’s estimated that 25 percent of all erectile dysfunction is a side effect of drugs, according to a Harvard Special Health Report. The biggest offender is blood pressure medication, but other drugs that can cause ED include:

• Antidepressants
• Anti-ulcer drugs
• Tranquilizers and diuretics
• Propecia (for hair loss)
• Antihistamines
• Anti-androgens (for prostate cancer)
• Anticholinergics (for overactive bladder and more)
• Some anticancer drugs

Antidepressants and other mood disorder drugs also come with sexual side effects for women. In a 2023 study, 43 percent of men and women reported having sexual or romantic side effects from taking a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), and women were more than twice as likely as men to be taking one.

10. Lack of Effort

Sex is work, Francis says. Not just the physical act itself but also making it a priority.

“We get busy and distracted. We make a home, we build a family, we’re advancing in our careers, we’re taking care of sick or elderly relatives, and so we end up becoming partners, collaborators, co-managers, teammates—not really romantic partners.”

As we turn our attention to the other demands of life, it’s easy to take for granted that our partner will always be there.

“There’s a kind of naive but very sweet belief that: ‘We love each other, so we got this. We can turn to the other demands of life because you’re here, and I’m here, and we’ve committed to this, and we want to be here.'”

But even benign neglect can lead to no intimacy in the marriage. “We need to be maintaining and reinvesting in our relationship,” Francis says. “Even though it’s so great that we trust each other, trust doesn’t replace effort.”

11. Aging

As we age, our bodies change—breasts sag, bellies soften, skin wrinkles, hair thins. Some people start to feel less desirable and even embarrassed to be seen naked. This shame or discomfort can lead them to avoid sex, even if the desire is still there.

Then there are the physical realities of getting older: Reproductive hormones decline with age, reducing desire. Studies show that our sex lives mellow out later in life, with Americans in their 60s having sex an average of 20 times per year, compared to about 80 times per year for Americans in their 20s.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Schade argues that worrying about a sexless marriage can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. “People just believe they’re going to be less sexually active later in life,” she says. “They also conflate sex with intercourse, so if that becomes more difficult, they give up instead of broadening their view of what sexual connection can look like.”

She gives the example of a husband with prostate cancer whose surgery renders him unable to gain an erection without the help of a medical device. His shame and grief and physical limitations lead him to believe that he should just forget about sex, instead of discussing with his partner how they might be able to expand their sexual repertoire.

How to Fix a Sexless Marriage 

If you’re wondering how to fix a sexless marriage, it starts with a conversation. Schade suggests making the implicit explicit, saying, “This is a little risky for me, but I miss you and I’m wondering if we can talk about our sexual relationship and what we want to keep and what we might want to change about it moving forward.”

The success of this conversation depends heavily on how you approach it. Francis suggests leading with desire instead of criticism. “That’s the game-changer,” she says.

Instead of: “We never have sex anymore. What’s up with that?” Or, “Do you even like me?”

Say this: “I want to feel more connected to you.” Or, “I want to share more pleasure with you.” Or, “I want to understand what makes you feel good.”

That opens the door to collaboration. “You’re working together for a shared, pleasurable experience. It’s a group project. You’re not dragging them into it, and you’re not being forced. You’re inviting them into more pleasure with you.”

A sexless marriage is common and fixable. Try these practical, actionable tips to get your sex life back on track.

1. Rebuild your friendship.

Spend time together outside the bedroom to remember what first led you to the bedroom. Get curious about each other again, Francis says. “Become friends, not just logistical partners or co-parents.”

Go to the movies, go on dates, take walks, do the Sunday crossword puzzle. Spend time together without the pressure of sex to feel emotionally closer, which can pave the way for feeling physically closer.

2. Expand your definition of sex.

Just because the kind of sex you used to have is unavailable doesn’t mean pleasure is off the table. “What still feels good? Or what hadn’t I known felt good? Or even, what didn’t used to feel good and now I really like?” Francis says. “I’m hearing more and more women say, ‘Oh, I actually kind of like a tummy massage.’” Start exploring what feels good now, and see if that can also be sexy.

Schade notes that when people are asked about heightened sexual experiences they’ve had over a lifetime, common responses aren’t even linked with intercourse. “It’s not uncommon for people to remember hot and heavy make-out sessions that didn’t end in intercourse,” she says.

3. Stop keeping score.

Let go of external ideas about what “enough” sex looks like. “Frequency, technique, timing—none of that matters if it’s not rooted in pleasure and connection,” Francis says. “Instead of chasing arbitrary goals, ask, ‘Are we enjoying each other?'”

4. Schedule time for intimacy.

If schedules are hectic, actually put intimate time on your calendar—just like you would a date night or important meeting. This doesn’t mean scheduling sex, but rather blocking out time to connect without phones, kids, or other distractions. Maybe it’s Sunday mornings with coffee in bed, or Wednesday evenings after the kids are asleep. When both partners can see this time is protected and prioritized, it allows you to mentally prepare and build anticipation throughout the day.

5. Compare notes.

Some couples have never discussed what they want to try in bed—and that might play a role in the dry spell. Schade recommends checking out a site called weshouldtryit.com, where you and your partner answer questions separately about sexual desire, and then the system generates a list of overlapping answers to show what you both agreed on. After you’re sexually intimate is a good time to tell your partner what you enjoyed (“I really like it when…”) and ask them to do the same.

6. Understand how desire works for both of you.

Sexual desire isn’t one-size-fits-all. Some people experience “spontaneous desire”—feeling turned on out of nowhere—while others have “responsive desire,” meaning their interest builds after certain cues like emotional connection, physical touch, or romantic content.

“It’s important to recognize and inspire responsive desire in a safe and respectful way for both partners,” says Whitney McSparran, a licensed professional counselor at Thriveworks. This might mean creating the right environment with music, lighting, or conversation. It could involve reading romance novels, watching romantic movies, or simply paying attention to what makes each of you feel connected and intrigued. The key is understanding your own patterns and communicating them to your partner, so you can both create conditions where desire can naturally emerge. 

7. Reflect on how you want sex to make you feel.

Not just what you want to do, but how you want to feel. Do you want to feel wild? Safe? Playful? Desired? That clarity helps your partner show up for you—and helps you understand your needs better.

If you need some thought-starters, Francis encourages you to “chase your yes.” “Any time something feels good—even if it’s not explicitly sexual—pause and savor it,” she says. Ask: What about this feels good? Use your five senses. Is it the taste? The smell? The texture? The sound?

She uses food as a metaphor. “Let’s say you like creamy foods—maybe you’ll enjoy silk sheets or oil-based massage. If you like crunchy foods, maybe you’ll enjoy biting or a firmer touch.”

8. Get help if you need it.

Schade recommends listening to the podcast Foreplay Radio because they acknowledge the different layers that commonly happen in relationships and get couples thinking. She also recommends the online workshop, “Hold Me Tight” by clinical psychologist and couples therapist Sue Johnson, PhD, founder of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). The eight sessions, with video examples of real couples, put sex into the broader context of all the emotions and behaviors that can keep couples stuck.

If there are formidable barriers that you can’t seem to work through, or if you don’t have a lot of support as a couple or an individual, consider speaking with a licensed marriage and family therapist. “You’re learning and growing together, just like in every other part of love and marriage, and sometimes it helps to have someone guide that process,” Francis says.