5 Most Common Mistakes Couples Make When Working on a Sex Problem in a Long-term Relationship
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Over the last decade, I’ve had the privilege to be trusted by hundreds of highly distressed couples dealing with an ongoing problem of sexual desire in a long-term relationship to carry them to safety and build a connected, loving and sexually-fulfilled relationship.
As you can read in their own success stories of transformation and joy, anonymous but written in their own words, they’ve made these mistakes over and over, causing them immense heartache and too often, the brink of divorce.
I’ve compiled a list of very common — and very understandable — mistakes that couples make to help you prevent this unnecessary pain and get the resources you need sooner. Whether it’s an issue of low or lack of sexual desire, or lack of passion in the bedroom after decades together, the resources to support you are a free consultation away.
1. Waiting to work on sex until you've "fixed" emotional intimacy first
One of the most common—and costly—mistakes couples make is believing they need to repair emotional intimacy before they can begin working on sex. It sounds logical: We'll reconnect emotionally first, and then the desire and sex will naturally return. But in long-term relationships, especially those that have become sexless or caught in a pursuer-distancer dynamic, emotional and physical intimacy don't exist on separate tracks. They are deeply intertwined, each reinforcing the other.
When couples avoid working on the sexual relationship while waiting for emotional closeness to magically return, they often end up strengthening the very patterns that keep them disconnected. The higher-desire partner continues to experience rejection, loneliness, and hopelessness. The lower-desire partner feels increasing pressure, guilt, or inadequacy. Both partners become more emotionally guarded, making vulnerable conversations even harder. Instead of creating safety, avoiding the sex problem allows resentment, distance, and mistrust to grow. The path forward isn't to choose between emotional intimacy and physical intimacy—it's to work on both together. Learning to create new experiences of touch, communication, and emotional safety at the same time is what begins to interrupt the cycle and rebuild connection.
Read more about why emotional intimacy and physical intimacy must be rebuilt together in my article: Can You Fix Emotional Intimacy Before Physical Intimacy in a Sexless Marriage?
2. Working on the sex problem individually
If you’re having a problem with sex with each other, it’s a couples issue, not an individual one. Unless you desire to have sex with a comatose partner, your partner has a role in what happens. The sustainable solution requires both people to be interested and committed in making their joint sex life better. It requires both to be in the room to understand each other and learn new skills. You can get the resources you need on your own, but ultimately, you have to learn new practices and new ways of having conversations with your partner to solve it.
I do not work with members of a couple individually because it can significantly hurt their relationship. If I were to work with an individual not the couple, I would end up seeing the dynamic through that individual’s eyes — through their hurt, their biases, and their stuckness — instead of seeing it through my expert eyes. What is a couples issue therefore needs to be addressed by the couple together, both being part of the process and solution.
3. Working on your sex problem through books and free online content
Books and free online content are wonderful if your sex problem is recent and has been going on for less than a year. You may be stuck and wanting to find inspiration, new perspectives and a mindset change on what is possible and which direction to take. You have not yet developed a deep level of disappointment and frustration and have the possibility of figuring this out yourselves.
If your problem has been going on for more than a year — and especially if the situation is deteriorating emotionally — working on this without getting personalized support is actually hurting your relationship. The more time goes by, the more emotionally disconnected you become and the deeper the wounds get. They you get caught in the downward “death” spiral of intimacy-destroying behaviors that threaten your relationship as well. The real shifts come from experiential work — doing things differently and re-connecting — not just by intellectually understanding that it’s necessary.
My personalized coaching approach is about taking you through a step-by-step process that teaches you to relate in a way that feels connecting, easy — and arousing. It’s about learning new communication and sexual skills, not just talking about them. And it’s about transforming your relationship to make it work better, the way my “Intimacy Warrior” clients have done.
4. Approaching the problem piece-meal
You might only have had enough time or interest to read one book, try an exercise for a couple of days, then find yourself losing interest as “life takes over.”
The most common problem, ever! Every one of my clients have gone through the yo-yo pattern. No, they’re not stupid or incapable. But they are using the wrong approach to the problem because it’s compelling and it makes you feel good — temporarily.
Until it makes you feel worse.
Working on a sex problem piece-meal gives you the illusion that you’re making progress — you’re doing something after all. But the failure to sustain the progress and get through the inevitable dips causes you to feel worse about yourself and about your relationship.
You feel bad that you can’t stick to something, like it’s a personal failure. And you also convince yourself that nothing works to fix your problem — the exercise or the approach is simply wrong for you. You fall prey to fatalistic thinking and believe that things are indeed hopeless. “See, I’ve tried EVERYTHING and NOTHING works,” you tell yourself.
The thing about change — especially when in involves a sensitive topic such as sex and intimacy — is that you go through ups and downs, successful periods and lots of dips. Ask anyone who’s gotten good at something.
The journey to being good at something is not linear.
It has ups and downs, dips and peaks, unexpected turns and detours.
It requires persistence — and a whole lot of perspiration.
You have to get good at failing and self-soothing when things don’t go your way.
And the better you are at repair of instances when things don’t go your way — and feelings are hurt — to get back on track.
My clients will tell you that working on things consistently, through weekly sessions and constant touch points between session, has helped them not only sustain progress but make their lives so much easier. They felt supported and were also getting tips to move through the challenges in an effective way. You can read about their journeys in their success stories, all expressed in their own words.
5. Arguing about sex — when none of this has anything to do with sex
If you’re struggling to fix an ongoing sex problem, or worse, it’s making you feel disconnected and distanced, it’s no longer a sex problem. It’s an intimacy problem. And when that lingers, it becomes a major relationship problem, by devolving into a “death" spiral of intimacy-destroying behaviors.
If you’re stuck in endless loops arguing about who is initiating (or not), you need expert intervention to take this conversation to a vulnerable level to help you both feel heard and understood.
Because at that point, the conversation is about one of three question, which go back to your attachment patterns:
Am I important to you?
Can I be myself with you?
Will you be there for me in distress?
Being stuck in the sexual conflict is like fog and mirrors, blocking what you need to see about your partner — and sharing what you want them to see about you. It’s about understanding each other and healing the hurts behind resentments and distance.
Until you can get to this level of vulnerability, you will spiral out, hurting each other in the process.
BONUS 6. Endlessly chasing possible causes of the problem instead of taking practical steps to come closer together.
Thanks to Instagram, Tik Tok videos and the Internet, it has become fashionable to be “armchair therapists,” diagnosing ourselves and each other with what is wrong with us.
However, knowing what is wrong does absolutely nothing to actually solve the problem practically.
Understanding your type of attachment does nothing to help you leave the argument feeling heard and understood, instead of abandoned.
Understanding that your relationship needs safety does not equip you with the know-how of how to stop intimacy-destroying behaviors in the moment you’re making them that make it unsafe.
You need a guided step-by-step approach — tailored to your specific situation — to solve your problem practically, so you can move on to enjoy your life and each other. That means showing you the specific things that you can do, in the moment and in between sessions, to change how you do things. Not just talk about them.
Like feeling safe enough to linger in a hug. And eventually, initiating sex in an easy and spontaneous way. And asking for what you want without feeling ashamed. And maybe scheduling “no underwear brunch” after Church every Sunday, the way one of my clients do now.
Too often, receiving traditional analytical couples therapy doesn’t help either, as it focuses too much on understanding the problem, rather than helping you solve it. Here is a check-list to know if you’re getting the best guidance in your sessions — or are stuck in a frustrating holding pattern:
If you’re NOT consistently experiencing connection with your partner in your therapy sessions, you’re going down the wrong path. Spending more time in therapy will do nothing. Your therapist needs to be expert enough to help you restructure your interactions with each other — from criticism to vulnerability, from closed-ness to open-ness — so that connection becomes a present reality, not a future promise. Your hope is on the line.
Analyzing what's gone wrong and why needs to be a tiny fraction of what you do. Real intimacy is not theory or analysis; it's an experience that must be modeled and fostered in every word you speak to each other, every gesture, every move. Your therapist should be modeling this for you and helping you live this — in every session. The alternative deepens the wounds that pull you two apart.
If you’re committing to a session-by-session model of therapy, you’ll face a frustratingly long and arduous path that may or may not get you where you want to go. It’s a costly risk that most couples are unwilling to take. Rebuilding intimacy needs to be an intentional step-by-step process, backed by success stories, and led by a specialist who believes in your relationship and your love.
You don't have to keep figuring this out on your own
If you recognized your relationship in one or more of these mistakes, know that you're not alone. Nearly every couple I work with has spent months — and sometimes decades — trying to solve the problem with the best intentions, only to find themselves feeling more discouraged, more disconnected, and more uncertain about what to do next.
The problem isn't that you've failed. It's that rebuilding intimacy requires a different roadmap than the one most of us have been given.
The good news is that these patterns can change. When couples understand the cycle they've been caught in and learn how to approach emotional and physical intimacy together, they stop feeling like opponents and begin becoming teammates again. They replace pressure with curiosity, avoidance with connection, and hopelessness with a path forward.
You don't have to wait until the relationship feels even more distant, or until one of you has given up trying altogether. The earlier you interrupt these patterns, the easier it is to create new ones.
If you're ready to stop guessing and start rebuilding your intimate relationship with a clear, evidence-based approach, I'd love to help. My coaching gives couples the tools, structure, and guidance to break old patterns, restore emotional and physical closeness, and create a relationship where both partners feel wanted, understood, and chosen again.
